[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19963-19965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             CORPUS CHRISTI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Quinn). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is 
recognized for 20 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, some of what I have to say here this 
afternoon is not going to be very comfortable to hear, and it is, quite 
frankly, pretty uncomfortable for me to come forth and to talk about 
this directly.
  The poster my colleagues see beside me, and I will refer to this a 
number of times, is about a play called ``Corpus Christi.'' This is 
representing Jesus Christ. This is the Apostle Peter, his supposed 
homosexual lover. This play depicts all the Apostles as the homosexual 
lovers of Christ.
  The reason that this is of concern to me is not because the 
Government directly funded it, because we did not, but because through 
the National Endowment for the Arts we funded this theater before the 
play and we have continued to fund this theater after they insulted 
those of us who believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. They 
continued to insult us by funding this theater that did this play, 
among others.
  I want to put this in a little bit of context. We are having a tough 
debate right now over the Interior appropriations bill. I strongly 
support most of the money in the Interior appropriations bill and have 
been an advocate for it.
  Furthermore, I want to make it clear, as I have before on this floor, 
that I am not a libertarian who favors eliminating the National 
Endowment for the Arts unless it cannot restrict itself to really 
funding true art.
  I believe there is an important role for arts in society. In fact, I 
came on this floor after having led a fight in my first term to try to 
first eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and then to freeze 
the funds. I came to this floor to say that I believe that Bill Ivey 
has made some progress at the National Endowment for the Arts in 
eliminating some of the types of performance art and in trying to 
direct the arts to different parts of the country.
  I also said in my statement, which I will ask unanimous consent to 
reinsert at this point, why I believed it is important to fund the arts 
and why I believe that some of the charges that some of the 
conservatives were making against the National Endowment for the Arts 
had not been researched.
  In fact, I went into detail on this particular play showing how the 
National Endowment for the Arts did not know for sure what Terrance 
McNally was going to produce when they funded this theater. But I did 
not know at the time because the National Endowment did not provide me 
with the information, and since then the American Family Association 
has, that we were continuing to fund the theater after they insulted 
us, after they in effect told the American people to go stick it in 
your ear, then we continued to fund them.
  That is not progress; that is a step backwards. We are not going to 
buy this wink and a blink where we say, ``okay, we are not going to 
fund the play directly. We will just fund the theater.'' Then we will 
fund the theater again. Most of these theaters are small theaters. The 
money moves between the plays. It is a tad too cute to convince me or 
anyone else that we are not funding the play directly when we are 
funding the stage, when we are funding the repertory company, when we 
are funding in effect indirectly their advertising and their overhead.
  Of course they are funding the play. And to have the gall to try to 
imply otherwise to me and for me then to come down to this floor to 
defend the National Endowment for the Arts when in fact they were 
continuing to fund the very things that I was trying to say they had 
tried to clean up, I feel deceived and duped on top of trying to help 
them work it out.
  Even that said, the conservatives in this House went to our 
leadership and went to our appropriators, and the gentleman from Ohio 
(Chairman Regula) has stayed firm and our leadership has stayed firm 
with the House position to keep it at a freeze. But since the other 
body wants to increase the funds, we came forth with a compromise that 
any new funding would go to a separate fund targeted towards smaller 
and rural areas where there clearly is a shortage of arts dollars in 
America, where they do not have the resources to do the arts and put 
the new funding there and also ask that, in the regular NEA, that there 
either be a restriction that funds could not be given to these 
individual theaters, which we have learned we cannot do in the 
limitation of funds, or that there be additional reduction in the NEA 
direct funding from $98 million down to $96 million and that $2 million 
be put over into the reserve fund.
  We have bent over backwards to try to come up with a compromise on 
this, even though many of us are so offended by the gratuitous type of 
art. We have said we will stand aside knowing that the majority of this 
body and the Senate want to increase the funds; but there has to be 
some kind of restriction, including the one other thing we asked for, 
that obscene and pornographic theater could not be funded.
  The truth is we know that by banning obscene and pornographic funding 
that is just language, because the truth is NEA could declare that it 
is not obscene or not pornographic. But it is important symbolism here 
of what we in Congress intend the arts to be. We do not intend it to 
insult the majority of

