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Protestors decry homosexual portrayal of Christ

About 80 protestors stood outside the Bartell Theatre Friday night to decry the “blasphemous” nature of the play “Corpus Christi,” in which a character symbolic of Jesus Christ is presumably homosexual.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and City Council President Mike Verveer attended the play to show their support for Madison’s gay community.

“I think it is important that community leaders be present in a visible way to show our support for freedom of speech,” Verveer said.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a Catholic-based organization out of Hanover, Penn., sent Cieslewicz postcards months before the play through their America Needs Fatima movement. Although the notes urged the mayor to ban or protest “Corpus Christi,” Cieslewicz was one of the first people to buy tickets for the play.

“We pray for the mayor,” said Preston Noell, director of the Chicago Bureau of Tradition, Family and Property. “Conversion is open for everyone.”

According to Noell, people from as far as Pennsylvania and Missouri came to protest the “unspeakable blasphemy” of portraying Jesus Christ as homosexual.

“To portray him like this is an insult to him and to us as Catholics,” Noell said.

The America Needs Fatima campaign has organized a number of protests and rallies including one against the film Dogma. They have protested other Corpus Christi plays in other parts of the country as well as an Osbourne Family calendar in which the family imitates a picture of the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus in her arms.

Members of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ came to the protest to proclaim their view.

“[The protestors] are trying to promote hatred for their own political ends,” Curt Anderson, Senior Minister of First Congregation Church said. “I think there is a spirit of divisiveness and hatred.”

Eight Madison police officers patrolled the area outside the theatre.

The protesters mostly sang Christian songs and recited prayers in an effort to demonstrate peacefully.

Brittany Hays, a student at University of Wisconsin-Richmond, came to the protest with the Richland Center Baptist Temple.

“We’re not doing this out of hatred; we’re doing this out of pure love for other people,” Hays said.

Reverend C.D. Fretz of Richland Baptist Temple said his group, consisting of approximately 20 people who were mainly students, came to present a peaceful demonstration of their faith in Christ.

Some community members unaffiliated with any organizations were present to simply show their support for the play.

“I’m here to show support for my community and the idea of intellectual freedom,” said Lindsay Williams, a bystander at the protest.