So I was searching Tumblr for posts tagged “buttsex” (as one does) when I came upon a rather rude image of Jesus, in agony, being fucked by four Roman soldiers after he’s been nailed to the (very short) cross. I’ll just screenshot that badboy as I found it, complete with the gloriously-understated banality of its tags: jesus, romans, buttsex.
I see a piece of art like that and my mind immediately goes to motive. Who made it, and why? Was it something somebody drew just for the troll value, for the sheer pleasure of poking Christians with a stick so they come boiling out of their ant hills? Was it a tongue-in-cheek anti-religious commentary in the old Victorian anti-clerical pornographic tradition? Could it have been actually intended as erotica, perhaps originally published in one of the gay print magazines alongside work by Tom of Finland or Etienne?
One thing that made me think “erotica” was the artful placement of Roman Soldier #4’s plume across the place where you’d expect to see a nail. You’ve got to be pretty sadistic to enjoy images of nailed appendages, but that metaphorical fig leaf makes it possible to imagine that The Dude is “only” tied there, should you so prefer. If trolling for outrage were the sole motive, why throw in that softening detail?
Just like that, I was lost in the deep weeds that are image searching for provenance. Would I find a whole body of hitherto-unsuspected blasphemous gay erotic art of the 1970s? Some DeviantArt genius with a very narrow fetish? An angry atheist with an airbrush? You never can tell these things in advance, it’s always a surprise.
The search was tricky, even arduous. Many sites were visited that featured a wild profusion of anti-religious imagery, mostly captioned in languages I do not speak. But eventually, I found thumbnail references in pure (if niche) porn sites, and eventually (after clicking through degenerate hives of scum and villainy that your antivirus software vendor would prefer you to avoid) I finally came upon the answer (or part of it) to my mystery.
Drum roll, please: Yup, it’s a clever ‘shop. Somebody took some heavy BDSM porn (I was right, I think, about the reason for the lack of nails!) and Jesusified it. Here’s the original:
That’s art by Damian, which makes sense because he has at least three collections of crucifixion art available: Roman Crucifixions, Roman Crucifixions and Decadence, and Female Crucifixions Through The Ages. Yes, my dear internet, female crucifixion as erotica apparently is a thing.
What’s interesting is how minor the photoshop needed to be. Our artist stripped the attributing watermarks, dropped a crude hammer and a nail at the bottom of the scene, flattened the chest, did the face, and ghosted in the hint of a flopping-in-the-way divine dick:
A remarkable transformation!
So, that’s two hours I’ll never get back, and I still don’t know who decided the world needed to see Jesus getting buttsexed by Roman soldiers.
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