Life

Conservatives lose their minds over Jesus as a scantily clad white twink on a poster

Critics are calling it a "gay Christ" and they're mad.
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Salustiano García's controversial painting of Jesus Christ
The image, created for a poster promoting Seville's Easter festivities, was unveiled last Saturday. Photo: Screenshot

A poster depicting Jesus Christ as a cute, white, scantily-clad youth has sparked controversy in Spain.

As NBC News reports, the Council of Brotherhoods in Seville, Spain, commissioned renowned painter Salustiano García to create the arresting image for a poster promoting the city’s Easter festivities.

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Since the poster’s unveiling last Saturday, Spanish conservatives have blasted the image in terms that reek of homophobia.

In an X post, Javier Navarro of Spain’s far-right Vox party described the image as a provocation. Pablo Herfelder García-Conde of the ultraconservative Catholic organization Instituto de Politica Social (IPSE) called the poster “offensive” and “an aberration.” A post from IPSE’s official X account called the image’s depiction of Christ “sexualized and effete.”

An online petition launched by Abogados Cristianos, an organization of Christian lawyers in Spain, calling for the poster’s removal and the resignation of Council of Brotherhood’s president Francisco Vélez, had received over 22,000 signatures.

Notably, critics seem to have nothing to say about García’s depiction of Christ as a white man with Western features and long silken hair. By contrast, recent research has suggested that the historical Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish religious leader in first-century Palestine, would have looked more like contemporary Iraqi Jews and would likely have worn his curly hair short.

Spanish sociologist and political scientist Rafa López described critics of the poster as “deeply racist and homophobic,” according to NBC News.

García has responded to the backlash, describing his portrayal of Christ to Spanish newspaper ABC as “gentle, elegant and beautiful.” He said he created the painting with “deep respect.”

“To see sexuality in my image of Christ, you must be sick,” said García, who has also said he used his son, Horacio, as a model for the image.

He told Atlas news agency that there is “nothing revolutionary in the painting.”

“There is contemporaneity, but all the elements that I have used are elements that have been used in the last seven centuries in sacred art,” he said. “I don’t see at what point, at what element, people who don’t like it don’t like it.”

Horacio said that he and his father were surprised by the uproar “because everything was done with respect.”

“A lot of controversy comes from the fact that the model is too good, the Christ too handsome, too attractive,” Horacio added.

In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Mundo, García dismissed claims that his painting is homoerotic.

“A gay Christ because he looks sweet and is handsome, come on!” he said. “We are in the 21st century.”

According to the Associated Press, both the Council of Brotherhoods and Seville’s mayor José Luis Sanz have also dismissed the controversy, with Sanz describing it as “artificial.”

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