There could be greater, more explicit protection to gay art from those who would call it obscene, if the U.S. Supreme Court elects to review an Omaha case where police seized three works from the basement of a bar catering to a gay clientele.
The seizure happened at the Run Bar in December 1994, when police answered a complaint from fire inspectors who saw the art works while inspecting the bar. The bar's owner, Terry Tippit, says he bought the works from a friend and customer who lived in San Francisco.
Tippit sued in 1995, asking a state court to declare the works were not obscene under Nebraksa law, and the case went to trial two years later. But Creighton University's chairman of fine and performing arts, Dr. Roger Aiken, testified the works in question had no redeeming or serious artistic value - in part, Aiken testified, because they weren't shown in a museum but, rather, in a gay bar.
The trial judge apparently relied on that testimony in ruling the works were obscene. Tippit appealed to the Supreme Court charging the Nebraska courts misapplied the obscenity test. The challenge suggests the Nebraksa Supreme Court should not define serious art by where the work in question is shown.
