Trump is Harming America More than Any Foreign Adversary

Traveling in France and the United Kingdom, the husband and I have found ourselves repeatedly having to explain that we neither voted for Donald Trump nor do support literally any of his policies. The French and British by huge majorities despise Trump and cannot understand what would make Americans vote for such a foul individuals.  Rather than get into a discussion of the racism and religious extremism that motivates today's GOP base, it is easier to say that we are working to defeat Republicans and elect Democrats to block Trump's toxic agenda.  It would be hard to stress how much damage Trump has done to America's image across the globe. The other irony is that there are distinct parallels between the decline and fall of ancient Rome and the decline of Great Britain and what is currently taking place in America.  In both of the aforementioned empires, bad domestic decisions aimed at showering wealth on the rich and maintaining privilege combined with a failure to invest in the future in terms of social policies and modernizing infrastructure played major roles in the collapse of empire. We see the exact thing happening now in America under Republican misrule.  While the UK has done much to rebuild its infrastructure, the Brexit vote motivated by racism and animus towards non-Christians will likely wreck havoc on the UK economy and reverse past UK economic promise.  Joe Scarborough has a column in the the Washington Post looks at the damage being done.  Here are excerpts:

Cataclysmic events often bring with them violent and abrupt endings to settled ages and long-established norms. Those absorbing the impact of these historical aftershocks rarely grasp the epochal changes in real time.

Who could have imagined during their commute home on the night of Nov. 21, 1963, that an event in Dallas the next day would shake the postwar order guaranteed by America’s victory in World War II? Even after Lee Harvey Oswald’s shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository, could anyone have foreseen the collapse of such an ordered age soon overtaken by the anarchy of Vietnam, the murders of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the race riots, Chicago, Kent State, Watergate, postindustrial rot and the cultural chaos set loose across the country by these events?

And could even the most insightful observer have foreseen — while staring at the billowing smoke set against New York’s brilliant September sky — the avalanche of strategic blunders set in motion by Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States?

On Sept. 10, 2001, the United States dominated the world stage in a way no other country had since the height of the Roman and British empires. NATO’s long twilight struggle against the Soviet Union ended with Russia in ruins. The Japanese economic miracle, predicted by some to turn America into little more than a granary for Japan, had flatlined. And a rising China was still struggling with a multitude of internal security concerns and was eclipsed on the world stage by the Pax Americana. The United States deployed a dazzling display of both soft- and hard-power assets across the globe.

On the eve of bin Laden’s attacks, America’s gross domestic product was nearly 10 times China’s and 40 times Russia’s. The U.S. military machine was unparalleled, with the Pentagon spending more on national defense than the next 15 countries combined. And despite those staggering outlays, Washington was running a $125 billion surplus.

Seventeen years later, endless wars abroad and reckless policies at home have produced annual deficits approaching $1 trillion. President Trump’s Republican Party will create more debt in one year than was generated in the first 200 years of America’s existence. And while the United States has been mired in endless wars and bloody occupations over the past 17 years, China has used that same period to aggressively develop economic partnerships across Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Perhaps that is one reason China will soon overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.

Any discussion of policy failures since 2001 must begin with George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq even though no evidence linked Saddam Hussein’s regime to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. . . . . That war cost nearly 5,000 American lives, $2 trillion and inestimable damage to America’s credibility across the globe.

The excesses of Bush’s military adventurism led to his successor, President Barack Obama, placing the United States in a defensive crouch for the better part of eight years. The commander in chief defined his foreign policy approach this way: “Don’t do stupid [stuff].”

Sixteen years of strategic missteps have been followed by the maniacal moves of a man who has savaged America’s vital alliances, provided comfort to hostile foreign powers, attacked our intelligence and military communities, and lent a sympathetic ear to neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.

For those of us still believing that Islamic extremists hate America because of the freedoms we guarantee to all people, the gravest threat Trump poses to our national security is the damage done daily to America’s image.

“America is an idea. Strip freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law from what the United States represents to the world and America itself is gutted.”

Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team 6 before he accomplished that goal. Other tyrants who tried to do the same were consigned to the ash heap of history. The question for voters this fall is whether their country will move beyond this troubled chapter in history or whether they will continue supporting a politician who has done more damage to the dream of America than any foreign adversary ever could.

