This commentary was published in Current , Aug. 12, 1991. The vice squad of American culture was once again on the attack. Yet despite a concerted smear and censorship campaign, perhaps even because of it, this work achieved its aim. This, of course, did not mean a hill of beans to white arch-conservatives and religious fundamentalists, who pointedly minimized or ignored altogether the abundant evidence affirming Tongues Untied 's artistic and social merit. Among these would-be guardians of American culture, sexuality as such remains taboo.
Black heterosexuality is shrouded by even deeper layers of silence and aversion.
And black homosexuality, the triple taboo, equates in their minds with an unspeakable obscenity. Predictably, the morals censors pounced on both PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts in an ongoing effort to force American culture into line with their rigid, narrow notions of morally correct art. Suddenly, traditional conceptions of America's Left, Right and Center prove bankrupt. Sandwiched uncomfortably amidst this improbable collection of censorship co-conspirators was a dismaying number of U.S. public television executives. Tongues Untied 's frank, nonconformist imagery and language thus lent themselves as easy targets for station censorship.