Should that speck of elephant dung be moved up or down on the Holy Mother's breast? To the left or right of that pornographic snippet in the background? These are the kind of questions New Yorkers got to ask starting Oct. 2, when the Brooklyn Museum of Art opened the exhibit "Sensation" to the public.

The name is probably more apt than its director, Arnold Lehman, ever intended. "Sensation" was advertised as liable to "cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria and anxiety." Indeed, its contents--most controversial of which are sliced-up animals suspended in formaldehyde and Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary with a generous helping of dung on her bosom--are not for the knock-kneed.

But far greater than the aesthetic or moral shock of the exhibit may be its political repercussions. Here New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has raised a stink of his own. The mayor cut the museums municipal funding of $7 million annually, citing his belief that public funding should not subsidize the establishment or desecration of religion.

Giuliani's position is simple enough, and right on the ball. But it masks a simmering brew of constitutional, moral and even religious questions. Sound a lot like "Piss Christ" or Robert Mapplethorpe all over again? The same issues boiled over then, and the same issues continue to define America's bitter culture war today. While it may be tempting, therefore, for those of us who support the mayor to just render due kudos and go home, perhaps we should take advantage of this fresh opportunity to explain why he was right--maybe even to propose a just accommodation of publicly funded speech and decency, artistic freedom and religious values.

Free speech will be at the core of the debate, since the museum filed its suit against the city on First Amendment grounds. But it shouldn't be. The First Amendment is indeed about the right of expression. But it is not about any chimerical right to have others subsidize that expression. As long as we keep this crucial distinction in mind, there should be no problem with the government insisting on certain criteria as a precondition of funding--those who find the stipulations stifling can seek money elsewhere and leave the matter at that.

Unfortunately, the Courts may not see it that way. In 1996, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a District decision gutting a statute that required the National Endowment for the Arts to respect "general standards of decency and respect" in its grant-awarding process. Implicit in such rulings is a reading of the First Amendment that goes something like this: whenever the state throws its weight behind a specific set of beliefs, it is establishing one worldview at the expense of another. And this the First Amendment explicitly prohibits it from doing. You don't have to support art, this peculiar interpretation of the Constitution counsels; but once you get in the game, moral criteria are illegitimate and only artistic considerations should apply.

Never mind that such a value-free reading of the establishment clause doesn't square with the historical record. The same House that passed the First Amendment also voted, by an overwhelming margin, to set aside a national day of thanksgiving and prayer. An injunction against establishment was thus never meant to imply that government could not encourage a healthy respect for religion. It meant only that the state could not establish a specific creed, as had been the case in England.

But even within a modern First Amendment framework, it still seems public funding could be withheld from any activity whose only purpose is the desecration, rather than the well-intentioned artistic presentation, of an alternative world view. After all, when government funds all manner of artistic visions equally and then steps back as they compete in the marketplace of ideas, it is merit that determines whatever establishment of truth ensues.