Sarah Silverman Explains Her "Jesus Was Gender Fluid" Tweet Controversy

Sarah Silverman made quite a splash on Twitter over the Christmas holiday weekend. On Christmas day, the comedienne and actress tweeted, "MERRY CHRISTMAS! Jesus was gender fluid!" The tweet immediately prompted a backlash, with several people sending hateful tweets to Silverman. Despite remaining mostly quiet about the tweet (save for a few polite replies here or there), Silverman is now taking to Twitter to defend her tweet, which says she "still loves."

The tweet, despite the backlash, has still been liked almost 4,000 times and retweeted over 1,000 times. Regardless, Silverman felt the need to explain her thought process.

She prefaced her explanation with, "I prefer not to respond to nonsense but here (re Jesus being gender fluid tweet, which I still love)." The star included a typed iPhone note in the tweet to give a more detailed explanation.

It reads, "I was in Wales w my boyfriend [Michael Sheen] and his family. I was sitting in the car on the way to Christmas at his sister's and figured I'd sent out a Christmas tweet. Decided to add on a word from our collective vocabulary since, to me, it's funny, beautiful, and true in that He is all of us."

She continues, "The absolute best is when the (adorable) haters write 'I'd like to see you make fun of Jews!' Um, hi, have we met??" The actress, who is very open about being "ethnically Jewish," as she puts it, also frequently uses her Jewish background in her comedy work.

Silverman has been making headlines recently for her work in the film I Smile Back, for which she was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role at the 2016 SAG Awards. She was also nominated at the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards for Best Actress.