The Increasing Unfitness of Donald Trump

I hope that in the minds of some readers I am not beating a dead horse, but to me the increasing danger that Donald Trump - I never give him the title of "president' because (i) he literally sickens me, and (ii) had the Electoral College performed its duty as envisioned by the Founders, he would not have been certified as "winner" - poses to America and the world requires constant calls for resistance.  I have at times compared Trump to the Roman Emperor Caligula (who ruled for 3 years and 10 months before being assassinated by members of the the Praetorian Guard), but as a piece in the New Yorker that bears the headline “The Lost Emperor.” in the January 15, 2018, print issue, points out, perhaps a better comparison, is the Emperor Nero.  Like Caligula, Nero died in office while facing several military revolts and having been declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate (Nero could not bring himself to take his own life but instead he forced his private secretary to perform the task for him).  As will likely happen when Trump leaves office regardless of the means, the vast majority of Romans gave a huge sigh of relief when both Caligula and Nero breathed their last.  Here are article highlights:

What made the Emperor Nero tick, Suetonius writes in “Lives of the Caesars,” was “a longing for immortality and undying fame, though it was ill-regulated.” Many Romans were convinced that Nero was mentally unbalanced and that he had burned much of the imperial capital to the ground just to make room for the construction of the Domus Aurea, a gold-leaf-and-marble palace that stretched from the Palatine to the Esquiline Hill. At enormous venues around the city, he is said to have sung, danced, and played the water organ for many hours—but not before ordering the gates locked to insure that the house would remain full until after the final encore. Driven half mad by Nero’s antics, Romans feigned death or shimmied over the walls with ropes to escape.

Chaotic, corrupt, incurious, infantile, grandiose, and obsessed with gaudy real estate, Donald Trump is of a Neronic temperament. He has always craved attention. Now the whole world is his audience. In earlier times, Trump cultivated, among others, the proprietors and editors of the New York tabloids, Fox News, TMZ, and the National Enquirer. Now Twitter is his principal outlet, with no mediation necessary.

Future scholars will sift through Trump’s digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero’s Rome—to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, and then in the first days of the Administration, some commentators counselled their colleagues to ignore the early-morning salvos about small hands or large crowds. “Stop Being Trump’s Twitter Fool,” Jack Shafer, of Politico, advised, just after the election. Trump’s volleys were merely a shrewd diversion from serious matters. . . . . Sean Spicer, the President’s first press secretary, insisted otherwise. Trump, he pointed out, “is the President of the United States,” and so his tweets are “considered official statements by the President of the United States.”

Spicer was right: a pronouncement by the President is a Presidential pronouncement. But Trump’s tweets are most valuable as a record of his inner life: his obsessions, his rages, his guilty conscience. No bile goes unexpectorated. Trump, who does not care for government work, is more invested in his reputation as a creative writer, declaring more than once that “somebody said” that he is “the Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters.”

Last week, when Trump returned to Washington from Mar-a-Lago, he set a White House record with a sixteen-tweet day. He behaved less like a President than like a teen-ager locked in his room with an ounce of Purple Skunk, three Happy Meals, and a cell phone.

Though he lauded Iranian demonstrators for standing up for their “rights,” he continued to offer respect bordering on servility to the likes of Vladimir Putin. One of his signature phrases—“fake news”—has been adopted by autocrats from Bashar al-Assad, of Syria, to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela. To the astonishment of our traditional allies, Trump humiliates and weakens a country he pretends to lead.

A new book by Michael Wolff, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” amplifies, in lurid anecdote and quotation, what we have been learning elsewhere every day for the past year: Trump believed that he would lose the election, but would multiply his fame, his fortune, and his standing in American life. To near-universal shock, however, he won. And the consequences followed. Trump has no comprehension of policy and cares about it less. He surrounds himself with aides who are either wildly incompetent or utterly defeated in their attempts to domesticate the mulish and bizarre object of their attention. There are no lingering illusions about the President’s capacities . . . . . Wolff’s book, which leans heavily on interviews with Steve Bannon, makes it plain that pretty much everyone in the President’s circle agrees that he is, in terms of character and intellect, fantastically limited. There is no loyalty or deliberation in the White House, only a savage “Lord of the Flies” sort of chaos. Each day is at once preposterous, poisonous, and dangerous.

Predictably, Trump has reacted to Wolff’s book in the manner of a wounded despot—by declaring that Bannon, once his closest adviser in matters of isolationism and white nationalism, has “lost his mind,” and by declaring war on the written word.

Nero had hoped to last long enough on the throne to re-brand the month of April “Neroneus” and the city of Rome “Neropolis.” He did not succeed. When he was thirty, having spent thirteen years in power, he was condemned by the Roman Senate as hostis publicus, a public enemy. He was doomed. One of his last utterances seemed to mark the despair of the politician-performance artist: Qualis artifex pereo! “What an artist dies in me!”

Scandal envelops the President. Obstruction of justice, money-laundering, untoward contacts with foreign governments—it is unclear where the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will land and what might eventually rouse the attention of the U.S. Senate. Clearly, Trump senses the danger.

In the meantime, there is little doubt about who Donald Trump is, the harm he has done already, and the greater harm he threatens. He is unfit to hold any public office, much less the highest in the land. This is not merely an orthodoxy of the opposition; his panicked courtiers have been leaking word of it from his first weeks in office. The President of the United States has become a leading security threat to the United States. 

Will America's Institutions Save It?

