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No One Was Killed When Christians Protested ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ Film

There have been some awful anti-Christian art pieces and films in the past few decades. Where were our government officials and the Hollywood “holier-than-thou” literati crowd when artist and photographer Andres Serrano unveiled his “Piss Christ”? It was a photograph of a “small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s ‘Awards in the Visual Arts’ competition, which is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects.”

There was a great outcry and a call to stop funding the National Endowment for the Arts but no one died as the result of the protest.

Consider the 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ:

“Although the original author of ‘The Last Temptation,’ Nikos Kazanitsakis, was Greek, the two most powerful figures behind this movie, Lew Wasserman, president of MCA (owner of Universal Studios, which produced the film) and Sidney Sheinberg, president of MCA, are Jewish. Gary Goldstein, head of national promotion and field operations for MCA, is also Jewish.

* * * * *

“The Babylonian Talmud is the most authoritative source of Jewish legends and traditions concerning Christ. The Talmud is a vast compendium of Pharisaic oral law and tradition, which was written down nearly 1500 years ago. Its teachings, which accurately reflect the beliefs of the ancient Pharisees, are of greater authority to modern religious Jews than the Bible itself. Compare essential points from ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ with the Talmud.”

Scorsese received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The production and promotion of The Last Temptation of Christ did not result in the death of Jews or the director, Martin Scorsese, by anyone who protested the blasphemous film.

Let’s not forget the video A Fire in My Belly that was first shown at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, another government-funded institution. The video included a scene with a crucifix covered in ants

No one was killed by the people who protested the anti-religious video A Fire in My Belly.

In October of 1999, an art exhibition opened in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum. The show was immediately protested because of The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili that showed a “rendered black Madonna decorated with a resin-covered lump of elephant dung. The figure is also surrounded by small collaged images of female genitalia from pornographic magazines; these seemed from a distance to be the traditional cherubim.”

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, described it as “‘sick stuff and threatened to withdraw the annual $7 million City Hall grant from the Brooklyn Museum hosting the show, because ‘You don’t have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion.’”

Cardinal John O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York at the time, said, “‘one must ask if it is an attack on religion itself,’ and the president of America’s biggest group of Orthodox Jews, Mandell Ganchrow, called it ‘deeply offensive.’”

William A. Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the work “induces revulsion.” Consider that Hillary Clinton “spoke up for the museum, as did the New York Civil Liberties Union.” The editorial board of The New York Times said that Giuliani’s stance “promises to begin a new Ice Age in New York’s cultural affairs.”

“The paper also carried a full-page advertisement in support signed by over 100 actors, writers and artists, including Susan Sarandon, Steve Martin, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut and Susan Sontag. Ofili, who is Roman Catholic, said, ‘elephant dung in itself is quite a beautiful object.’”

I suspect that those who supported the above works of art would be the first to denounce the anti-Muhammad video so they can blame America first.

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