$100,000 in stimulus funds pornography through NEA

There’s a lot of stimulus money floating around these days. With numbers like $787 billion being tossed about, it’s hard to know where that money is going, or even what it amounts to. A billion is too much dough for most of us to wrap our heads around, let alone several hundred billion.

But how about $100,000? How about $100,000 spent on pornographic “art”?

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has not always been known for their good judgment in what should be viewed as art. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”, a photo of a crucifix in a jar of urine, was the basis for a $15,000 taxpayer-funded grant that was disputed in the late 1980s. Or consider Joel-Peter Witkin’s “Maquette for Crucifix” which portrays a naked Jesus Christ surrounded by sado-masochistic imagery, also funded and lauded as art by the NEA.

Now the NEA is at it again, and is spending our hard-earned tax dollars on what Christians should find abhorrent.

(Warning: the following paragraph contains graphic, but truthful, examples that should be offensive to all of us.) For example: A $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened “Thundercrack”–“the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” Plus, a $25,000 injection for Jess Curtis/Gravity, a dance troupe whose “Symmetry Project” looks something like two people writhing naked on the floor, and another $25,000 check for CounterPULSE, which offers a weekly production of “Perverts Put Out”. You can use your imagination for that one. (Descriptions and data from FOXNews.)

“These are funds intended to create permanent jobs, not to feed prurient interests,” wrote Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., in a letter signed by 50 colleagues in the House and fired off to Patrice Walker Powell, the acting chairman of the NEA. “I find it unconscionable that taxpayers are funding objectionable and obscene movies, plays and exhibitions.”

What I find really disturbing about this story is not merely that it is happening. Unfortunately, sex sells, and immoral skankiness has been selling as art for a long time. What really bothers me is that despite the fact that it’s being paid for with our taxpayer dollars nobody other than FOXNews and a few brave bloggers are even mentioning it.

In comparison to $787 billion, $100,000 is not a lot of money. But $100,000 is a lot to the average citizen, like you and I, and a whole lot more than we want to spend on immoral sexual displays. We need to take a stand for real artistic expression–the kind that inspires and does not degrade.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)

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  1. altfreq11 said:

    “Pornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the the purposes of sexual excitement.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography How are any of these things pornographic?

    August 16, 2009
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