[[Page 19964]]

the American people gratuitously with our tax dollars.
  This is not about freedom of speech. It is not about freedom of art. 
Pretty much you can do whatever you want in America. And if it is in 
the name of art, you do not even fall under a lot of the restrictions 
we have on other forms of entertainment.
  So this is not about what you can do with your money. This is about 
what you can do with my money and the taxpayers of Indiana and the 
taxpayers of America's money.
  There is a difference between private art that you do and then asking 
everybody else to fund your art. And part of what should be funded 
should be what is good, what is pure, what is beautiful, what we want 
to preserve in America, things that uplift not that tear down or insult 
other parts. That is not what should be publically funded. It should be 
more consensus art.
  Obviously, there needs to be art that expresses dissent in society. 
And sometimes dissent eventually becomes the majority position. But it 
is not the job of the majority to fund with their tax dollars things 
that offend their fundamental beliefs in society.
  I want to make a couple other points on this.
  A book that made a big impression on me as I was growing up was ``The 
Christian, the Arts, and Truth'' by Frank Gaebelein, the founder of the 
Stonybrook School on Long Island. I read this book many years ago 
because many times evangelicals have not been appreciative enough of 
the arts. The Catholic Church has. The Jewish faith has. But the 
evangelicals sometimes separated themselves. And we need to be more 
involved.
  As Gaebelein said in his book, though, ``What is the function, the 
underlying purpose of art? What is it for? How many answers there are. 
Art exists to give pleasure, to edify, to represent or depict, to 
fulfill the artist's urge for making things, to tell us about life.'' 
He says, ``This is another way of stating the criterion of durability. 
Art that is deeply true does not succumb to time. It stands up to the 
passage of the centuries.''
  The art we fund with public dollars should meet that standard.
  Furthermore, another book that made a big impression on me was ``How 
Should We Then Live,'' by Francis Schaeffer, a book on the arts and how 
Christians should look at the arts. And he shows how through the 
Reformation and through many things much of the great art and the great 
music in the world was created by Christians because they appreciated 
what was good and true and pure and things that came from our creator.
  A new book, ``Roaring Lambs,'' for which I and the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) and a number of others sponsored a musical 
celebration here on the Hill with a number of artists, talks 
specifically about the problem of Christians dealing with art. And 
interestingly, in this book it says that we need to have a more 
positive role, which I absolutely agree with, and figure out how to 
promote the arts because it makes our lives so much richer, it 
criticizes some of those, who criticize the National Endowment for the 
Arts for being too negative.
  Now, the dilemma I face here today is I have bent over backwards, and 
the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) who is the head of the 
Conservative Action Team, and the members of the Conservative Action 
Team, have bent over backwards to try to come up with a compromise 
saying we are not trying to stifle the arts, we are trying to stifle 
certain things that are extremely offensive to the overwhelming 
majority of the people and cannot stand the light of day.
  So let me give my colleagues some more examples of what I am talking 
about.
  The Manhattan Theater Club did ``Corpus Christi.'' I already referred 
to that. And this year they got two more grants, not one but two 
grants.
  Women Make Movies, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) 
will be following me and talking about education through his 
subcommittee on education, showed that they got $100,000 over a 3-year 
period for pornographic films such as ``Sex Fish,'' ``Watermelon 
Woman,'' and ``Blood Sisters.'' They depict explicit lesbian 
pornography and oral sex. They got two grants last year after they told 
us this was going to be cleaned up.
  The Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, which staged the ``My Queer 
Body'' play, where the performer describes on stage what it is like to 
have sex with another man, climbs naked into the lap of a spectator and 
attempts to arouse himself sexually in full view of the audience.
  So what did we do in the National Endowment for the Arts? We funded 
it this year. After they in effect funded that play, we said, oh, well, 
we will fund that theater. They do great art.
  Now, I cannot stand here and say they funded that play because they 
did not. It is too cute. They gave money to the theater after they did 
it.
  My criterion is that sometimes we do not know what a theater is going 
to do in advance, but if they do things that offend the overwhelming 
majority of the American people, they should have their money taken 
away or not given to them the next year. But that is not the position 
of the NEA. They went right back. And this is an NEA that is claiming 
they are cleaning it up.
  At the Whitny Museum of American Art, where they had previously done 
this famous so-called ``Piss Christ'' where the crucifix was in a jar 
of urine and they had another porn film on ``Sluts and Goddesses Video 
Workshop and How to be a Sex God in 100 Easy Steps,'' now they have a 
marquee for a crucifix, a naked Jesus Christ surrounded by 
sadomasochistic obscene imagery and many grotesque portrayals of 
corpses and body parts. They got $40,000 this year.
  The Walker Arts Center had an AIDS artist that pierced his body with 
needles, cut designs into the back of another man. He then blotted the 
man's blood with paper towels and set the towels over the audience on a 
clothes line.
  This theater really needs our funding. I am glad my tax dollars are 
going to this theater.
  The Walker Arts Center, and I used to live in Minneapolis, is a 
tremendous contemporary art theater. But they do not need our money. 
And if they are going to use money that gets comingled with funds in 
this way, they do not deserve to get the public money.
  The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York has an exhibit with 
Annie Sprinkle, whose pornographic and NEA funded works have already in 
the past caused problems. This new Schneeman exhibit includes film 
footage of the artist hanging naked from ropes and engaging in very 
graphic sex with her partner.
  Well, this is great. They got $10,000 this year to kind of thank them 
for their great public service.
  Franklin Furnace, in New York, receives NEA funds and they usually 
also promote homosexuality and blast traditional morality.
  In fact, the Woolly Mammoth says openly that the purpose of their 
theater is to challenge the established morality of our society.
  I am really glad that my tax dollars are continuing to go to them. 
This is not a question of what has happened in the past. This is a 
question of what has happened this year in funding.
  Now, the Theater for the New City, and I want to talk a little bit 
about this play in particular, they have a play that they did called 
the ``Pope and the Witch.''

