Hell hath no fury like TikTokkers scorned.
A filmmaker says she’s been subjected to a vicious smear campaign on social media ahead of the release of her new documentary, which alleges that the word “homosexual” was accidentally inserted into the Bible back in 1946.
Sharon “Rocky” Roggio is the director of “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted A Culture,” which doesn’t hit cinemas until this weekend but is already causing controversy among hardcore Christians.
“The opposition is quite vocal about our film, trying to debunk it because they’re afraid,” Roggio told The Daily Beast on Monday. “We’re literally unmooring them and pulling the anchors out from underneath.”
The director — who is gay — has started a TikTok account to promote her movie and says she’s been hit with hatred from those who profess to practice the Bible’s teachings.
“People … especially on social media … turn their fear into anger and then hatred. They’re vicious. A lot of what I see on social media and TikTok is the epitome of the phrase, ‘There’s no love like Christian hate,’” Roggio declared. “They’re just so disgusting.”
The doc argues that the team of translators who worked on the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in the early 1940s used the word “homosexual” while translating 1 Corinthians 6:9 — a verse that discusses those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
According to Roggio, the word was used in lieu of the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai,” which actually translate to “effeminate” and “sexual pervert” — not “homosexual.”
Roggio claims that the inclusion of the term has been exploited by some fundamentalists to promote a pernicious anti-gay agenda over the past 70-plus years.
“We’re talking about a word [homosexual] that is a medical term that has a connotation of a group of people that have an orientation, as opposed to what the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts are referring to, which is an aggressor, somebody who was an abuser — somebody who has abused someone else, and there is a victim on the other side. It’s a very different connotation,” the director declared.
The translators did not intentionally use the wrong word, Roggio claims, but she insists that the inclusion of the term has been exploited by some fundamentalists to promote a pernicious anti-gay agenda over the past 70-plus years.
“The word ‘homosexual’ went viral in print in the ’70s,” she told The Daily Beast. “That impacted the ’80s and the moral majority, and how we see the merger of politics and religion, specifically in America. What we now see today is the dangers of Christian nationalism, and it’s only grown.”
According to the documentary, there are currently 45,000 evangelical churches in the US that believe homosexuality is a sin — but Roggio insists that the film is not anti-Christian and that many adherents do not hold homophobic views.
“1946 [the movie] is not an attack on Christianity or the Bible. It is a quest to discover biblical truth and honor God’s Word,” she declares.
For Roggio herself, the issue is personal — and complicated. The gay director grew up in a strict Christian household — and her pastor father appears in the documentary to refute her claims.
However, the dad and daughter still profess to love each other in spite of their differences, highlighting the complicated relationships that can exist among believers.
However, there are others who refuse to watch the film with an open mind.
One Christian organization is already delegitimizing the film, calling its claim “irrelevant,” while others have taken to social media to lambast the doc.
“Love how those liberal scholars keep reaching,” one Twitter user remarked beneath a news article about the movie. “The bulls– is off the charts with this…” another chimed in.
Meanwhile, a third defiantly declared: “Jesus was clear that ALL sex outside of marriage is a sin, and that marriage was 1 man, 1 woman, 1 lifetime.”