NAPLES, Fla. -- Two paintings satirizing Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky are at the center of a free-speech debate, and the man leading the charge to remove the art from city property is a blind councilman who's been told the paintings are obscene.

The debate is expected to rage on at least until Sept. 4, when the Naples City Council will discuss whether the paintings violate the lease it has with the private, nonprofit von Liebig Art Center, and if the art violates Naples' community standards.

The art center is built on city property and operates under a 100-year lease that allows the city council to remove art it finds offensive.

Councilman Fred Tarrant, 74, is leading the opposition to the Lewinsky art.

Tarrant, who is blind, said that people he trusts tell him the painting hanging in the von Liebig's "Pop Art" exhibit, "Famous Tongue Mona Al Monica," is offensive and possibly obscene.

The work by Naples artist Ted Lay depicts the faces of Albert Einstein, the Mona Lisa, and Lewinsky with their tongues hanging out.

Critics said that Lewinsky's tongue looks like a penis. Lay said that the tongue is a tongue and the painting is a satirical take-off on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

So is another painting in the exhibit by Lay, 73.

"Christmas Card for Monica," shows former President Clinton with coat and tie, legs spread, and dressed in boxer shorts decorated with the Stars and Stripes.

Lay said that the shorts are modeled from a pair of Tommy Hilfiger designer boxers he bought at a department store.

The exhibit is scheduled to end Sept. 1, and the paintings have already been sold to an art collector.

The paintings were chosen for the exhibit by an independent juror, Kevin Dean, director and curator of exhibitions for the Selby Gallery at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla.

Dean said that Lay's paintings were some of the best work submitted and that one of the dangers of art is that it can offend people.

To Tarrant, the paintings are more than offensive. He said that they are clear violations of the art center's lease with the city.

"These artists can paint anything they want," Tarrant said. "I don't care how far out it is, as long as they display it on private property and not shove it in our face on tax-supported property."

The lease gives the city council power to decide if art hanging in the center violates community standards. Those standards are not defined.

Tarrant said that if he cannot address control of the work the center exhibits through the its lease, he'll propose a law to regulate "inappropriate" art placed on public property in the city.

Tarrant said that he does not believe his view challenges First Amendment freedoms.

When the city granted the 100-year lease to the art center to build on park property in the mid-1990s, former art center leaders agreed not to exhibit anything "controversial or in bad taste," Tarrant said.

"Well, they've done it," he added.

Mayor Bonnie MacKenzie voted against Tarrant's request to discuss the von Liebig lease at the Sept. 4 council workshop, but asked von Liebig officials to move the offending Monica painting out of the lobby.

She also asked the city attorney to contact a state library committee that can help the council decide just what local standards are for art.

City council member Tamela Wiseman is the only member of the panel to squarely oppose taking the painting down or regulating other art works.