Brazil’s Supreme Court has sided with Netflix – and against some two million signers of a petition – to allow the streaming/broadcast of a short film that portrays Jesus Christ as a homosexual, Mailonline reports.
Supreme Court President Dias Toffoli issued the decision last week, one day after a Rio de Janeiro judge censored The First Temptation of Christ and ordered the streaming entertainment giant to pull the comedy web show.
A Rio-based Catholic group brought the case saying that the film, which shows Jesus introducing an implied boyfriend to his family, offended the “honor” of millions of Catholics.
Two million people signed a petition to have the program, a Christmas special, removed after it was uploaded by the Rio-based production company Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters was attacked with gasoline bombs on Christmas Eve.
In giving the ruling, Toffoli said banning the film violated “freedom of expression.”
“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,” Toffoli wrote.
“The freedoms of intellectual, artistic, scientific expression, religious, philosophical and communication beliefs are fundamental and essential rights to achieve the objectives of the Federal Republic of Brazil.”
Earlier last week, Judge Benedicto Abicair charged that The First Temptation of Christ’ s censorship would be “beneficial” to the Christian community and Brazilian society.
“Exhibiting the “artistic production” … may cause graver and more irreparable damage than its suspension,” he wrote.
Netflix Inc. appealed to Brazil’s Supreme Court against the injunction.
