Tue 30 Mar 2010 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
A Texas university play that depicted Jesus as a gay man has been cancelled after a "vile" backlash from a church congregation. CBS affiliate KTVT reports a theatre class at Tarleton State University depicted Jesus as a gay man who presides over the marriage of two disciples, in Corpus Christi. A local pastor pushed for his congregation to derail the production and handed out phone numbers and email addresses of school officials. A bombardment of hateful emails and phone calls followed. The pastor, David Harris from the Hillcrest Church of Christ, told CBS his opposition was not rooted in play's gay theme. "This has never been a battle between the homosexuals and the Christians," Harris said. "This has been a battle about the defamation of the name of Jesus Christ and I don't care if it had been a tobacco-chewing cowboy, I would've fought just as hard." John Otte, the student director of the production hoped the play would serve as a lesson for tolerance. "I'm not angry with anyone, it just saddens me that they would go this far," Otte told KTVT in an email. "I understand their belief and their anger, but not the violence threatened." The university says the messages didn't contain any specific threats, but had an unmistakably angry tone. "We didn't have specific threats of violence, but we had hundreds of vile, hateful emails and phone calls that got increasingly volatile as the week went on," she said. "We had enough hate spewed our way from Christian believers that the professor took that into consideration." Otte hopes to stage the play at some point off-campus, though Harris says his opposition will continue.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 30th March 2010 - 8:54am