                              {time}  1445

  They received $30,000 before the play and this year we funded them 
again. I am going to read a review of ``The Pope and the Witch'' that 
actually views it from a fairly positive way. It is actually describing 
some of the controversies.
  I have the wrong release in front of me, but basically the thrust of 
``The Pope and the Witch'' and the reviewer in outlining the play says 
that, first off, the person who wrote this play, an Italian playwright, 
is a Communist, a member of the Communist party in Italy, and his goal 
was to contradict and undermine the Catholic church in Italy. So they 
come to America and we fund the theater, the stage, the performers 
before they perform the play and then this year we go back.

[[Page 19965]]

  So what is this play? To show a paranoic Pope who is so paranoid that 
when 100,000 children gather in Vatican Square, he decides that this is 
a plot by condom manufacturers to embarrass the Catholic church. So he 
goes berserk in a paranoic way. So then a nun, who happens to be a 
little witch dressed up in a nun's outfit, kidnaps the Pope. They give 
a heroin needle, an insertion into the Pope whose head then clears up 
and he starts to distribute free heroin needles, advocate the 
legalization of drugs, and promote the distribution of birth control 
throughout the world now that the witch has helped him understand that 
drugs are a positive influence and birth control is a positive 
influence.
  I am sure glad that our tax dollars are used to fund a theater that 
puts out something that bigoted against the Catholic church of the 
United States. Can you imagine if any theater in America did anything 
that bigoted against African Americans, against Jews, against many 
groups in America, but it is still okay to pick on and discriminate and 
insult Catholics who believe the Pope is a direct lineage from the 
original apostles and speaks for the Church and for God. That is okay. 
That is okay to give money to those theaters.
  Now, Republicans and Democrats in this body and the Presidential 
candidates in both parties are busy saying, ``Hollywood's bad. We need 
to clean up Hollywood. They have terrible things on TV.'' You heard me 
describe some of the terrible things that we are indirectly funding, 
the stages, the actors, the promotions, the lights, the overhead in 
these theaters with your tax dollars. Hollywood's dollars are their 
own. I want to clean up Hollywood, too. But how dare Members of 
Congress stand on this floor and in particular in the other body and 
say Hollywood is bad when we fund this here. How can you do that? Will 
the American voters look at us and say, ``Man, you guys aren't very 
consistent there''?
  We really do need to clean up America. People have a right to free 
speech. We can try to advocate what to do in the free speech arena, but 
we do not have to fund the speech. The court has already ruled that an 
artist does not have the right to be publicly subsidized. That is a 
privilege, not a right. It is something to build on, to uplift, to 
preserve. We have theaters and art museums and philharmonics that are 
drowning because they do not have enough money. We have places all 
through the Midwest and the West and the Plains and the South and 
little cities and little towns that need art funding.
  But, no, we give it to these places that insult our basic values in 
America. It is beyond and it defies belief how those people can defend 
this type of funding. I hope that before the Interior bill comes to the 
floor, a few people can see the light of day and work with our House 
leadership that has been steadfast in trying to work with rules. We 
have held out a compromise. We are not asking to eliminate NEA. We are 
not asking to cut NEA. We are actually willing to put more money into 
arts.
  But I stand here before you and say there is nothing more important 
in my life than God. People can mock that. They can disagree with me. 
But if it was not for Jesus Christ, I believe that I would be lost. And 
I have a right to not have my tax dollars and my government do 
gratuitous insults to everything I believe, making my Lord and Savior a 
