In December last year, men and women of God were outraged after Netflix treated them to a Christmas special comedy dubbed The First Temptation of Christ depicting Jesus as gay and Mary the mother of Jesus smoking weed.
Jesus, who is turning thirty, brings a special guest to meet his parents, Mary and Joseph, implying that Jesus and his male friend are in a sexual relationship. The program caused an uproar, especially in Brazil, where more than 120 million Brazilians comprise the world’s largest Catholic population.
Netflix filed an official complaint with the country’s top legal authority, decrying attempted censorship by a judge who ordered the film’s withdrawal from its platform, but the film was never removed. Its lawyer had argued that the judge’s decision amounts to censorship and has an impact equivalent to that of the bomb used in the terrorist attack against the headquarter of the comedy group.
The supreme court in Brazil ruled in favor of Netflix, issuing an order that allows Netflix to continue showing the satirical film reaffirming Brazilians’ right to free speech.
“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,” Brazilin supreme court president wrote in his decision.
This isn’t the first Porta dos Fundos, a Brazil-based YouTube group has done a Jesus-centric satire. In 2018, they did The Last Hangover, which included a very drunk Last Supper which even won the International Emmy Award for best comedy web television special.
