This is what multiculturalism has come to: A student artist who proposed a mural for a Rhode Island high school came under heavy pressure to change her design because it upheld the ideal of traditional marriage.
Liz Bierendy, a 17-year-old artist at Pilgrim High School in Warwick, RI, had to defend her design for a mural to cover a school wall because it depicted a boy’s progression from childhood to adulthood as ending happily with a man standing hand in hand with a woman and child. The man and woman wear wedding bands.
Critics demanded that Bierendy change the mural because it might not represent the life experiences of all Pilgrim High School students — some of whom, presumably, don’t live in traditional families.
Fortunately for Bierendy, the Warwick school superintendent stepped into the fray, and she was allowed to finish the mural as she envisioned it.
Still, the reaction to Bierendy’s mural underscores society’s alarming tendency to adjust standards to fit the way we live, rather than adjust the way we live to fit standards.
My first thought when I read about Bierendy was of the elephant-dung-smeared image of the Virgin Mary that once hung in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. When Christians complained, the common refrain was, “What’s the matter? It’s just art.” One might ask Bierendy’s critics now: “What’s the matter? It’s just art.”
But as a member of the so-called millennial generation, I began to feel that Bierendy just might be on to something.
The need for art that depicts the traditional progression to adulthood is greater than ever. Too few examples exist in real life. Art can fill the gap, showing young people who seem determined to delay responsibility for as long as possible that an adult life with marriage and children is a desirable goal. While we should be realistic about human nature and certainly shouldn’t base governmental policies on idealistic assumptions, we should nevertheless work to renew the culture so that it encourages better behavior in each successive generation. We all know the statistics about how children who grow up in intact traditional families are much less prone to a variety of social, psychological and health problems.
Whereas kids my age (I’m 23) might tune out an essay or blog post asking them to consider marriage and parenthood as valid priorities, art might actually invite them to consider again the advantages to the traditional “transition to adulthood.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that kids aren’t actually happier remaining kids when their brains and bodies are long past the point of developing. They might not know it, but they want to be adults who not only take full responsibility for themselves but are at least capable of taking responsibility for a child, too.
A depiction of a smiling, hand-holding family (however cheesy that might seem to jaded young people) might help kids become aware of that fact.
Tina Korbe is associate editor of hotair.com.