homosexual who is having affairs with the apostles when there is no 
historical evidence, when it is made up merely to rub it into my soul, 
so to speak.
  As a Catholic, you have the right not to have your tax dollars insult 
the Pope and undermine him directly or indirectly. I am not arguing it 
is directly. I am arguing it is indirectly. I will make this point 
again. Do not play games with us. You will hear people stand up in the 
coming debate most likely and say that these things were not direct 
funded. I did not assert that they were direct funded. What I asserted 
was these are mostly repertory theaters. I am a business person. I 
understand the difference between variable, fixed and mixed costs. When 
you get a grant, some of that grant goes directly for the play, some of 
it goes to cover the overhead of the theater and some of it goes to 
cover what they call mixed costs that vary some with the thing. When 
you only have four plays in a season and we fund one of them, it is a 
disproportionate covering of your cost. Do not play games and tell the 
American people you are not funding these kind of plays. If you fund 
those theaters, you are funding those kind of plays.
  We need the arts in America. We need the National Endowment for the 
Arts to stand up and say there is good art. We need to promote good 
art. We have a program called FAME in northeast Indiana that gets some 
NEA funds, where school kids all over our district in high schools, 
elementary and junior high kids touch into art and produce good and 
beautiful art. They do not produce the type of obscene things that we 
are funding here. Why do we not fund that? We fund the first chair in 
one of our philharmonic positions in the Fort Wayne Philharmonic so 
they can go out and teach music in the school and it helps our 
philharmonic to have a stronger first chair. That is a good use of art.
  Why do we have to fund a homosexual Christ? Let them find the funding 
for that. If that theater wants to challenge the principles and the 
foundations upon which this country is and insult the religious beliefs 
of the majority of America, let them go raise the money to do it. Why 
do they have to get public money?
  Members can tell I am very frustrated. It is hard for me to do this, 
because I have a number of things I have worked very hard for in this 
appropriations bill. We have worked hard for weeks to come up with a 
compromise. I am very disappointed that we are at this point where not 
only did the other body say that they would not even consider our last 
offer but then went and tried to blame it on the Conservative Action 
Team. A press release went out saying the Conservative Action Team 
signed off on this. We did not. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Shadegg) has written the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) about that. 
The leadership understands it. They are trying to address that. But 
misinformation went out and when we tried to work out an agreement that 
I have defined here, they turned that on us.
  It is very frustrating. I am sorry that I have been so upset. I am 
sorry even that I had to read some of the graphic materials that I did. 
But sometimes as a Congressman, even if it is not in your best 
interest, you have to say, am I so compromised that I am unwilling to 
speak about things that matter most to my soul, matter most to my life? 
And am I so worried about every grant that I might get in some 
appropriations bill or that I might tick somebody off if I say these 
kinds of things, or that there might be retaliation later that I will 
not even speak out for the things that are most important to me, most 
important to my family, and that is my Lord and Savior.
  I stand here today as someone who worked hard to come up with a 
compromise with others and I am deeply disappointed at the attitudes. I 
hope people will be held accountable and you will not let them off by 
trying to do a slide or by trying to say Hollywood is bad when we in 
fact are funding this type of activity indirectly through the Federal 
Government.

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