The creators of Netflix’s gay Jesus comedy film are facing more than just an angry petition now, as someone tried to burn down their offices over the holidays.
Masked men attacked the Porta dos Fundos offices in Rio de Janeiro on Christmas Eve, launching two Molotov cocktails at the door. Fortunately, a security guard was able to put out the fire, and nobody was injured.
The First Temptation of Christ was released earlier in December on the streaming platform, and features Jesus bringing home a man who is clearly his secret boyfriend home to meet his parents during his 30th birthday celebration.
The film has sparked outrage among conservatives and Christians around the world, who feel that the religious icon they have so repeatedly shoved in everyone else’s faces belongs to them and them alone, and that coding a fictionalized version of him as queer is the highest offense. A petition to have the film removed and to have the filmmakers “held responsible” for offending Christians has gained over two million signatures.
According to the BBC, a video circulated on the 25th in which a far-right religious group calling themselves the “Popular Nationalist Insurgency Command of the Large Brazilian Integralist Family” claimed responsibility for the attack on the Porta dos Fundos office. Though the video has since been deleted, the group pointed to the film as the reason for the attack.
There has been no corroboration that the people who made the video were responsible, but Porta dos Fundos has handed security camera footage of the incident over to local police for their investigation.
