A controversial Netflix show, which depicts Jesus Christ as a thirty-year-old gay man with a boyfriend and Mary as adulterous, received a furious backlash, drawing international attention and a petition with over 2 million signatures to ban the show.
Now, the petition has snowballed, breaking the 2 million barrier and counting, according to Sky News.
Petitioners have slammed the show as ‘blasphemous’ suggesting that the show’s producers went too far.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, called the film “garbage” and said the filmmakers “do not represent Brazilian society.”
Brazil is the most populous Catholic country in the world, giving rise to an uproar of this particular magnitude.
On the show itself, National File reported:
The Netflix film, A Primeira Tentação de Cristo, or The First Temptation of Christ, depicts a 30-year-old Jesus Christ as gay and taking his boyfriend, Orlando, to meet his parents, Mary and Joseph.
As a result, over a million people took to signing a petition to ban the film for “seriously offending Christians.”
According to Caldron Pool, the film reportedly “follows the adventures of Jesus’ disciples after they wake up hungover the morning after the Last Supper… wondering where the Messiah is.”
Porta dos Fundos, which literally means “back door”, is a comedy group of five Brazilians working from Rio de Janeiro, Pink News reports.
The group, whose content has been compared with Monty Python, has already signed deals with Netflix and Brazil’s Fox Network.
One of the complainants against the production cancelled their Netflix subscription, saying: “I have nothing against being gay, but not when it mocks my God.”
Another described the film as “an attack not just on our faith but blasphemy against our Lord.”
One petitioner wrote: “It is a serious offence against Jesus Christ and the Christians! It has no historical evidence to support the insinuations presented.”
Somebody else said: “A movie that came to destroy the image of Christ who gave His life to save us. Netflix has featured series that the family can’t join to watch. God created man and woman and no one can change that.”
