s photograph of black and white men shocked, enraged, or stimulated different elements in the viewing audience. Twenty years after he photographed some of his initial homosexual friends, many viewers may fail to recognize how Mapplethorpe was pushing the boundaries of sexual behavior in his time. His photography shows his exploration of sexuality was perverse in the extreme. He enjoyed dehumanizing the human. He continuously experimented always accepting anything in his social life, then capturing many issues of his life on film. His photography documents a wide range of pleasure and pain for public review and consideration. As Mapplethorpe grew in prominence through the early 80s, so did the public controversy surrounding the rise of homosexual advocacy. The debates raging about Mapplethorpe often reflect an undertone of these homosexual arguments. His works are very controversial because they serve as a spring board for cultural debates. An objective examination of many of Mapplethorpe's photographs suggests a love of the beauty of bodies, devoid of any political or cultural agenda. When elite intellectuals use their position to convince their peers that by not allowing public view of such controversial materials they protect the Christian morals of the society, then censorship occurs. One such critic was Jesse Helms, who used photographs from The Perfect Moment to support his amendment that barred the use of federal funds to promote, disseminate, or produce obscene or indecent materials (373). Helms did not represent Mapplethorpes art to the conference committee as art with a deeper meaning behind the controversial images, but presented the amendment as a strictly pornographic issue. He made the issue seem to be a vote against or supporting pornographic materials supported by tax money, and of course the committee voted to pass the amendment. The result of the committee was the Miller test that labeled art as obscene when the w...
