Update, Aug. 26, 2024: In a further change, Ogden City has removed the obscenity clause from its art grant contract. The guidelines now only prohibit city funding from being used for support of or opposition to political campaigns or ballot measures.
Kye Hallows and Patrick Ramsay have decided to accept the grants they were offered. Our original story continues below.
Ogden City will change the guidelines for its annual art grants after some of this year’s recipients claimed the rules amounted to censorship.
The old contract prohibited anything objectionable, offensive, obscene, or inappropriate for the general public. City Arts Administrator Lorie Buckley told the Arts Committee on Aug. 13 that the words “objectionable” and “offensive” will be removed from the grant contract.
“Those two words that were so subjective are in the process of being removed, that whole last section, so that it isn't so subjective anymore,” Buckley said. “It just is kind of more tied into things that could be considered obscene or hate speech.”
The word “inappropriate” has also been removed from the draft, and the contract still needs to be finalized.
Even with the changes, Patrick Ramsay hasn’t decided whether he’ll accept a grant to support a writer-in-residence program at his bookstore, Happy Magpie Book & Quill.
“That subjectivity, based on the word ‘obscene,’ still leaves room for arbitrary enforcement, for bias,” he told KUER in an interview after the committee meeting. “And I'm concerned about what that bias might do in our city, especially for marginalized communities like the LGBTQ+ community and people of color.”
In the committee meeting, member Jake McIntire asked who would decide if something is obscene.
“I would prefer, or hope, that we as an advisory committee have a strong role in that review process because we want to really prevent random community members saying, ‘This is obscene to me,’ and then that funding gets pulled because of a singular community member,” he said.
Buckley said a review process could be created in concert with the committee. It could then be presented “as a recommendation to administration for the process of how to review if anything does come forward.”
Buckley added that the city will likely follow the state’s guidelines on what’s considered obscene.
“We were kind of referencing and looking at what state legislation is stating is obscene. We're doing quite a bit of research on that definition of that word and what is considered that, and that would most likely be our guidelines.”
While some changes were made, the part of the amendment to the contract that prohibits “political advertising, lobbying, or campaigning” will stand.
Mara Brown, Ogden City administrator, clarified that the clause refers to content about an active campaign or ballot initiative, not general topics that could be considered political.
“We're looking at the wording because we’re sensitive to those thoughts about something being inherently political, and that's also not the intent,” Brown said.
The question of political content was due to The LQ Zine, which is funded by advertisements, some of which have been political, in addition to city grants. Publisher Kye Hallows told the committee he would welcome “any candidate that wants to pay for an advertisement in my queer magazine.”
Buckley countered that “anything that the city is funding has to be politically neutral.” However, she suggested that The LQ could publish “one issue that the city funds and one issue that's funded outside of city funding.”
Buckley said the rules around obscenity did not come from issues with past grant recipients. Rather, the changes are supposed to protect the city in case “someone came forward with something that really wouldn't be for the community, that maybe was very pornographic or something of that nature.”
“It's like a protection clause to help us navigate an issue, if it came forward,” she said.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
