On February 28, the Catholic League issued a news release blasting Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida, for hosting an exhibit by Pat Payne, “A Look at Violence in Religious and Sexual Imagery.” The work depicted Jesus being sodomized, mutilated and masturbated.
We immediately contacted the school’s president and trustees and filed a complaint with those members of the Florida state legislature whose duty it is to oversee education funding. Santa Fe Community College has now decided to remove the artwork from a public exhibit to a professor’s office.
Catholic League president William Donohue responded as follows:
“It’s great news to learn that this obscene and blasphemous artwork has been dumped in some professor’s office. But we will still go ahead with our plan to have our members write to Dr. Jackson Sasser, the president of the college.
“Higher education is in bad shape when a publicly-funded college decides to profane the sacred. The Payne exhibit is void of intellectual merit and only those who have never been anything but a student or a professor would disagree.
“The best way to resolve problems like these in the future is to deny anyone a Ph.D. unless he or she has worked in a blue collar job for at least two years. I would personally recommend shoveling coal. But waiting on tables and tending bar is okay, too. This would not only provide a reality check for aspiring intellectuals, it would actually give them a chance to meet the proletariat whom they are so fond of writing about.”
