US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gestures while giving a speech entitled 'The Law and the Arts' at The Juliard School Thursday Sept. 22, 2005 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Posted on 09/22/2005 9:58:07 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - The government can decide what artwork is worthwhile without being accused of censorship as long as it is funding that art, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience Thursday at the Juilliard School.
"The First Amendment has not repealed the ancient rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the tune," Scalia said.
The justice, who limited his discussion to art issues, said he wasn't suggesting that government stop funding the arts, but that if it does fund artwork, it is entitled to have a say in the content, just like when it runs a school system.
The high court and Scalia have weighed in on the issue before.
In the late 1980s, the National Endowment for the Arts sparked a public and political uproar when it helped fund exhibits of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic images and a photograph by Andres Serrano of a crucifix immersed in urine.
Critics contended the NEA was financing obscenity, and Congress passed an arts-funding law in 1990 requiring public values be considered when handing out grants.
The Supreme Court upheld that law in 1998, ruling that the government need not subsidize art it considers indecent. Justice David H. Souter was the only dissenter, saying the law was overbroad and had "a significant power to chill artistic production and display."
Scalia said Thursday he believes the government did not violate the First Amendment in the case of the Serrano photo — it did not pass any law to throw the "modern day DaVinci" into jail nor did it stop him from displaying his art, he said.
"I can truly understand the discomfort with government making artistic choices, but the only remedy is to get government out of funding," he told the audience.
Scalia said the Supreme Court has not done a very good job of framing a definition of obscenity, which the First Amendment does not protect.
"The line between protected pornography and unprotected obscenity lies between appealing to a good healthy interest in sex and appealing to a depraved interest, whatever that means," Scalia said in stating the court's position.
The result is that every small town in America must tolerate the existence of a porn shop, he said.
I wish we had eight more of him
Take the King's coin, do the King's bidding.
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gestures while giving a speech entitled 'The Law and the Arts' at The Juliard School Thursday Sept. 22, 2005 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Hear, hear!
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Paging Judge Souter, white courtesy phone.. The moving van company wants to know when to pick up your furniture and belongings at the soon to be FReedom inn.
Basically you get what you pay for, and if you want other people's money to pay for it, you get what the majority wants. The leftists want democracy, that's how democracy works.
The audacity of these people are amazing. Though it's everybody's money paying for something, the content reflects the morals of a very small minority. Rather elitist and undemocratic I'd say.
Hypocrites.
The Leftists don't really want democracy. They wear the robes of democracy as a convenient disguise for their ultimate goal of single party government.
Agreed.
The result is that every small town in America must tolerate the existence of a porn shop, he said.
Agreed.
Ideally, neither of these points should be controversial, let alone worth the time of a Supreme Court Justice to make comment. Unfortunately, such is not the case. And that fact says bad things about the direction in which our society has been going for many decades now.
As true today as in the time of the Lorenzo di Medici.
Souter probably has some Mapplethorpes in his home bathhouse in NH.
This won't play well with all the artistes. Watch them all start crying for artistic integrity and about the artist's right to be insulting and provocative.
No. He probably wishes he had been the model in the Bullwhip picture.
I gues the AP idea of a gesture differs from mine.
Sadly, no.
It's one thing for Scalia to talk about it in front of a sympathetic audience, another thing to copy a report of it here, and still another thing to deal with the reality.
Consider San Antonio's harsh experience with the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center:
The Esperanza's relationship with the city of San Antonio is very controversial. In 2001, the Esperanza won a federal lawsuit, claiming that the city's decision to deny the agency funding in the 1997-1998 city budget amounted to 'viewpoint discrimination.,' and said art is 'unquestionably shielded' under the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ordered the Esperanza's funding to be restored.
Taxpayer Funded Arts Group Staged Radical Political Rally 9/9/2005
There the matter rests. Only now Esperanza seems to gloat a bit, and we choke every year when we're compelled to fund those jackalopes.
I never understood why the government funded the arts in the first place. Make artists actually work for their living and maybe they'll start considering their audience's tastes if they want to sell something. They have every right to put out their crap on their dime and time, but we should be able to retain the right to call it crap and refuse to pay for it.
Where does the Constitution authorize Congress to fund art in the first place, let alone become art critics?
That was my first thought in reading the little excerpt on the front page before I clicked in to read the article and the comments.
The government has no business funding art and artists...... And I say that as a person who made a living for quite a few years as an artist myself.... Without taking a cent of tax money.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, OTOH I'm surprised that Ginsburg and Stevens didn't join that opinion.
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