Must be a sign of the apocalypse or something. :)
Posted on 12/07/2010 5:22:30 AM PST by Kaslin
What in the name of Gilbert Stuart is going on at the National Portrait Gallery?
A week ago, CNSNews' Penny Starr reignited the culture war with an arresting story about the staid old museum that began thus:
"The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitalia, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as 'homoerotic.'"
Film of the crucifix with ants crawling on Jesus is from "A Fire in My Belly," a video by David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992, that expressed his rage and anguish at the death of a lover who also died of AIDS.
As this is a Christmas-season exhibit, it came to the attention of William Donahue of the Catholic League. He called the ants-on-Jesus image "hate speech" and demanded its removal.
The rest of the four-minute video of "A Fire in the Belly," writes Starr, portrays "the bloody mouth of a man being sewn shut ... a man undressing a man's genitals, a bowl of blood and mummified humans."
One wonders: Why has this exhibit not received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts?
With all deliberate speed, the portrait gallery pulled the video.
Too late. By now the exhibit, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in America," had come to the attention of House Republicans who may have just struck the mother lode of that "waste, fraud and abuse" that the Gipper was always talking about.
Other features in the exhibit include that painting of the naked men kissing with one holding a gun to the chest of the other and a 1954 painting of an aroused naked man, "O'Hara Nude With Boots," by Larry Rivers. "O'Hara" is poet Frank O'Hara, Rivers' lover.
How did The Washington Post react to Donahue's protest?
"The Censors Arrive," said the Post. Yet the ants-on-Jesus image, 11 seconds long, is no big deal said the Post, which chastised Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor for suggesting the exhibit could imperil Smithsonian funding.
The Post added, "We hope Mr. Cantor's threats prompt many additional Washingtonians to visit and judge for themselves."
But if the Post is interested in having Washingtonians "judge for themselves" this "art," why does the paper not publish photos of "O'Hara Nude With Boots"? If this is art the gallery should be showing high school kids who come to Washington each spring, why not let the Post's readers see what the controversy is all about?
To Post art critic Blake Gopnik, the "show about gay sex" at the gallery is "courageous" and "full of wonderful art. My review of it was a rave."
What Gopnik raved about are the kind of pictures that used to be on French postcards, the possession of which in the 1950s could get you kicked out of high school.
As for the gallery's pulling of "A Fire in My Belly," Gopnik wrote that the NPG curators "come off as cowards."
Down the hall from the "Hide/Seek" homoerotic art and gay sex show is the Steven Spielberg-George Lucas collection of paintings by Norman Rockwell, which they loaned to the gallery. While Gopnik raved about the former, the Rockwell paintings, so beloved of flyover country, are just the kind of bourgeois schlock art that truly repulses him.
Writes Gopnik: "Norman Rockwell would get the boot (from the National Portrait Gallery) if I believed in pulling everything that I'm offended by. I can't stand the view of America that (Rockwell) represents, which I believe insults a huge number of the non-mainstream folks."
The reason I don't demand that Rockwell's trash be pulled, says Gopnik, is "because his (Rockwell's) detractors, including me, got to rant about how much they hated his art."
Cantor "has said that taxpayer-funded museums should uphold 'common standards of decency,'" says Gopnik. "But such 'standards' don't exist and shouldn't in a pluralist society."
Interesting. But if there are no common standards of decency, there is no moral community, and where there is no moral community, there is no country. If we cannot agree on what is beautiful, moral and decent, are we really "one nation, under God, indivisible" anymore?
Gopnik and the Post have put critics of the gallery's sex show on notice that their protests are to be restricted to the verbal. Neither they nor Congress have a right to tell curators what to exhibit and not exhibit. "(T)he use of public dollars does not give lawmakers the right to micromanage or censor public displays," says the Post.
The gauntlet has been thrown down to the new GOP majority: Keep your puritanical hands off our museums.
The Smithsonian needs a haircut next year to remind these folks who's boss and that with public funding comes public responsibility.
