obscene art

Sorry guys, I just had to saunter down the hallway carrying obscene art a few times before I sat down to write about this episode.

The raw, homoerotic images in the 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, which sparked a national debate over public support for “obscene” art, would surely not get the same rise in today’s culture, where homosexuality is broadly accepted and hard-core pornography is available at the click of a mouse.

He backed the death penalty; he supported Star Wars; he voted to ban federal money for obscene art.

He attacked foreign aid as wasteful and ill-considered and he was a central player in the culture wars of the '80s and '90s as the champion of cutting funding to what he considered to be obscene art.