Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren As the recent censorship of an AIDS-themed film reminds, the separation of church & state is a thin line. By now, most of the world knows that David Wojnarowicz’s short film A Fire in My Belly was blasted by religious righters at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery LGBT-themed exhibition in Washington, D.C. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), wasn’t explicit about his religious motives, complaining merely that the film was an act of “arrogance” with taxpayer money (though the show [...]

A New Exhibit Proves It Takes at Least Two to Play Hide and Seek by Chael Needle There’s a danger that “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” currently running at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., will become known as the exhibition whose hosting institution, the Smithsonian, censored a work by an artist who has come to have a major influence on how we understand AIDS. This happened on the eve of World AIDS Day. And that work is a four-minute video excerpt [...]