Very true. Had any of the protesters actually, you know, seen “The Last Temptation of Christ”, they would have realized that the scenes with Christ having sex were part of a temptation/dream/hallucination that was being shown to him to prevent him from achieving his destiny, a temptation that he ultimately rejected. And the temptation was not sex per se as much as it was normality, domesticity, and family.
For “Last Temptation” and “Satanic Verses”, at least, I have always maintained that there was something far more insidious going on there. For example, consider this passage from “The Satanic Verses”:
" ‘We will make a revolution,’ the Imam proclaims through him, ‘that is a revolt not only against a tyrant, but against history.’ For there is an enemy beyond Ayesha and it is History herself. History is the blood-wine that must no longer be drunk. History the intoxicant, the creation and possession of the Devil, of the great Shaitain, the greatest of lies - progress, science, rights - against which the Imam has set his face. History is a deviation from the Path, knowledge is a delusion, because the sum of knowledge was complete on the day Allah finished his revelation to Mahound. ‘We will unmake the veil of history,’ Bilal declaims into the listening night, ‘and when it is unravelled, we will see Paradise standing there, in all its glory and light.’ "
Show of hands all those who think that this passage is NOT about the Ayatollah Khomeni, so we can slap you around a bit. I always believed that the caricature of the Imam (one of a long line of rather unsubtle but nevertheless entertaining caricatures that Rushdie uses in his novels) was the main reason for this book earning the author a fatwa.
Similarly, in “Last Temptation”, the scene that always stood out for me is one where Jesus, now living the life of a normal man with a family, comes across Paul preaching in the square about the miraculous death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul, of course, was not one of the original 12 apostles, and wasn’t there when the resurrection happened. When Jesus calls Paul out on this point and accuses him of preaching falsehoods, Paul essentially tells him to stuff it because he’s giving the people what they need, and that the resurrection story is the only one that gives them hope. He ends by telling Jesus that he’s glad to have met him, because now he can forget all about him.
For those preaching today, this scene is a huge problem. It doesn’t have the kind of sleaze appeal that “Christ had sex” does, but it is a far more dangerous idea.
Just my .02 cents.
(re: showing kids the idea of demons etc…) Sorry.