Cruzify him

Have all the columnists of this paper (save myself) already spoken out on the issue of the ‘blasphemous’ artwork by Mideo Cruz?The FREEMAN readers must be sick to death of reading about the facsimile of Christ stuck with a phallic object, and must have formed their own conclusions already about whether this is art or not.Or whether this is sacrilegious and offensive to religion.Or whether this is the criminal act that’s punished in the Revised Penal Code.

So, to save this paper’s faithful readers from Cruz fatigue, maybe I’ll just focus on free speech and Facebook.According to my favorite oddball news purveyor, Yahoo, a judge in the United States has just handed down a ruling that sexually charged photographs posted on Facebook are protected by the freedom of speech guaranteed by the US Constitution.

You might think that, of course, everybody has the freedom to post their own sexy photos. Even if everybody can see that the poser has used the best lighting, angle, and make-up, and the most advanced photoshopping techniques technology can offer, and even if they’ve contorted their limbs to make their bodies approximate billboard material, there’s no denying his or her right to post those photos.And that’s true even if the most unflattering of bikinis is worn, or the expression on the face is the most salacious ever.

But see, in the US case, the posers weren’t adults: they were teenagers.And from the description provided of the photos, those weren’t ordinary photos either.At the teens’ slumber parties, there were photographs of the girls sucking on lollipops.Not so bad, you might think.But it doesn’t stop there.In one picture, one girl sucks on a lollipop while another lollipop is positioned between her legs, and her friend pretends to suck on it.Then there are pictures of the girls pretending to kiss each other, and more pictures where they wear lingerie while in sexual positions.There’s even one where there are bills stuck into their lingerie, much like strippers making money at a bar.

Now given this scenario, do we all think that these bad, bad girls should be allowed to do this?Their school, a community college in Indiana, didn’t think so, and the school took disciplinary action by suspending the girls from all extracurricular activities they were in (volleyball, choir and cheerleading) for the rest of the school year.Their principal relied on a school rule penalizing students who dishonor themselves or their school, and never mind whether they were inside or outside the campus. So, even though the girls’ photos had nothing to do with the school, were not taken inside the campus, and the girls were in a private home and they were not attending a school event, they still got into trouble.

Of course, after having already shown the entire world they were fearless, the girls didn’t take their suspension sitting down, and they sued the school for violating their freedom of expression.To the horror of all morally pure citizens of Indiana, the girls won even though their pictures were tacky and tasteless, since, according to Yahoo,according to the judge, “the low-brow status of the speech does not make it any more permissible for schools to discipline students for practicing their Constitutional rights, no matter how dishonorable.”

So there you have it.Photographs not even pretending to be art, protected by the Constitution as free speech.

What then if the visual work (much like a phallus stuck to the face of Christ, which admittedly I haven’t seen), tries to pretend it is art?And even though, as some national artists have proclaimed, it is “bad art”?Would it be entitled to the same protection?Is it still speech that we must respect?

People cite the example of shouting “fire” at a crowded movie house as not being protected by free speech.But that means you can cry “fire” on stage as part of a play.You might not be able to plunk down a defiled statue of Christ inside a church while a mass is being heard by the faithful.But would you be able to show it in a quiet museum, where art goers expect their boundaries to be questioned and stretched?

Ah.Such questions we must face as a nation.