But when government subsidizes empty desecration, devoid of any intellectual or artistic value, the state itself is making that determination--and this is the very evil a neutral First Amendment was supposed to guard against. So proponents of the mayor can still support his tough stand on a painting that callously juxtaposed the scatological with the divine, right? So it seems. Until, that is, they learn that Chris Ofili is a Roman Catholic who uses elephant feces as a symbol of fertility. On what possible grounds can we then deny funding to his affirmative interpretation of Christianity?

Athough experiment might be of use. Imagine a canvas covered with swastikas. The artist insists the symbols are not meant as an attack on the Jews, but rather as the celebration of a Nazi industrial policy that achieved full employment while permitting women to stay home. Would we still not have every right to oppose the use of public funding in displaying such work? I believe we would.

Why? Because irrespective of an artists intentions, there are certain symbols and images so sanctified by history, so essential to a peoples self-definition, and so central to the way they conceive of themselves and relate to the Universe, that public funding of what might legitimately be perceived as their desecration is downright wrong. Neither is this tantamount to censorship--desecrate at will in your home, display to your hearts content in private galleries. But don't demand that others pay for your vision.

Where, then, do we draw the line? Public funding of desecration of religious symbols and sacred objects of singular significance is out, but what about art meaningfully representing subject matter that merely conflicts in a serious way with ones worldview? Should a born-again evangelical have to see his tax dollars spent on representations of homosexuality? How about Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase?" He might just fear hellfire and brimstone as punishment for underwriting any display of carnality. Heck, what about a fanatical tree-hugger--should his tax dollars help house murals depicting the brutal subjugation of the American West?

Perhaps the government should play no role in funding art. That, indeed, would be a neat solution. No delicate categories to demarcate, no slippery slopes to get tripped up on and none of the moral ambiguity. No Smithsonian perhaps, and no safeguarding of the nation's cultural heritage either; working class families might even have to pay discomfittingly higher ticket prices in private galleries.

But no, that's not really a satisfactory arrangement either. Government clearly has a compelling interest in making quality art accessible to those who might not otherwise be able to enjoy it, if for no other reason than that the maintenance of healthy civic institutions is more likely to be carried on successfully by citizens with refined sensibilities than by couch-potatoes. The difficulty in devising just funding guidelines is no excuse for giving up.

Frankly, however, holding the line at sacred representations and symbols of faith strikes me as tenable. Duchamp's artwork and Mapplethorpe's photography are not so much frontal attacks on another's worldview as independent assertions of other, potentially conflicting visions. Where conflicts of such a nature arise, Aristotle's advice to rely on democracy as the distiller of wisdom greater than that possessed by any single individual might perhaps be heeded. But democracy should not be able to marshal public funding in those cases of work either intended to, or reasonably construed as, desecrating the symbolic moorings of another's historical and cosmic identity. Mad props to Giuliani for recognizing that.