Over 1 million people sign petition against Netflix Christmas film depicting Jesus as gay

Over 1.5 million people have signed a petition asking streamer Netflix to take down a film that allegedly shows Jesus in a gay relationship. 

" First Temptation of Christ", a Portuguese langu film released in Brazil by Netflix on December 3, has created an uproar for its depiction of a gay relationship between Jesus and his friend Orlando.

film also reportedly shows Mary, mor of Jesus, smoking weed. petition, started on Change.org, has so far collected 1,529,504 signatures. It calls upon Netflix to remove movie, me by comedy sketch group Porta dos Fundos (Backdoor in English). 

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"For removing film from Netflix catalog and for Backdoor to be held responsible for crime of villaius faith. We also want public retraction, as y have seriously offended Christians," re plea.

Though film is t yet available on Netflix India platform, a Christian group has raised objections over it. Abraham Mathai, president of Indian Christian Voice, has sent an open letter to Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings, calling film "blasphemous, vulgar and disrespectful" and "highly offensive to sentiments of Christian community".

"Even though freedom of expression is a fundamental and constitutional right, but using same liberty to offend sentiments of members of a particular faith persuasion is highly abhorrent and absolutely unacceptable... "In 21st century, where digital wave has brought world to our fingertips, we are exposed to a Pandora's Box of information, both historic and futuristic. While as a community we may enjoy this medium, but, what we will t tolerate is someone rewriting history especially in such b taste," he said. 

Mathai termed Christmas Special as an "abomination that implies homosexuality being central pillar of Christian faith, under pretext of parody". He furr said Netflix should publicly apologise to Christian community and withdraw film from its platform. Meanwhile, Porta dos Fundos, which has over 16.2 million YouTube subscribers and 9.3 million followers on Facebook, has defended film.

"Porta dos Fundos values artistic freedom and humour through satire on most diverse cultural mes of our society and believes that freedom of expression is an essential construction for a democratic country," group said in a statement, obtained by Yahoo! Entertainment.

Despite several attempts, Netflix is yet to react on furore surrounding film.

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