Netflix has caused controversy by streaming a “comedy” special that depicts Jesus as a homosexual and his mother as God’s pot-smoking mistress. This comes to us from a “comedy” group with a history of sacrilegious content of this sort, including, reportedly, a skit that portrays Christ as a homicidal sadist.
There is part of me that thinks we should ignore this idiocy and go on with our day. It’s so utterly stupid and witless — just provocation for provocation’s sake — that I fear we dignify it by responding with exactly the outrage that the creators of the special were banking on. In the end, what they’ve produced is the intellectual equivalent of making a fart noise in our faces. Why pay it the respect of getting angry about it?
But ultimately it’s this — the total lack of any creative value — that makes its existence on Netflix all the more worthy of condemnation. If this was some dumb skit on YouTube, it wouldn’t warrant our attention. But Netflix, a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate, decided to lend it the support and credibility of its massive platform. What reason is there to stream this tripe, other than as a blatant “screw you” to its Christian customers? Netflix has “The Last Temptation of Christ,” too, which is equally sacrilegious, but at least it’s a legitimate film created by one of the best filmmakers in cinema history. This gay Jesus thing, on the other hand, serves no artistic purpose other than to desecrate what Christians hold dear, just for the fun of it.
I won’t dwell on the obvious point that many have already made. It goes almost without saying that Netflix would never play host to a whimsical comedy special that portrays the Prophet Mohammed as a homosexual. In fact, the skit goes out of its way to avoid including Muslims in the mockery. From The Daily Wire report:
At other points in the special, Mary smokes marijuana, Melchior, the oldest member of the Magi, hires a sex worker, and Jesus gets high off “special tea.” Hallucinating himself — he meets with Buddha, Krishna, the Rastafari god Jah and an alien deity for Scientologists, the Post writes.
Buddha, Krishna, even the Rastafarian god and the galactic lord Xenu of Scientology fame. It seems that the deity of one major world religion is missing. These oh-so-bold comedians wouldn’t dream of heaping the sort of contempt upon Islam that they heap upon Christianity, and they certainly wouldn’t spit on Islam’s prophet like they spit on Jesus Christ. For one thing, they would be condemned by everyone as bigots. For another, they’d be taking their lives into their hands. Not to mention Netflix wouldn’t have picked it up. The company that has publicly condemned “hatred” and “bullying” only makes an exception where Christianity is concerned.
And so for that reason, Christians should oblige and cancel their Netflix subscriptions. This isn’t a boycott. It isn’t even a statement on our part. Netflix is the one that made the statement. That statement is clear: If you’re a Christian, we don’t want your business. What else are we supposed to do but oblige? If you show up to someone’s house party and they immediately scream in your face and call you a piece of garbage, you probably aren’t going to stay very long. You aren’t welcome. And it’s not your house. Fine. Why would you want to stick around anyway? Well, we aren’t welcome at Netflix’s party. That’s fine, too. We can take our collective millions of dollars in subscription fees and go elsewhere.