The Onion

In its current issue, the satirical weekly newspaper The Onion has published a cartoon depicting an orgy involving the deities of four major religions. Jesus, Moses, and Ganesha are shown with their penises erect, and Ganesha is fisting Buddha.

The cartoon is The Onion's response to the riots in Libya that were apparently sparked by the depiction of Mohammed in the film Innocence Of Muslims. The Onion's headline "No One Murdered Because Of This Image" makes the point that Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists do not resort to violence when their religions are offended, whereas some Muslims do.

Jesus has been depicted with an erection in Terence Koh's sculpture Gone Yet Still, and in two cartoons in the student magazine The Insurgent. A Belgian sculptor was prosecuted for blasphemy in 1988 after depicting a tumescent Jesus. Also, Danish artist Jens Jorgen Thorsen painted a tumescent Christ on the wall of a railway station in 1984. JAM Montoya's 1997 photograph El Ultimo Deseo depicts Christ with an erection. A series of three paintings (Man Of Sorrows, circa 1530) by Maaten van Heemskerck depict Christ in a similar state, as discussed in Leo Steinberg's book The Sexuality Of Christ In Renaissance Art & In Modern Oblivion.

A less explicit cartoon depicting a post-coital Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, and Buddha was published by the Israeli magazine Nana in 2006, one of many Mohammed cartoons published in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, which caused widespread protests with its Mohammed caricatures in 2005.