To the editor:
Thanks to Wayne Owens and Orrin Hatch, it is business as usual for the National Endowment for the Arts. Both voted against legislation that would have prohibited funding of pornography.Since attention was drawn to the obscene pornographic photo display of Robert Mapplethorpe two years ago, the NEA has continued to financially support pornography promotions, including an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum titled "The Unmentionable," which consisted of adult and child pornography.
Other projects funded by the NEA include $10,000 to the First National Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival in Seattle, and a play by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Inc. in which a nude performer jumped into the audience and sodomized two spectators.
In 1990, Orrin Hatch led the battle against an amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms that said: "None of the funds appropriated under this Act may be used by the National Endowment for the Arts to promote, distribute, disseminate or produce materials that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual or excretory activities or organs."
While opposing Helm's amendment, Hatch proposed his own amendment which sounds impressive but eliminates funding of nothing and is completely ineffective with respect to pornography.
A similar amendment to clean up the NEA act was offered in the House by Rep. Rohrabacher. The only Utah representative to vote against it was Wayne Owens.
Hatch and Owens both say they support the NEA because it helps local artists. Even if they had voted in support of the Helms and Rohrabacher amendments, the NEA's funding of legitimate arts would have in no way been hindered.
If Hatch and Owens want to support pornography, I suggest they do it in a back alley newsstand with their own money, not Utah taxpayers' money.
P.K. Ruplinger
Sandy