The "NEA Four"—a gay man, a bisexual man, a lesbian, and a heterosexual feminist—played a prominent role in the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they challenged the withdrawal of their funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and a decency clause imposed on grant recipients.

Founded in 1965, the NEA was mandated to consider cultural diversity in its funding decisions. But by the mid-1980s, public support for the arts was threatened by an increasingly conservative political climate. In 1989, Republican lawmakers and religious right groups launched a campaign against what they deemed morally objectionable art. Opponents were particularly incensed that NEA funds had indirectly supported the work of Robert Mapplethorpe—renowned for his homoerotic and sadomasochistic images—and Andres Serrano, who photographed a crucifix in a jar of urine. During a time of moral panic about homosexuality and AIDS, conservative Patrick Buchanan, among others, saw public funding of controversial art as a key battleground in a "culture war" against traditional values.

At the behest of Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas), more than 100 legislators signed a letter to NEA chair John Frohnmayer threatening to withhold federal support if the agency continued to fund "morally reprehensible trash." In the fall of 1989, Congress passed an amendment—introduced by Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms—barring the use of federal money to support work that could be considered obscene, including "depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts." Following a vociferous debate, Congress reauthorized the NEA in 1990, but added a provision that the agency must consider not only artistic merit, but also "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs of the American public."

In June of that year, citing the new clause and "certain political realities," Frohnmayer rejected grants to four solo performance artists—Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller—that had been unanimously recommended by a peer review panel.

Finley, a heterosexual woman and the best known of the four, was renowned for smearing chocolate on her naked body to represent the degradation of women. Hughes (a lesbian and former anti-porn feminist), Fleck (a gay man whose act included urinating onstage—but not, as accused, on a Bible), and Miller (a bisexual AIDS activist) all included explicit homosexual themes in their work.

In addition to the NEA Four, conservatives also objected to federal funding for Marlon Riggs’ film about the black gay experience, Tongues Untied (1989), the GLBT film company Frameline, and the work of Ron Athey, an HIV-positive artist who incorporated ritual body modification and bloodletting into his performances.

Civil libertarians and queer activists reacted with outrage to the encroachment on freedom of expression, but little support came from the straight left or the mainstream arts establishment, because, as Hughes explained, "anxieties about sexuality, the body,

and race are not just anxieties of the right, they are anxieties also of downtown artists."

After the NEA rejected their request for an appeal in August 1990, the four defunded artists—with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights—filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding reinstatement of their grants and rescinding of the NEA’s decency provision, arguing that the guidelines were vague and unconstitutional. In 1992, federal district judge Wallace Tashima ruled in their favor; the government, he said, does not have "free rein to impose whatever content restrictions it chooses," since "the right of artists to challenge conventional wisdom and values is a cornerstone of artistic and academic freedom." Four years later, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld Tashima’s ruling.

The NEA Four won a settlement reinstating their original grants and awarding legal costs, but the Clinton administration appealed the lower court decision regarding the decency clause. In June 1998, the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 8 to 1 that Congress has wide latitude to set spending priorities. Wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, "Avant-garde artistes...remain entirely free to epater la bourgeoisie [shock the middle class]; they are merely deprived of the additional satisfaction of having the bourgeoisie taxed to pay for it." However, the sole dissenting justice, David Souter, said that the law carried "a significant power to chill artistic production and display."

Although the original NEA implementation language stated that it was the government’s proper role "to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry, but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent," the NEA Four case illustrated a shift in public support for the arts. In 1996, Congress cut the agency’s budget from a high of more than $170 million to less then $100 million, and the NEA ceased funding individual performance artists; legislators increased the budget in subsequent years, but never to its former level.

Perhaps an even more profound outcome was the chilling effect it had on artists. "There’s enormous commercial pressure to be more mainstream," said Hughes. "A lot of the counter-cultural edge has really disappeared."