If conservatives had never protested that gay Jesus movie, truthfully, most people probably wouldn’t have known about it at all. Instead, the tireless saga as they strain to get it removed from Netflix is keeping the film in headlines and in our brains.
The latest bit of news surrounding The First Temptation of Christ is positive — at least, it’s positive if you value things like artistic expression and freedom of speech over a religion being allowed to ban anything that challenges it.
The Brazilian Supreme Court rather quickly overturned a recent ruling by Brazilian judge Benedicto Abicair, which ordered Netflix to remove the comedy from its streaming platform until a court could properly sort things out. Abicair’s order came after a Catholic group filed an official legal complaint against the movie, which appeared to depict Jesus is gay.
However, Brazil’s Supreme Court wasn’t having it.
“It is not to be assumed that a humorous satire has the magic power to undermine the values of the Christian faith, whose existence goes back more than two thousand years," said Jose Antonio Dias Toffoi, the current President of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil.
Conservatives demanding the removal of The First Temptation of Christ have circulated an online petition that’s garnered almost 2.5 million signatures so far. A far-right religious group has also taken credit for an attack on the offices of the comedy troupe that created the film, Porta dos Fundos. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
