Seriously, Folks: Didn't Jesus Die for Gays, Too?

The controversy over the “Fire in My Belly” video just pulled from the National Portrait Gallery appears, on the face of it, to be about using tax money to display art that some Christians find offensive. Or so the critics - from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League to Glenn Beck of Fox News to conservative Republicans such as the incoming House Speaker John Boehner - would have us believe.

But the artist, the late David Wojnarowicz, was gay. The video is informed, among other things, by the AIDS crisis. And the broader exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” attends to issues of gender and sexuality, including homosexuality.

So what is at stake here is not just money but the contested intersection of religion, morality and sexual politics that has been going in recent years by the tagline of “the culture wars.”