Art Critics: The Religious Right Wants to Decide What Everyone Gets to See

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The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is off to a bad start. Even before assuming their new positions, Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor demanded that the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., remove portions of an exhibit that some Religious Right activists deemed offensive.

The Smithsonian Institution, which oversees the gallery, immediately caved and pulled a short video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz. The segment in question showed some ants crawling on a crucifix. It was all of 11 seconds long.

Boehner and Cantor acted at the behest of William Donohue, the garrulous president of the Catholic League for …