When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, he tried to cut off taxpayer funding for a museum showing a work entitled "The Holy Virgin Mary," featuring an image of the Madonna smeared with elephant dung, surrounded by cutout porn photos of female genitalia. Mr. Giuliani said the museum didn't have a "right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion." Hillary Clinton, then a Senate candidate, defended the right to show the artwork: "Our feelings of being offended should not lead to the penalizing and shutting down of an entire museum."

Mr....