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Perhaps we've allowed ourselves to become too blinded by our obsession with the Gay Superman Question (or by the retina-searing, fabulous rainbows emitted from the hero's fingertips) to see this on our own, but maybe the latest incarnation of the Man of Steel is not actually a closeted homosexual sent out into the world to destroy Warner Bros.' box office grosses in the red states, but rather the Son of Man Himself, dispatched by the Creator to save humanity from its sins:

"It is so on the nose that anyone who has not caught on that Superman is a Christ figure, you think, 'Who else could it be referring to?' " said Steve Skelton, who wrote a book examining parallels between Superman and Christ. [...]

The preview shows the hero with his eyes closed as the voice of his father — Marlon Brando's, courtesy of 1978's "Superman" — tells him he was sent to Earth because humans "lack the light to show the way."

"For this reason," continues the voice, "I have sent them you, my only son."

Online message boards and Web logs quickly latched onto the biblical resonance of those lines.

"The allusion to Jesus Christ could hardly be accidental," wrote Christian blogger Tom Gilson..

The article also mentions that the character was originally "inspired by the Old Testament story of Moses and the supernatural golem character from Jewish folklore," but new times call for our enduring icons to exhibit a certain flexibility of identity to maintain their cultural relevance. If Warner Bros. is brave enough to allow all sorts of populations to fill the red-and-blue spandex with their own characteristics for the next couple of weeks and promotes this inclusive vision of a Gay Jew For Jesus Superman, the studio could really do some serious damage at the multiplex.