Israel Star Chronicle

The Creative City’s reputation for tolerance took a minor hit over art censorship this week.

On January 27, the West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission voted unanimously to deny sponsorship of the gay-oriented Tom of Finland Erotic Art Festival because two female heterosexual members decried the event as “in bad taste” and the city park an inappropriate place to hold it because it also hosts families and children.

On January 27, the West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission voted unanimously to deny sponsorship of the gay-oriented Tom of Finland Erotic Art Festival because two female heterosexual members decried the event as “in bad taste” and the city park in which the event would take place also hosts children. This painting won a prize in 2005. WeHo News.

Commissioner Whitney Weston said at the meeting that the event was in bad taste and that she expressed concerns about holding the festival in a park “where there are children.”

The festival is held behind a shroud to prevent straying eye’s contact with the exhibit, and although admission is free, identification is checked and only adults are allowed entrance to the event.

Ms. Weston denied that she attempted to censor the event, saying that she voted against sponsorship of it because “I felt like it needed to be celebrated and promoted and not shrouded in secrecy in some dark corner of the park.”

She said her statement was “twisted” out of context. Ms. Weston feels the event should take place at a private gallery, not in a public park.

Beverly Dennenberg agreed in that commission meeting that the show was in bad taste, but wished to prevent the commission from sponsoring the event because she felt the Tom of Finland Foundation is, despite its tax-exempt status as a non-profit, a “commercial enterprise.”

She characterized the non-profit arts enterprises the commission regularly sponsors, such as the Summer Sounds Series of musical concerts, as city-generated saying, “those are created by the city for the public; don’t you see the difference?”

She dismissed the affair, however, that the commission’s sponsorship “didn’t seem like it meant anything.”

The Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission is peopled with gay men, none of whom defended the event before the vote.

The arts community expressed outrage at the censorship in evidence and the gay community howled in protest at the expression of prejudice.

The crowd attending the 2010 Tom of Finland erotic Art Festival. WeHo News.

Ivy Bottini, co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board (LGAB), another co-sponsor of the event, and an artist herself, told WeHo News that she believed the commission to made up of non-homophobes, but called the incident “the underbelly of being heterosexual,” that displayed the sometimes unexamined prejudices all people carry with them.

She said that straight usually people “don’t know the depth of damage society has done to lesbian and gay people…”

In her remarks to the council, she said, “the words used linked gay men and children together as if they shouldn’t happen - the proximity shouldn’t happen. Our community has struggled with this for centuries; people believe that gay men should not be near children.”

Ms. Bottini, who the city has honored for her gay activism with a tree planted in the city’s Matthew Shepard Memorial Triangle, said the city needs to do sensitivity work with the commissioners to “find the areas of underbelly of the fear of homosexuals that have come down through the ages. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing; I think it comes down through the ages and is just how society brings young people up.”

Numerous public speakers attended the regular city council meeting Monday to make their complaints to the council after meeting with the City Manager earlier in the day.

The city manager, Paul Arevalo, announced that one of the outcomes of that meeting would be a sensitivity and awareness session for the Arts and Cultural Affairs Commissioners alongside the Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board.

Louis Pachecho, one of the organizers of the event, said he hoped that the commission’s attitudes could come under review, “A committee on arts and culture should not be allowed to censor art.”

Sister Unity pointed out that “West Hollywood’s unwritten mission is to welcome the unwelcome, to offer a space where the invisible becomes visible.”

Dan Berkowitz, the co-chair of the LGAB and former-president of the Tom of Finland Foundation, said in council chambers that he saw Ms. Weston’s comments as “misinterpreted,” a result of careless language.

“I was disappointed [with the vote] because it could be construed as anti-gay,” he said. “Anyone who speaks in public must know that one’s words, if not chosen carefully, can be misconstrued.” He said he hoped the incident could be used as a teaching moment, rather than as a punitive one.”

The city council went ahead and granted the sponsorship despite the stand taken by its commission.

The resolution supporting the event and waiving fees for the use of the park won the day and the event shall go on over the weekend of March 25-27 in West Hollywood Park.