Sunday, November 20, 2011
Is Christian Bashing Being Funded by the Public?
A group of New York lawmakers and public officials were demanding a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn remove an art exhibit that includes a film depicting ants crawling on a crucifix. They believe that this is one of the repeated attempts of the museum to bash the Christian faith. This group of individuals believes that the Brooklyn museum is trying to make religion bashing fashionable. Before this controversial piece of artwork, there was another one in 1999, which featured an exhibit that depicted Mary with African features and included clumps of elephant dung and cutouts of female genitalia. Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to cut the funding of the 1999 exhibit, however, it was unsuccessful. Representative, Michael Grimm, said, “It’s an issue of how we spend our taxpayer dollars. Everyone has a right to express themselves. At the same time, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right to go around offending massive groups of people and have other people pay for it.” It is the first amendment that allows the artists freedom of speech and the ability to create whatever they want, however, once it becomes religiously offensive does it violate the first amendment?
Taxpayer’s money has funded a religious exhibit in the past, like in the court case Lynch v Donnelly. Their money went towards not only a Christmas scene with Christmas trees, snowflakes and Santa Claus, but also a nativity scene of Jesus Christ’s birth. Therefore, shouldn’t the law remain the same in all-religious tax-funded exhibits? If a nativity scene is okay, why not a religious film?
I believe there is a huge difference between funding a nativity scene and funding artwork that mocks the Christian religion. Taxpayers money should not be contributed to something that is religion offensive. I usually argue that courts should stay consistent with their court case rulings, however, this is a situation where I strongly disagree, public taxes should not be funding this religious exhibit, nor should it even be their for all of New York City to see. I understand that the artist has freedom of speech, but if this is allowed then what next? What if there was a painting that incorporated the KKK, is that still freedom of speech, or is that offensive yet?
Taxpayer’s money should only be permitted to fund religious exhibits if they can somehow be secularized. Like the Christmas scene in Lynch v Donnelly, it brought customers into town, which helped the local businesses. However, there is absolutely no secular purpose to the film in the Brooklyn museum. I understand New York City is known for its creativity, edginess and diversity, however, offending a religion with taxpayer’s money is completely unacceptable and the museum should stop being funded by taxpayers immediately. This would be an entirely different scenario if the museum were privately funded.
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