NEA's chilling effect

Support the arts: Abolish federal funding | Gene Edward Veith

Performance artist Karen Finley lost her case. Hours after the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that the National Endowment for the Arts could consider issues of "decency" when doling out their grants, Ms. Finley retaliated by reprising her masterpiece, "The Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman."

Ms. Finley, with three other performance artists, had sued the NEA after congress attached stipulations in 1990 that would restrict taxpayer funding for art that failed to follow "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public." The four artists, feeling their rights to free expression were violated and fearing the "chilling effect" on the creation of great art, took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. With only Republican appointee David Souter dissenting, the justices ruled that deciding not to pay for something is not the same as censorship.