Holly Hughes on the U.S. Supreme Court Decision

Statement by Holly Hughes, plaintiff/respondent, on the U.S. Supreme Court "Decency" Ruling. June 30, 1998

After the hearing everyone wanted to know - the assembled press - whether we thought we had won or not.

I tried to imagine what a victory in this case would look like. Even if the court had managed to uphold the lower courts' decisions, a reassertion that decency language was unconstitutional would do nothing to repair the damage done in the past ten years by right wing forces aided by dems in need of some political viagra...

There is no more NEA funding for individual artists, that's gone, kaput, finito. The NEA has been cut severely... I think it consists of two temp workers and a borrowed fax machine. They don't have enough to cash to buy a latte.

A "victory" wouldn't have restored the NEA, let alone done anything to move the agency in the direction I think it needed to go in... i.e., to become MORE adventurous and LESS conservative.

A "victory" wouldn't have erased the political capital organizations like The Christian Coalition, The American Family Ass. and others have built for themselves by attacking spending for controversial and especially queer art. Ralph Reed managed to catapult himself out of the margins into the political mainstream on this issue. I don't mean to say that the right has gotten less white supremacist or anti feminist, just that they have successfully used attacks on art as a giant bake sale to build up bucks for other less profitable causes like killing abortion doctors, gutting the social safety net and fighting affirmative action, etc.

And after watching the court "hear" the case I am not surprised by the decision.

Actually the decision that most angers me is that of Clinton's . . . his decision to bring this case before this incredibly conservative court. It's another one of his betrayals of the people who elected him, right up there with DOMA, so called welfare reform, don't ask, don't tell, and the humiliations of Jocelyn Elders and Lani Guinier. Unfortunately I could go on and on.

This is a horrifying decision that will have, I fear ramifications in many areas from AIDS education to public health and education, higher education and reproductive rights. I could go on and on but my hope is that groups out there will go on and on, making connections and building coalitions. Unfortunately, this issue has failed to excite much organizing except by the right.

Some have opined the decision is "not so bad" because the court says that if this were viewpoint discrimination it'd be illegal. The duplicity and dishonesty of the majority opinion reeks of privilege; it's almost Orwellian in its double think. As a queer feminist I "know" what decency means. It's another code word along the lines of "states rights and family values."

Cornell West said we are living in an ICE AGE and I think this decision will be another sharp dangerous pile of whiteness in this bleak landscape. After all, we are living in a time when we'd rather let people die rather than promote drug use through needle exchange, we are willing to let people die rather than get safer sex information, we'd rather send African Americans to jail than school. We have successfully scapegoated immigrants, poor women, queers, people of color, unions and intellectuals for the economic devastation brought about by global capitalism. (If only there were the coalition of those groups that the right imagines!)

Thanks to all NAAO members for their courage.

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Last updated: June 30, 1998