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Integrity Recommends: Gay Jesus in Love
Press Release
New Website Decodes Da Vinci the Gay Way
LOS ANGELES, CA - May 19, 2006 - Jesus' secret lover may have been male, not female as described in the new movie "The Da Vinci Code," opening this week.
The movie takes Da Vinci's famous "Last Supper" painting and says Jesus had a sexual relationship with the androgynous person next to him - a figure traditionally considered to be a man.
"Who was Jesus' mystery lover? Maybe it was Mary Magdalene, like the movie says. But pioneering scholars say that Jesus had a male lover," said Kittredge Cherry, lesbian author and founder of JesusInLove.org, the first website to focus on the queer Christ.
JesusInLove.org features a variety of books and images about Jesus and the man he loved, including a new painting by gay artist Becki Jayne Harrelson. Her "Last Supper" decodes Da Vinci by showing a full embrace between Jesus and an explicitly male partner.
"Let's take back Jesus," Ms. Cherry said. "The success of 'The Da Vinci Code' shows that Jesus belongs to the people, not just to sex-negative churches. In particular, the gay Jesus empowers gays and lesbians who turned away from spirituality because of the Religious Right."
The history behind the queer Christ is fleshed out in a variety of new books listed at JesusInLove.org. They include "The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament" by Chicago Theological Seminary professor Theodore Jennings and "Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love" by anthropologist Will Roscoe.
The site also offers a sneak preview of Kittredge Cherry's forthcoming fictional autobiography of the queer Christ, "Jesus in Love."
JesusInLove.org features work by six contemporary American artists and an impressive links page that connects with many other artists worldwide who picture Christ as gay or female.
A recent review of JesusInLove.org by online magazine QueerDay.com called the site "a rather heavenly idea."
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