Fábio Porchat, one of the main actors in ‘The First Temptation of Christ,’ says the controversial movie depicting Jesus Christ as “gay” was not to discourage people from believing in God.
The 45-minute special, made available by Netflix, an American streaming service, on December 3, has since generated backlashes from several quarters, with many condemning the movie.
Porchat, who is the co-founder of Porta dos Fundos, a Brazil-based YouTube comedy group, told Variety that the movie was generally misconstrued.
“It doesn’t incite violence, we’re not saying people shouldn’t believe in God,” he said.
“They [Netflix] haven’t said anything to us like, ‘Maybe we should stop making the special available.’ They support freedom of speech.”
He also wondered why Christians have aimed attacks at them for producing the movie even when the gay community, which was the most affected in the movie, has been relatively quiet.
“We play at insinuating that Jesus has a new friend, and probably this new friend is gay, but they have just been having fun and a very good time in the desert for 40 days,” he said.
“If anybody should be angry with us, it should be the gay community because a gay character turns out to be the Devil. But the gay community loves us!
“The show is almost a Christian fairy tale: Jesus faces off bravely with the Devil and then chooses to follow God, accepting to be his son, Jesus Christ.
“A lot of people, when they see the show, say: “Oh that’s what they were talking about? Ok, that’s O.K., they’re just having fun, no problem at all.
“For some Catholics here in Brazil, it’s O.K. if Jesus is a bad guy, uses drugs: That’s no problem. The problem is he’s gay. No, he can’t be gay. And that’s interesting because Jesus is everything. God is black and white and gay and straight. God is everything. It’s more homophobic to be insulted by a gay Jesus than to make Jesus special.”
The actor went on to dismiss rumours that Porta dos Fundos only do satires about Christianity, stating the group covers Islam and other aspects.
“People say that we don’t make fun of Islam,” said Porchat.
“We do, we’ve satirized terrorists, for example. But they are trying to incite other people to violence, which for Catholics is a very un-Catholic thing to do.”
Johnson Suleman, general overseer of Omega Fire Ministries, had charged Christians to unsubscribe and delete their accounts on Netflix while nearly 2 million people have signed a petition, which calls for the special to be prohibited and pulled down from the streaming service.
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