A friend sent this (September 2001): anyone have any details?

Rowland.

~~~

Dear Friends,

I got this through the email today, and if you think of the sacrifice this one man has done for us all sign your name and forward to anyone you know will do the same. Isn’t it enough that he was publicly humiliated by his own people? namely the Jews. Well we are his people too and we can end the release of this movie. There is a movie that is coming out in 2001 claiming that both Jesus and his disciples were gay. There is already a play that went on for a while. The play and movie are titled “Corpus Christi” which is Latin and translates to “Body of Christ”. This is sickening and revolting to all true believers! We can all do something! Please send this to ALL of your friends to sign to stop the movie from showing in America. Already certain areas in Europe have started to ban it from coming to their country and we can Stop it too! We just need a lot of signatures, and you can help! Please do not delete this! Jesus said, “Deny Me before men and I will deny you before the Father.” Show respect for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who died for us! Please help! PLEASE SIGN AND SEND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! IF WE WORK TOGETHER WE CAN BAN THIS! Note this works better if you copy it and paste instead of pushing the “Forward” button)

IMPORTANT: Once 500 have signed, kindly mail to

Urban Legends and Folklore ‘Gay Jesus’ Movie – Rumor Resurrected on the Net

Part 2: Jesus as ‘swinging homosexual’

Granted, this is a rumor that could come true at any moment, but as it stands there’s no evidence anywhere – not in the trades, the entertainment magazines, nor on the many movie news sites available on the Web – that such a film is in production or even slated for production. This is an urban legend, and an old one at that.

Compare the current email version to the following 1984 snail-mail document cited in folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand’s book, “The Mexican Pet”:

ACTION NEEDED NOW

Modern People News has revealed plans for the filming of a movie based on the sex life of Jesus, in which Jesus is portrayed as a “swinging homosexual.” This film will be shot in the U.S. this year, unless a public outcry is GREAT. Already a French prostitute has been named to play the part of Mary Magdalene, with whom Christ has a blatent [sic] affair in the movie.

We cannot afford to stand by and do nothing about this disgrace. It is time for us to stand up and be counted! We must not allow this perverted world to drag Our Lord through the dirt. Please Help us to get this film banned from the U.S. as it has been in Europe. Let us show how we feel!

Detach and mail this form below to the address given. Make copies and give to your friends and others. (J.H. Brunvand, “The Mexican Pet” (W.W. Norton:

1986), pp. 175-77)

As Brunvand notes, no such film was in production at that time, either. But that didn’t stop an estimated one million Christians from writing letters of protest against it. Brunvand further notes that Martin Scorsese’s scheduled production of “The Last Temptation of Christ” was scuttled at the same time when similar rumors spread falsely alleging that that film would depict Jesus Christ as a gay man.

Returning to the current variant, I’m obliged to acknowledge there’s a small grain of truth to it: the claim that a stage play exists portraying Jesus and the disciples as gay. Written by Terrence McNally, the play is called “Corpus Christi” and premiered in 1998. However, no plans to adapt it into movie form have been announced.

Needless to say, McNally’s play has inspired a fair bit of outrage itself, not all of it based on fact, again demonstrating how rumors can supplant the truth when an issue is emotionally charged. As one reviewer observed after making his way through shouting demonstrators to attend the play,

The most electric moments in “Corpus Christi,” Terrence McNally’s play about a gay Jesus, come when you arrive at the theater. Across the street, Catholic protestors in white berets recite Hail Marys into a megaphone. If you approach the police barricade that pens them in, they ply you with leaflets charging that the play portrays “the Blessed Virgin screaming obscenely to St. Joseph for sexual relations” (sadly, it doesn’t). (Jacob Weisberg in Slate magazine, 10/09/98) The reviewer’s sarcasm aside, what’s of interest here is how rabblerousers saw fit to invent damning claims about the production even though the facts themselves, from the point of view of everyone who was offended, were damning enough. It’s a common phenomenon, and one I daresay is well known to politicians, who often make conscious use of it to galvanize voters. It’s equally well known to folklorists, who observe ordinary people not only succumbing to misinformation in the course of everyday life, but consciously resorting to it when there’s an urgent issue at hand.

More…http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa053100b.htm

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