I congratulate you on devoting a page of editorials to an issue which is so important to our nation, that of censorship in the arts. Recent events and pronouncements by right-wing ideologues have waved the red flag of obscenity and attached it to the National Endowment for the Arts in an effort to abolish government funding of the arts. As a civilized nation, we must not let this happen.

To begin with, the National Endowment for the Arts does not fund obscenity, has never funded obscenity and never will fund obscenity. It has funded art and artists that have proven to be controversial, but never works that are utterly without social, literary or artistic value as obscenity has been defined.

The Mapplethorpe and Serrano exhibits are so clearly art, that to mention these works in the same breath with obscenity is to display an appalling lack of understanding of the nature of art.

On its most obvious level, the Serrano "Piss Christ" makes a powerful statement about the status of religion in America today. The Mapplethorpe exhibit is such an effective testimony to the racism and homophobia that pervades this society, that even the most "liberal" individuals have a difficult time with it. How we as a populace have reacted to these exhibits says much more about us than it does about the art or the artists.

For this country, government support is a key component of arts funding. The idea that art can thrive or even survive in the free market, without government support, is an illusion that is an unfortunate remnant of the Reagan era. Art that responds solely to the marketplace for its vision and its funding is called prime-time television. Are Dallas and Dynasty to be our artistic legacy? Furthermore, art that is funded only by private contributions creates an elitism that reflects only the narrowed vision and taste of the funders. Shall we be deprived of the artistic voices of the non-majority culture? The National Endowment protects against either of these eventualities.

The NEA has been established to provide a small amount of government funding to stimulate arts activity in the United States. It has been immensely successful at that. The peer review system was specifically designed to avoid the type of governmental interference in art that is currently being advocated. It too has been immensely successful. As Americans, it is critical that we continue our support of the NEA as it is currently structured, without restrictive language regarding artistic content. Our civilization depends on it.