Tell us how you really feel....
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s just welfare in disguise.
When a society accepts the political correctness verdict that they have no right to set taboos, that society is dying. And that is the ultimate gola of the nihilists, the death of any taboo structure which would restrict their lusts. Filthy faggots have degenerate minds, so their pronouncements will be putrifaction.
Next time I won’t hold back.....
What you wrote, little jeremiah, IN SPADES!
http://www.ask.com/dictionary?q=in+spades&qsrc=8&o=ffx&l=dir
Must be a sign of the apocalypse or something. :)
This is about giving homosexuals other people's money to flaunt their lifestyle in front of the public and insult people who disagree with them.
This is about giving homosexuals other people's money to flaunt their lifestyle in front of the public and insult people who disagree with them.
Genesis 13:13
Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.
Genesis 18:20-21
Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
Genesis 19:4-7
Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house.
They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.
|
Psalms 12:8 The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.
|
Isaiah 3:9 The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.
2 Peter 2:13b Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
Ezekiel 16:49-50
49. "`Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
50. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
5. if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
6. if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
7. and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men
8. (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--
9. if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
10. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings;
11. yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
12. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
But there IS hope!!!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
If you could NOT change, you would be in most pitiful shape.....
Anyone who does not understand the mind of the homosexual male and the homosexual agenda may want to read this column by Blake Gopnik:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/04/AR2010110407182.html
Homosexuals.
If you don’t see the difference between classical nude sculptures and paintings, and the offensive in the extreme faggot blasphemy, you either didn’t read the article, or the homosexual agenda doesn’t bother you. Why would it not bother someone, is the next question.
Thanks, I just glimpsed at it (just eating breakfast, I have respect my digestion) and maybe I’ll ping it out as a “know thine enemy” thing.
But I was trying to use restraint.
People who know me well have said I should have a talk radio show.
Ha ha - I’d get no ad sponsors. There is a small hippie radio station nearby but I’d only last one time.
Did you see what the Fagot Blasphemy was?
The exhibit is not exactly the Folsom Street Fair of sexual perversions. At least not the pictures and Photo’s that the Smithsonian has placed online. And when included in the outrageous list is a photo of a fully clothed woman clutching her breasts. Not something we expect in polite company nor something you would need to visit a burlesque show for. And certainly less voyeuristic than Eve’s naked image on the Sistine Ceiling.
Yes they included one depraved video. That happens to be in it’s unedited version on Youtube for the entire world to see at their leisure. And while it was removed from the show, the resulting press coverage guarantees it will be viewed by millions. The remainder of the display looks like it has anticipated themes of loneliness, Isolation, Frustration, and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Taxpayer monies should not be used to pay for offensive “art” that promotes sexual perversion, whether it’s akin to SF insanity or somewhat more restrained. Homosexuality is a mental illness, repulsive, abnormal, wrong, immoral, unhealthy and not one thin dime of public money should be spent promoting, normalizing or apologizing for it.
Public money shouldn’t be spent on ANY art. Donation only.
Do you really suppose people were more moral in 15th century Italy?
Come on.
You think 15th Century Italy had government enforced homosexual agenda crap all over the place?
You think that 40% of births were to unmarried mothers?
etc.
What I don’t understand is your (apparent) support of disgustingly obscene “art” in a national institution.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/04/AR2010110407182.html
Copy some tomorrow here.
Yes, bastardy was quite common back then, though they didn't keep statistics.
How many people got killed in duels or are poisoned by their wives in today's America?
40% to unmarried women? Most of those raised without a father?
You’re comparing duels and poisoning to - what? The current murder rate?
How about abortion?
Yes, infanticide was *very* common in the Renaissance. Not legal of course, but very common and the laws not much enforced. As with poisoning and duels.
Priests didn’t fight duels, and preached against it too. The ruling classes did not care.
You really need to get away from the idea that every age past was more moral than today.
Sometimes morals were better, sometimes worse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
