Dear Sen. Patrick Leahy: Condemn Censorship at the Smithsonian

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is beloved by many progressives for his ardent support of gay rights, his opposition to the Patriot Act, and for even being the U.S. Senator who got Vice President Dick Cheney to drop an f-bomb, all because Sen. Leahy had concerns about Halliburton's business practices. To say Leahy has some progressive chops is putting it mildly.

That's what makes it all the more disappointing that in the wake of the Smithsonian and the National Portrait Gallery censoring a piece of artwork by David Wojnarowicz, Leahy has remained fairly quiet. Leahy is a member of the board of regents at the Smithsonian, and was called out by Frank Rich this past weekend in a searing column that suggested that the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian were committing an act nothing short of gay bashing by hiding the artwork of Wojnarowicz.

For those who haven't heard the story yet, it goes a little something like this. Anti-gay activists suggested that Wojnarowicz's video portrait, A Fire in My Belly, was derogatory to religion because it featured an image of a crucifix with ants on it. Art purveyors, not to mention thousands of LGBT activists, noted that the piece was an effort to chronicle the suffering of an AIDS victim in the mid-1980s (Wojnarowicz, who was gay, lost a former lover to AIDS in 1987, who was the inspiration for A Fire in My Belly).

After essentially no debate, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian sided with the anti-gay activists and removed the work from the show.

While that may have satiated the homophobic appetites of the Catholic League or CNSNews.com, it severely tarnished the reputation of the Smithsonian. The Warhol Foundation has threatened to remove hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to the museum if they don't reinstall Wojnarowicz's piece, and gallery owners have weighed in saying that the Smithsonian caved in to bigotry and prejudice instead of standing up for the integrity of art.

Rich's column in the New York Times, for its part, was one of the most scathing critiques yet.

"The Smithsonian’s behavior and the ensuing silence in official Washington are jarring echoes of those days when American political leaders stood by idly as [HIV/AIDS] raged on," Rich wrote in the piece.

Among those he'd like to see come out and condemn the decision to censor the piece? Smithsonian bigwigs like Sen. Leahy.

Sen. Leahy responded to the censorship debacle with a short statement released through a spokesperson. "The Smithsonian museum staff are authorized to make decisions like this, and Senator Leahy, after the fact, said he didn’t question their authority to use their judgment about material in particular public displays.”

In very basic terms, that statement might make sense. After all, we wouldn't want every piece of art in the Smithsonian to go before a board of regents before being displayed.

But Leahy's quote also has a bit of tone deafness to it, in that the Senator clearly has some muscle in Washington (he is the second most senior legislator in the U.S. Senate, after all). As a member of the board of regents, Sen. Leahy could have issued a statement like this: "While I don't think members of the board of regents should be consulted in matters like this, I am saddened to see the Smithsonian turning back the clock to the 1980s, when so many people living with HIV/AIDS were targeted by anti-gay activists and forced or bullied into hiding. I urge the Smithsonian and the National Portrait Gallery to live up to its mission of capitalizing 'on the richness inherent in differences' and showing art that challenges our way of thinking and captures a community of voices."

Think of the power a statement like that would have delivered, as opposed to: "Eh, censor away folks."

Send Senator Leahy a message that his voice is critical here, and that he should condemn efforts to keep the artwork of LGBT people and those living (or who have lived) with HIV/AIDS from the public. Wojnarowicz's piece captures an important time in American history -- a time when a lot of shameful behavior by our political and religious leaders created a culture of stigmatization and fear. There's no reason we have to relive those times by repeating the same mistakes of the past.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons