Obscenity Allowed If It Mocks Catholics



By Jim Brown

A judge has denied a request by a Catholic group to have an obscene sculpture removed from a public university campus in Kansas.

A federal judge in Kansas has ruled that Washburn University did not violate the Constitution by displaying a statue that some critics say is an overt attack on the Catholic faith. According to a lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center, the sculpture — titled “Holier Than Thou” — depicts a Roman Catholic bishop wearing a grotesque facial expression and a miter that resembles a private male body part.

Click to view an image of the sculpture

Thomas More attorney Robert Muise says the judge in the case wrongly concluded that a reasonable observer would not view the work as hostile to Catholicism. But the litigator says the judge should have applied a more stringent standard — perhaps “an informed reasonable observer,” Muise suggests.

According to Muise, the suggestively phallic symbol incorporated into the sculpture's design is not so subtle that an eye well-versed in Catholic symbolism and tradition would not be aware of the profane insult.

“Any informed Catholic who is aware of what his faith teaches about the sacrament of penance, the role of a priest or a bishop in the sacrament of penance, the importance of the different clerical garb that a priest wears in the sacrament, what the sacrament means — all those things which were mocked in the sculpture as well as in the caption — would clearly recognize this as an attack on his particular religion,” the attorney says.

And Muise also believes the case gives evidence of a common double standard under the Constitution's establishment clause. “If this sculpture had been, for example, a sculpture of Martin Luther King wearing a phallus,” he says, “or a sculpture of a Jewish cleric, a rabbi, or a Muslim cleric, I have no doubt that the diversity-multicultural-thought-police who are out there would not only have it immediately removed, but would have those who were involved with the decision-making [in displaying it] removed from their particular official positions.”

Muise is appealing the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado.

(This article courtesy of Agape Press).

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