Last December, a bunch of Republican U.S. legislators joined forces with the Catholic League’s blowhard president William Donohue to get the Smithsonian Museum to censor part of their Hide/Seek queer art exhibition, all because of David Wojnarowicz’s video Fire In My Belly which showed ants crawling over a Jesus figurine for a whole 11 seconds.
Now that the show has moved to The Brooklyn Museum, New York state Republicans have started threatening to pull all the museum’s public funding calling Wojnarowicz’s work “sacrilegious,” “Christian bashing,” “a hate crime,” and “blatantly disrespectful and offensive to Christians during the holiday season.”
Even Bill Donohue has jumped into this deja vu scenario by saying that Wojnarowicz died by “self-inflicted” AIDS, something Donohue implies wouldn’t have happened if he had simply lived life according to Catholic doctrine. This is the same man who called Catholic child rape victims “gold diggers” and blamed gays for the Church’s molestation problem adding that the church has been unfairly singled out and scrutinized over the alleged rapes.
Maybe we can divert New York’s public art funds and pay Bill Donohue to deliver more of his anti-LGBT theatrics in the Brooklyn Museum. Viewers won’t be able to tell whether it’s real or just very passionate performance art. Either way, they’ll understand why the public needs queer art exhibitions in the face of Donohue and his elephantine friends.
How about we take this to the next level?
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slanty
They probably remember the death threats tolerant NY Republicans got earlier this year for supporting marriage equality. The rest of them don’t want to appear too tolerant.
Kieran
You don’t have to be straight or a republican to be offended by “art” that is deliberately offensive to millions of Christians. The Brooklyn museum wouldn’t dare s
sponsor an exhibit showing a Jewish Torah or the prophet Mohammad crawling with
insects. Christians, whether they be gay or straight, should expect the same
respectful courtesy.
Yttrium
I lol’d at Christian groups calling this a “hate crime.” They despise that word whenever it has to do with an actual minority, but they’re fine applying it to themselves.
S
@Kieran – See ‘Argumentum ad Populum’. Also, I think it is necessary to mention that if we listened to peoples ‘feelings’, Homosexuality would still be illegal. I don’t care about your feelings nor any other Christian, or Muslim or Jew, you simply do not have a right to remove a piece of artwork because of your easily swayed and fragile feelings. To quote Dan Savage ‘Fuck your feelings’.
cory
what do the ants symbolize ?
kylew
@S: Hear hear!
Dave
@cory: Well, duh! As the only creatures not created by God but by Satan, ants obviously symbolize the death of Christianity. Or something like that…. Look, don’t question it; ants crawling on a crucifix is baaaad, mmm’kay? I mean, probably not as bad as some gnats on a statue of St. Peter or caterpillars on a rosary, but definitely really, really bad.
SteveC
I saw the Hide and Seek exhibition in the Smithsonian in DC in February. I also went to see ‘Fire in my Belly’ in the makeshift exhibition space outside the gallery. Which was free. It was barred from the main exhibit, which I thought both sad and pathetic. It’s a good piece.
Ogre Magi
Typical christian crap!!!!!
Parson Thwackum
CHRISTIANS should expect respectful courtesy? FUCK Christians. On what basis do a group of people whose life is built around abusing minorities and women demand “respectful courtesy?”
Pep, Italy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/arts/design/11ants.html
Read this article for those of you that think that the artist was bashing or ridiculing the figure of Christ.
“That “A Fire in My Belly” is about spirituality, and about AIDS, is beyond doubt … Wojnarowicz was profoundly angry at a government that barely acknowledged the epidemic and at political forces that he believed used AIDS, and the art created in response, to demonize homosexuals … the video is filled with symbols of vulnerability under attack: beggars, slaughtered animals, displaced bodies and the crucified Jesus..He said that in his own upbringing as a Roman Catholic he’d been taught that Jesus took on the sufferings of all people in the world.”
Wendy's missing left breast
@Parson Thwackum: I think we can ignore the abuse of women though. BAM BAM BAM.
Queer Supremacist
Christianity is a hate crime. Why this modern-day Torquemada wannabe is not in federal prison for aiding and abetting the ongoing two-millennium genocide of non-gentiles and non-heteros is beyond me.