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A colourful dissent against the #MeToo movement was mounted Tuesday outside the courtroom in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where Bill Cosby, a once cherished American father figure, was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for drugging and sexual assaulting a woman in his home in 2004.

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A conclusion that some celebrated as justice for a man who had long eluded accusations of misconduct was described by Cosby’s publicist, Andrew Wyatt, as the latest offensive in a “sex war” gripping the country. He likened the proceedings against Cosby, 81, to the persecution of Jesus.

“They persecuted Jesus, and looked what happened,” Wyatt said. “Not saying Mr. Cosby is Jesus, but we know what the country has done to black men for centuries.”

The spokesman delivered a broadside against Judge Steven O’Neill that seemed designed for maximum shock value, pitting white women against black men amid a vexed national reckoning with issues of race and gender. As if that weren’t enough, Wyatt invoked the only controversy that eclipsed Cosby’s on Tuesday — the battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, unfolding 240 kilometres away in Washington.

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“What is going on in Washington today with Judge Kavanaugh is part of that sex war that Judge O’Neill, along with his wife, are part of,” said Wyatt, the founder of Purpose PR, based in Birmingham, Alabama. Lawyers for Cosby had asked the judge to recuse himself because his wife, Deborah O’Neill, is a therapist who works with victims of sexual assault.