Gay Jesus

In 1998, the Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin started a controversial debate with her exhibition Ecce Homo, which had a religious gay, bi, transsexual –theme. The exhibition took place in a church; some people got upset and the Pope cancelled a visit. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-494905621.html

Ten years later, she made another try, with the same photos, in the same church. This time around it was different. No headlines. Sweden is supposed to be the most secularized country in the world and apparently, a lot has changed over the past eleven years or so…

We’ve been through the Åke Green ordeal - he is a pastor that got put in jail for a month for preaching, in a very offensive way, about the evils of homosexuality - which, among other things "earned" us the attention of the American Westboro Baptist Church and GodHateSweden.com (I’m taking it as a compliment, thanks).

I never thought the Ecce Homo pictures were offensive; but I’m not religious, nor a homophobe.

It all comes down to free speech, I think. It’s bad to put Åke Green in jail because no matter how much of a d%&# he is, he has the right to say whatever he wants. It’s not bad to show a gay version of Jesus in church, because of the very same reason.

Somehow this get’s turned around a lot though. What’s bad and what’s not isn’t really clear when it's about these things. So, what do you think? Is it bad to exhibit gay Jesus in church, or is it bad not to?

Here are some of the photos:

http://www.ohlson.se/images/press/ecce.jpg

http://www.qx.se/nyheter/bilder/200708/20070817102746.jpg

http://obj.fotosidan.se/obj/docpart/27/27e82402eaf178a451c20fd25d3d13aa.jpg

http://www.dt.se/multimedia/archive/00064/veropet_jpg_64269h.jpg

And two articles about Åke Green (one American, one British):

Swede's Sermon on Gays: Bigotry or Free Speech?

Swedish anti-gay pastor acquitted