TIM MILLER-THE NEA 4- THE CULTURE WARS

In 1990, I, a wandering queer performance artist -- seen in the demonstration above holding Oscar Wilde before my arrest by Federal Police in L.A. after hundreds of artists symbolically charged the Federal Government with crimes against the First Amendment-- had been awarded a NEA Solo Performer Fellowship, which was promptly overturned under slimy political pressure from the Bush White House because of the lush, wall-to-wall homo themes of my creative work. We so-called "NEA 4" (me, Karen Finley, John Fleck and Holly Hughes), then successfully sued the federal government with the help of the ACLU (if you're not a card-carrying member, become one!) for violation of our First Amendment rights. We won a settlement where the government paid us the amount of the defunded grants and all court costs. The last little driblet of this case was the "decency" clause, which Congress had added to the NEA appropriation under the cattle prod of Jesse Helms. Judge Wallace Tashima of the Ninth Federal Circuit Curt had sagely declared this "decency" clause unconstitutional from the bench and thrown it out. The Justice Department decided to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.

If you read your newspaper you'll know that in 1998 the Supremes decided that it was okey-dokey not to fund "indecent art" in their NEA 4 decision. The law "neither inherently interferes with First Amendment rights nor violates constitutional vagueness principles,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her majority opinion. In a disappointing 8-1 decision the high court hitched up with Helms and his ilk and said the National Endowment for the Arts can consider "decency" in deciding who gets public money for the arts. I was grateful that at least Justice David H. Souter showed he was sensible to the reality of how under assault artists have been in this country for the last ten years. He was the lone Justice who dissented, saying the law should be struck down as unconstitutional because it was "substantially overbroad and carries with it a significant power to chill artistic production and display.''

There is no question that the "chilling effect" is as real as the polar ice cap! I hear this from artsists and my students all over the country. It's so embarrassing that the Supreme Court made this decision that undermined the First Ammendment. I will look forward to the time (in the not too distant future, I hope), when a teacher will step before a community college class exploring late twentieth century social movements and say, "Now, students, I know it is shocking to believe this, but there was once a time as recent as the late 1990's when lesbian and gay men were actually denied certain civil rights within our democratic society. The Supreme Court even upheld a series of laws that constitutionally discriminated against them!"

ART IS NOT A CRIME!!!!

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