The left frequently cites the rights are a bunch of bible thumpers who want to push their "religous" beliefs down their throats, and the right claim that the left is working to remove all signs of morality out of goverment.

Morality isn't politics. They are totally different things. Morality is you believe, it can and often is totally different in many respects to what you neighboor believes. If you try to force your belief system, you going to screw somebody over—no matter if it's your opinion on racism, education, abortotion, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

That said, just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it should be made a crime. Hateful speach is just as bad as blasphmous speach, and in many cases is equivlant to the offended person. That said, a remark or a piece of artwork is just that—it's not like somebody is slicing you up or shooting you with a gun.

Just because some white person said "I HATE THOSE N1GGERS" before shooting a black person, doesn't make them any more guilty or less guilty of killing him. All he said were words. They weren't actions. True that wasn't exactly a nice thing to say, and it was far from politically correct, he didn't do anything in reality then saying 4 words and shoot him.

Many people are screaming censorship when it comes to the latest exihbet in the publicly paid NY Metropolitian exhibet in NYC, when Guliante suggested that they create a screening board to decide which artwork the city will pay for. This was caused by those who were insulted by the pictures of Jesus with piss on him. Of course, we all know that the left would be just as censor happy if they were picture of black men on a fire, with a caption saying "Die Blacks, Die".

Ideally, the goverment would get out of the art bussiness all together—that way there would be no debate over what is acceptable, and what is not. A private collection could choose what they like and what they dislike. The goverment really has no choice—they have to accept all. And that's not fair—why should somebody who is anti-rascism support a rascist piece of artwork?

Private collections of artwork avalible for public tour do exist, and are quite often visited, such as the Norman Rockwell collection in MA.

In the end, censoring blamphous artwork is the same as censoring rascist and sexist artwork—your just hurting people. To the religous right, it's god to the left it's the black, and to the rest of us, well it's neither.