Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida, is hosting an exhibit by Pat Payne, “A Look at Violence in Religious and Sexual Imagery,” that depicts the following:
- Jesus being sodomized
- Jesus with pierced genitalia
- Jesus being masturbated by a woman
The exhibit began February 8 and lasts until March 29. Catholic League president William Donohue has seen a copy of the WCJB-TV video of the art and released the following comment today:
“This is the Lenten treat that Santa Fe Community College has chosen to present to Christians. We’re taking our complaint to the president of the college, the school’s trustees and those members of the Florida state legislature whose duty it is to oversee education funding. We are asking that they use the maximum degree of powers vested in them to deal with hate speech. We’re also going to give the college some free publicity: we are writing to every parochial and public high school in the Gainesville area letting them know what kind of place the college is.
“Leslie Lambert, chairperson of the Creative Arts and Humanities Department, says of the art, ‘If it causes people to stop and think, and to confirm their own value system or to reevaluate their value system, then I am pleased as an educator.’ I’d be curious to know the content of her own value system. In any event, if she wants people to stop and think, then why doesn’t she substitute Martin Luther King for Jesus and then explain to African American students that this isn’t hate speech—it’s just about getting people to think. Or maybe she could donate a portrait of her own mother being sodomized. That would work.
“The faculty would never demand that the artist and his work be banished from the campus. No, the only person they would banish is someone caught smoking while viewing the exhibit.”
