Falwell Joins NEA Controversy, Sides With Helms : Arts: The evangelist accuses the endowment of supporting ‘extreme pornographic and anti-Christian’ works.

WASHINGTON — TV evangelist Jerry Falwell, joining the controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts for the first time, has accused the NEA of supporting so much “extreme pornographic and anti-Christian” work that “it makes my blood boil.”

The plea, which includes a letter signed by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) supporting Falwell’s anti-NEA campaign, is the centerpiece of a new fund-raising campaign by Falwell’s Virginia-based Liberty Federation.

Copies of the letter, which asks supporters to return--with a donation--a signed “taxpayer petition of outrage” over the NEA to be forwarded to President Bush, have found their way to Capitol Hill within the last two weeks.

The Falwell-Helms campaign is the latest effort of conservative politicians and religious groups to resuscitate the NEA controversy of the last two years. The campaign is said by observers in Congress to be significant both because of its timing and because of the emergence of Falwell, who had not taken any significant role in the NEA flap since it began in April, 1989. Falwell is one of the best-known figures in conservative religious circles.

Although the Falwell-Helms campaign has yet to stir much interest among lawmakers, the timing of this and other new developments is significant, Senate and House sources said. Bills to appropriate money for the NEA for fiscal 1992 are expected to come up for committee approval and votes on the floor sometime between mid-June and late August.

In the House, legislation has already been introduced by Rep. Philip M. Crane (R-Ill.) to strip the NEA of all funding, effectively shutting the agency down.

According to a variety of observers, Crane expects to mount an offensive against the NEA as the 1992 money bill approaches final action. He will be joined by Reps. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Dick Armey (R-Texas). The three hope to create enough anti-NEA outrage that congressmen and senators will vote in large numbers for Crane’s bill, which he calls the “Privatization of Art Act.” However, a nearly identical Crane initiative was overwhelmingly defeated in the House last October.

The Bush Administration has requested $175 million for the NEA this year--exactly what the agency received in 1991.

Unlike protracted NEA debates of 1989 and 1990, this one seems certain to be short--probably lasting only a few days. But it also appears to loom as intense and politically bloody.

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), the ranking Republican member of the subcommittee that draws up the NEA money bill, is thought to be planning to join actively in an attempt to strip away much of the NEA budget--and perhaps try to impose new language restricting the kinds of art the NEA may support.

Crane, Armey and Dannemeyer all contend that continuing disclosures about allegedly distasteful NEA grants have begun to convince members of Congress that a law passed last year requiring the NEA to adhere to “general standards of decency” has not succeeded in stopping the endowment from making grants some right wing leaders consider offensive.

Armey and Dannemeyer contend that revulsion with the NEA and its grants has reached critical mass with disclosures earlier this year of endowment support of the film “Poison,” which includes scenes of gay and heterosexual intercourse. With a little more fuel thrown on the fire between now and when the appropriation bill comes to the floor, Dannemeyer and Armey said through spokesmen last week, the NEA may be brought down.

Ironically, Crane is not predicting victory.

Careful to avoid past mistakes when conservatives, such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), have promised to kill the NEA but succeeded only in wounding it, a Crane aide emphasized that the time may not yet be right for success.

Of the bill, the aide said, Crane “is not optimistic that it will pass this year.” Rather, Crane sees the process of eliminating the NEA as a war of attrition--one that may take, the spokesman said, several years, but one that conservatives are confident they can win eventually.

“We just think,” he said, “that times have changed.”