A French DJ and LGBTQ activist is taking legal action over online abuse regarding her role in the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony’s “Last Supper” display.
Barbara Butch’s attorney, Audrey Msellati, wrote in a statement posted to Butch’s Instagram that the DJ and activist who played “Christ” in the display had “been the target of an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation.”
In response, Msellati said Butch was “filing several complaints against these acts,” regardless of whether they had been “committed by French nationalists or foreigners.”
“Since the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, artist, DJ, and activist Barbara Butch has been the target of an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation,” Msellati wrote in the letter.
Barbara Butch is going to sue anyone who's been mean to her after the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
— Resistance Kiwi (@ResistanceKiwi) July 30, 2024
Sweetheart, that will be all the people in Christendom and most of X. 🤪 pic.twitter.com/vgqugLRsKw
Msellati explained that Butch was “threatened with death, torture, and rape” and had also “been the target of numerous anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist and grossophobic insults.”
“Barbara Butch condemns this vile hatred directed at her, what she represents, and what she stands for,” the letter continues.
The opening ceremony featured a parody of the “Last Supper” in which Butch was in the middle, while drag queens and transgender performers stood on either side of her.
Opening of the Olympic in Paris features parody of Last Supper, starring transsexuals, homosexual men and… a little kid#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/2j2XSf9ict
— ancient north eurasian solidarity (@UEurasier) July 26, 2024
In the aftermath of the display, the organizers of the Olympics have received criticism.
A spokesperson for the Olympics issued a statement that there was “Never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” and that the organizers had tried to “celebrate community tolerance.”
Minnesota Bishop Robert Barron criticized the apology, stating that “everyone’s tolerated” except for the “2.6 billion Christians on the planet.”
Thomas Jolly, the artistic director for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, explained during an interview that the “idea” had been “to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus,” according to France24.
CatholicVote, a conservative, non-profit political advocacy group, has also criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their silence on the “Last Supper” parody.
