The ruling reaffirmed Brazilians’ right to free speech, saying that satire had no “magic power” to undermine the Christian faith.
Brazil’s supreme court has overturned a ruling banning Netflix from showing a film depicting Jesus as gay.
The First Temptation Of Christ depicts Jesus returning home on his 30th birthday and introducing his family to his ‘boyfriend’.
The 46-minute special was produced by Rio-based comedians Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters were targeted in a petrol bomb attack on Christmas Eve.
In his ruling, president of the supreme court, Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli, said: “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”.
Religious groups had responded angrily to the film, and a petition started by a Brazilian Catholic organisation received over two million signatures.
Netflix had complained after a judge in Rio de Janeiro ordered it to remove the show, calling it “blasphemous” and accusing it of hurting the honour of millions of Catholics”.
The streaming service had compared the effect of the ban to that of the physical attack on the film’s offices, saying both “silence by means of fear and intimidation”.
