A Christmas special film that depicts Jesus as gay created controversies and was banned until Supreme Court of Brazil overturned and ruled out a decision in favour of Netflix. The film, The First Temptation of Christ, infuriated fervent Christians in the country. Two million people signed a petition calling for it to be axed. However, the Supreme Court president Josè Antonio Dias Toffoli said on Thursday that Netflix should be allowed to continue streaming the show, stating that freedom of speech was fundamental in a democracy.
In his statement the judge said, “One cannot suppose that a humorous satire has the ability to weaken the values of the Christian faith, whose existence is traced back more than two thousand years, and which is the belief of the majority of Brazilian citizens”.
“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,” supreme court president José Antonio Dias Toffoli wrote in his decision.
Many of the country’s conservative Christians were agitated by the portrayal of Jesus bringing home a presumed boyfriend to meet his family. On Christmas Eve, a group attacked Porta dos Fundos’s (Gay Jesus Film Office) office in Rio de Janeiro with fire bombs. Police is investigating the bombing on this office with its investigation squads.
According to the reports unknown assailants throwing Molotov cocktails through the windows of the production house where Porta dos Fundos films its videos. An on-duty security guard quickly stopped the blaze, and no one else was in the building at the time of the fire. An altered voice speaking on the tape claims responsibility for the attack as part of a group called the Command of Popular National Insurgence, a part Brazil’s “integralist” movement, which was inspired by the 1930s-era Italian fascism.
A judge in Rio de Janeiro ordered Netflix to take the film down stating that his decision is temporary and is made Judge to appease furious Christians until a final decision is made by a higher and apex court of the country.
“Exhibiting the ‘artistic production’… may cause graver and more irreparable damage than its suspension,” the judge wrote.
On Wednesday, judge Benedicto Abicair ruled against the film following a petition by a Brazilian Catholic organization that argued the “honor of millions of Catholics” was hurt by the airing of The First Temptation of Christ. The special was produced by the Rio-based comedy group Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters was targeted by gasoline bombs on Christmas Eve.
Porta dos Fundos, the associate group of the film said in a statement that it stands “against any act of censorship, violence, illegality, authoritarianism and all the things we no longer expect to have to repudiate in 2020. Our job is to make humour.” Felipe Santa Cruz, president of the Brazilian Bar Association, said the banning is against the Brazilian constitution, which guarantees free expression in the arts, science and communication. “Any form of censorship or threat to this hard-won freedom is a setback and cannot be accepted by society”.
