His example was if the Oklahoma City Bomber guys wrote a beautiful symphony work about killing children, he would refuse to listen to it. I disagreed saying that if it's beautiful music, it's beautiful music, and that it can stand independently from its creator and the events surrounding its creation.

You are probably a bigger man than me, then. Not to say that your premise of art standing on it's own isn't correct, but I have a great deal of difficulty separating the art from the artist. My take is that if I heard the symphony without knowing who wrote it or why, I could enjoy it in blissful ignorance. However, if I learned that the driving force behind the music was inspired by the thought of killing childrent that would change my response to the music. That's not to say that the music itself is evil, but in my mind I'd always be actively considering the inspiration everytime I heard the song. If you can, great. I won't foist my limitation upon you, however I wouldn't be able to make that separation.

Another example is a friend of mine who doesn't like a certain actor becase she saw an interview with him where he was crass and admitted to being a womanizer. Now my friend can't stand to watch the actor's movies because she always sees him in that light. I pointed out that this probably not an isoalted attitude among hollywood actors and she agreed, but that didn't change the way she perceived his work.

Finally, your argument only works for art that is ambiguous in nature. Songs with words, paintings that depict identifiable objects or situations, and much literature contains ideas and concepts within the work itself that people might find offensive, distasteful, or simply just not "their bag".

Art serves many purposes, whether it's to make money, convey emotions, convey ideas, convey "truth", or simply to enjoy producing it. I suppose it's all up to us individually to determine what we seek to find in art and what we think of as valuable.