Perhaps you’ve heard of the “gay Jesus” Christmas comedy which debuted on Netflix last month.
Here are a few pieces from a synopsis provided by Decider.com:
The three wise(a**) men…are trying to follow the North Star to Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s joint, but keep getting lost. There’s some jokes about bringing ham rolls to a traditional Jewish potluck…so they decide to pass them off as “free range soy” rolls. They finally arrive to find the Virgin Mary…and Joseph…busy preparing for Jesus’ arrival. It’s going to be a surprise party, and the joke here is, how does one surprise the Son of God?
…
Well, here’s your answer: he doesn’t yet know he’s almighty powerful. God his damn self (Antonio Tabet) shows up, and we learn not only that he’s long been passed off as Jesus’ Uncle Vittorio, but that the plan is to finally tell Jesus about his true parentage. Joseph, understandably, doesn’t care much for God, since he divinely knocked up his wife.
…
Jesus…finally arrives from his sandy sojourn, with his new friend Orlando…in tow. If Orlando was any more flaming, you’d need a fire extinguisher. The implication is, they’ve been buggering each other a bit atop the dunes and such.
Not everyone — as you’d be sure — was enthused by the 46-minute-long Spanish-language flick.
In fact, in Brazil, a petition to remove the movie from the streaming giant garnered millions of signatures.
And now, a judge there has ordered it off the platform.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Judge Benedicto Abicair handed down the judgement Wednesday.
The decision followed a petition signed by over two million Brazilians stating that the comedic film, entitled The First Temptation of Christ, broke the law and “seriously offended Christians.”
A Brazilian student in Edinburgh spoke to LifeSite about the verdict.
Here’s Ricardo German:
“I think it’s great. According to Article 208 of the Brazilian Penal Code, to ‘publicly denigrate an act or object of religious worship’ is a crime punishable by up to one year in prison. Judge Abicair did nothing but order the provisional suspension of a work in clear violation of that legal prohibition.”
As per the report, Judge Benedicto Abicair can also prevent the show’s producers — comedy troupe Porta dos Fundos — from marketing it:
The judge, according to German, can forbid Netflix’s Brazil installation — officially a “legal person” for the purposes of legal proceedings — from making the film available to view. He can also bar Porta dos Fundos from advertising the film anywhere that can be accessed from Brazil, “which would technically include the internet as a whole (at least in the Portuguese language, some jurists could say).”
But Ricardo was surprised — Brazillian courts have gone down the path of a more liberal lean.
So it probably won’t last:
“The order will almost certainly be reversed by the higher courts (the High Court of Justice or the Supreme Court), unfortunately.”
In Ricardo’s view, the higher courts are more interested in activism from the bench rather than application of the law:
“The superior courts don’t apply the law: They decide what outcome they would like the most and, based on that, confer whichever twisted hermeneutics they need to effectively render any legal disposition contrary to their ideology meaningless.”
And superior court judges are appointed, not elected:
“[I]f you’ve had over two decades of left-wing governments, you get what you get.”
And when you release a work mocking the life of Jesus in Brazil, apparently, you get some very unAmerican Christian uproar: On Christmas Eve, the Porta do Fundos headquarters were firebombed.
They don’t mess around down there. A different set of convictions, or at least different ways of expressing them.
Because of those, for now, the country’s resisting Temptation.
-ALEX
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