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"New Website Dares to Show Gay Jesus"
by Kitt Cherry

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Controversial gay Jesus images are now on display at http://www.JesusInLove.org , the first website to focus on the queer Christ.

"Artists who dare to portray the gay Jesus have had their work destroyed--- if they can find a way to exhibit it at all. Now these powerful images are available for all to see at JesusInLove.org," said Kittredge Cherry, lesbian Christian author and founder of the new website. "We did extensive research to find these cutting-edge paintings and other resources that show Jesus as gay or bisexual, transgender or female," she said.

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.

"The gay Jesus image is emerging now in artwork, books and theology," Cherry explained. "It is appropriate, even essential to explore Jesus' same-sex attractions and female
side because in him God became flesh---a total, shocking identification with all people, including the sexually marginalized."

Paintings displayed at JesusInLove.org include "Madonna, Lover and Child" by Becki Jayne Harrelson, in which the baby Jesus is cuddled by lesbian parents, and "St. Francis 'Neath the Bitter Tree" by William McNichols, a crucifixion scene with Jesus labeled "homosexual." In "Crucifixion" by Sandra Yagi, a female Christ hangs on a cross while her purse is looted by the Pope, a businessman and a terrorist.

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 seminary professor Theodore Jennings and "Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love" by anthropologist Will Roscoe. JesusInLove.org also offers a sneak preview of Kittredge Cherry's forthcoming fictional autobiography of the queer Christ, "Jesus in Love."

Visitors are urged to check out the "pray with us" page, where a high-tech slide show ends with the risen Christ hand-in-hand with his male lover in "Jesus Rises" by F. Douglas Blanchard.

For more information, contact JesusInLoveInfo@aol.com  or visit http://www.JesusInLove.org .

Originally posted: 2006-MAR-11
Latest update: 2006-MAR-11
Author: Kitt Cherry