Play's Gay Jesus Roils Texas Town

(March 26) -- At one Texas university this weekend before Easter, the apostles are all gay, Jesus is officiating at a same-sex wedding and the kiss he shares with Judas is raising eyebrows.

Those adaptations to the life and times of Christ are just part of Terrence McNally's incendiary 1998 stage play "Corpus Christi," which is being performed in an abbreviated version at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. The play details the troubled high school years of a thinly veiled Jesus figure named Joshua, who confronts a hostile environment because of his homosexuality.

As a gay teen himself, McNally grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the 1940s and '50s.

"Stephenville is a very conservative, very religious town," Liza Benedict, associate vice president at the university, told AOL News. "And let's just say we've gotten numerous complaints."

One of those in the community who is upset with the university is David Harris, pastor of the Hillcrest Church of Christ. "It infuriates me that somebody would be given a platform to be able to demean and degrade the son of God," Harris told Fox News. "I'm angry about it, and every Christian should be."

"When people call to complain, I try to make it vitally clear that this is a First Amendment issue," Benedict said. "It's about academic freedom. The university didn't choose to put on this play. That was the students' decision."

"Corpus Christi" was chosen by John Otte as the final project for his advanced directing class. "I chose this play to direct and produce because I am a Christian," Otte said in a written statement, "and I believe that this play can bring people together in a story of acceptance and realization of the alienation we in the gay community feel from most of our churches."

According to Benedict, the performance date a week before Easter is merely coincidental. It was scheduled more than a year in advance, well before students had enrolled in the class, let along selected what play they might direct for a final project.

"It is being said often that this play is a direct attack on Christians -- their faith and their deity," Otte said. "It simply is not true. He is my savior as well, and I was raised in an extremely faithful and religious home."

In the play, the fabled Judas kiss -- in which Judas Iscariot kisses Christ, thereby revealing his identity to Roman soldiers -- is re-envisioned as a gay kiss, devoid of betrayal. Such artistic liberties have caused an uproar in Stephenville, prompting the university to close the performance to the public and add extra police security to the theater.

Due to safety concerns, the university is limiting attendance to the show to students and members of their families, Benedict said, and the play has been rescheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Saturday.

F. Dominic Dottavio, president of Tarleton State University, said in a statement that while he personally finds "no artistic or redeeming quality in the work," the school has little choice but to let the show go on.

"As a public university, we are legally bound to allow the student production to go forward," Dottavio's statement read.

When McNally's play was first performed in 1998 in New York, the playwright received numerous death threats, and the Manhattan Theater Company, where the play opened, drew thousands of protesters. After the play's debut in London, a Muslim group upset at the portrayal of Jesus, whom the religion views as a prophet, issued a fatwa, or decree, against McNally that called for his death.