Jesus was a gay, genderfluid drag king, says college professor

Students perform a scene from the Stations of the Cross commemorating Jesus Christ's last hours during Holy Week celebrations on March 28, 2018 in Luque, Paraguay. / AFP PHOTO / NORBERTO DUARTE (Photo credit should read NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images)

A college professor has sparked controversy by suggesting that Jesus Christ was a genderfluid drag king who had sex with men.

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew, who teaches New Testament Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, documented his unorthodox theories in a 2009 compilation of Biblical criticism which he edited.

His views, found in a chapter entitled “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross-Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word across Different Worlds,” have angered right-wing extremists from Breitbart to The Daily Caller and Fox News.

LANGLEY PARK, MD - APRIL 14: Surrounded by observers and actors playing Roman soldiers, Henry Colindres (C) portrays Jesus during a traditional Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, procession on the Christian Good Friday holiday April 14, 2017 in Langley Park, Maryland. The recreation of the crucifixion of Jesus drew several thousand area Catholics and marched its way through several Maryland neighborhoods in the suburbs of the nation's capital. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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According to student Elinor Reilly, a senior writing in the college’s student journal, the professor writes that “what we have in John’s Jesus is not only a ‘king of Israel’ or ‘king of the [Jews]’, but also a drag king.”

He later states that Jesus “ends up appearing as a drag-kingly bride in his passion.”

Professor Liew explains that while “John is clear that Jesus is [Jewish]; what John is less clear about is whether Jesus is a biological male.”

He adds that Jesus’s “excessive” and “deceptive” speech would have been viewed as “feminine” at the time, with women having a “moist and soft nature”.

Professor Liew (College of the Holy Cross)

“I am suggesting that John’s constant references to Jesus wanting water, giving water, and leaking water speak to Jesus’ gender indeterminacy and hence his cross-dressing and other queer desires,” the professor continues.

The professor also suggests that Jesus had a gay lover in the form of a Roman centurion, and that he had homosexual desires about God while on the crucifix.

He argues that rather than being incestuous, “this exchange of desires place[s] the Father’s identity in question”.

Indonesian Catholics reenact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, as Christian devotees mark the holy week in Indonesia, a predominantly Islamic nation, at the compound of St. Mikael church in Surabaya on March 30, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Juni Kriswanto (Photo credit should read JUNI KRISWANTO/AFP/Getty Images)

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Professor Liew writes: “One may, as a result, turn around Jesus’ well-known statement in John, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’: Jesus himself needs others to cum with the Father.


“Jesus’ statement that ‘I in them [his followers] and you [the Father] in me’ turns out to be quite a description,” he notes. “What we find in John is a Jesus who longs to be ‘had’ by the Father”.

“Things do not get less queer as one gets to the other parts of John’s Gospel. It is noticeable that throughout the Gospel Jesus and his Father form a “mutual glorification society”. This constant elevation or stroking is nothing less than an exciting of the penis, or better yet, phallus,” he adds.

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“Its consistency is then explainable, since ‘we all know that after… an orgasmic dissemination or circulation, the phallus, like most penises, becomes limp.

“Fast forwarding to the passion narratives, Conway observes that John’s Jesus is a ‘quintessential man’ because he ‘reveals no weakening to the passions that might undercut his manly deportment’. If this is so, there is also something quintessentially queer here.”

Professor Liew, who joined the college in 2013, explains that Jesus’s spiritual experience on the cross is homosexual and genderfluid in nature.

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“During the passion, Jesus is not only beaten and flogged; his body is also nailed and his side pierced,” he says.

“Oddly, John defines Jesus’ masculinity with a body that is being opened to penetration.

“Even more oddly, Jesus’ ability to face his ‘hour’ is repeatedly associated with his acknowledging of and communing with his Father, who is, as Jesus explicitly states, ‘with me’ throughout this process, which Jesus also describes as one of giving birth.

BENSHEIM, GERMANY - APRIL 14: Jesus Christ, played by amateur actor Julian Lux, is crucifying in the annual Good Friday procession on April 14, 2017 in Bensheim, Germany. This is the 35th year of the annual event shortly before Easter that around 100 actors and thousands of spectators commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. Germany is predominantly Catholic in the south and Protestant in the north and Easter is an intrinsic part of the country's Christian religious calendar. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)

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“What I am suggesting is,” he continues, “when Jesus’ body is being penetrated, his thoughts are on his Father.

“He is, in other words, imagining his passion experience as a (masochistic?) sexual relation with his own Father.”

Reilly, the student who describes Liew’s interpretations, ends her article by writing that the professor “continues to be held up as an example and a bold successor to the learned and discerning tradition of our Catholic and Jesuit College of the Holy Cross.”

24-year-old student Alec Green, depicting himself as Jesus Christ, carries a cross in a re-enactment from the Bible on Good Friday in Sydney on March 30, 2018. Good Friday, part of the Easter weekend, is a Christian religious holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death and is a public holiday throughout Australia. / AFP PHOTO / Peter PARKS (Photo credit should read PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

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Last year, it was discovered in spy papers that murdered British playwright Christopher Marlowe said Jesus was gay.

At last summer’s Pride in Seoul, South Korea, Jesus turned up and, standing in front of a crowd of anti-LGBT Christian protesters and their sign reading: “Homosexuality is Sin! Return to Jesus,” held a placard saying: “I’m cool with it”.

For the record, as it is the time of the year for Christians to remember Christ in all his glory, these are all the statements Jesus made about homosexuality.