Was Jesus gay?
“Corpus Christi”, a play that depicts Jesus as gay, is set to open in Australia at Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival in early February. There has been predictable outrage expressed in the media. The Anglican Bishop of Sydney, Robert Forsyth, described the play as “deliberately offensive” and “historical nonsense”. The play portrays Jesus and the disciples as gay men. Terence McNally, who wrote the acclaimed play, created a gay Jesus partly as a way of exploring the feelings of rejection and persecution he experienced as a gay youth growing up in Texas. When the play opened in the UK in 1999 in addition to taking harsh criticism from conservative Christians, McNally became the target of a fatwa issued by an Islamic group. Assuming an historical Jesus existed, why is it considered outrageous by some to speculate that he may not have been heterosexual in orientation? In the Bible mention of homosexuality is rare, in part because it was considered taboo in the context of