Yet another editorial compares the misrule of Trump/Pence to the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula.   Like the current occupant of the White House, Caligula made wild boasts, was a narcissist and had no experience in ruling when he took power.  Overall, the results were disastrous yet the empire survived for another 400 years due to the ingrained nature of its institutions.   Historical sources note as follows about his four (4) year rule:

[H]e is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first six months of his reign. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant. . . . . . it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor, . . . 

Eventually, Caligula's excesses and alienation of the Senate became so great that he was assassinated and Rome moved onward in greater power and prosperity.  Here are highlights from the editorial that draws disturbing parallels:

What happens when the people of a great nation gradually realize that their leader may not be, er, quite right in the head?

When Caligula became Roman emperor in A.D. 37, the people rejoiced. “On all sides, you could see nothing but altars and sacrifices, men and women decked in their holiday best and smiling,” according to the first-century writer Philo.

The Senate embraced him, and he was hailed as a breath of fresh air after the dourness, absenteeism and miserliness of his great-uncle, Emperor Tiberius. Caligula was colorful and flamboyant, offering plenty of opportunities for ribald gossip. Caligula had four wives in rapid succession, and he was said to be sleeping with his sister. (Roman historians despised him, so some of the gossip should be treated skeptically.)

He was charming, impetuous and energetic, sleeping only three hours a night, and he displayed a common touch as he constantly engaged with the public. His early months as emperor brimmed with hope.

Initially, Caligula focused on denouncing his predecessor and reversing everything that he had done. Caligula also made popular promises of tax reform so as to reduce the burden on the public. He was full of grandiose pledges of infrastructure projects, such as a scheme to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth.

But, alas, Caligula had no significant government experience, and he proved utterly incompetent at actually getting things done. Meanwhile, his personal extravagance actually increased the need for tax revenue. . . . This led to increasingly desperate, cruel and tyrannical behavior.

A coward himself, Caligula was said to delight in the torture of others; rumor had it that he would tell his executioners: “Kill him so that he can feel he is dying.”

Caligula, a narcissist and megalomaniac, became increasingly unhinged.  . . . . The Senate, dignified and traditional, watched Caligula with increasing alarm.

Yet as Caligula wreaked havoc, Rome also had values, institutions and mores that inspired resistance. He offended practically everyone, he couldn’t deliver on his promises, his mental stability was increasingly doubted and he showed he simply had no idea how to govern. Within a few years, he had lost all support, and the Praetorian Guard murdered him in January 41 (not a path I would ever condone).

To me, the lesson is that Rome was able to inoculate itself against unstable rulers so that it could recover and rise to new glories. Even the greatest of nations may suffer a catastrophic leader, but the nation can survive the test and protect its resilience — if the public stays true to its values, institutions and traditions. That was true two millennia ago, and remains true today.

The question today is this: when will the Cabinet or the American Congress act to remove the American Caligula from office?

Is America Headed to Being a Middle East Style Autocracy?

Despite its many misdeeds throughout its history - inconvenient facts ignored by the political right wing - and missteps, America has largely been viewed as a defender of democracy and western values.  Not so much anymore with Der Trumpenführer in the White House.  Crude, obnoxious behavior is increasingly the norm flowing from the White House and decades of foreign relations building is being torn asunder  America's version of Odoacer who over threw the western Roman Empire.  All of this may play well for the moment among rural and red state Trump supporters, but the time will come when America needs the allies that Trump is alienating. The reckoning could be far worse than the ignorance embracing, xenophobic Trumpians imagine.  Indeed, an op-ed in the New York Times suggests that America is headed toward rule akin to that of a Middle East autocracy, aided by the complicity of what I refer to as the Vichy Republicans (Fox News viewers will need to look up the term Vichy).  Here are column highlights:

President Trump’s trip to Europe was truly historic.

He left our most important allies there so uncertain about America’s commitment to their security from Russia and to shared values on trade and climate change that German leader Angela Merkel was prompted to tell her countrymen that Europe’s days of relying on America are “over to a certain extent,” and therefore Germany and its European allies “really must take our fate into our own hands.”

No U.S. president before had ever put a crack in the Atlantic alliance on his inaugural tour. Historic.

“Who is America today?” is the first question I’ve been asked on each stop through New Zealand, Australia and South Korea. My answer: We’re not the U.S.A. anymore. We’re the new U.A.E.: the United American Emirate.

We have an emir. His name is Donald. We have a crown prince. His name is Jared. We have a crown princess. Her name is Ivanka. We have a consultative council (Congress) that rubber-stamps whatever the emir wants. And like any good monarchy, our ruling family sees no conflict of interest between its personal businesses and those of the state.

So any lingering Kennedyesque thoughts about us should be banished, I explained. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay no price, bear no burden, meet no hardship, support no friend, oppose no foe to assure the success of liberty — unless we’re paid in advance. And we take cash, checks, gold, Visa, American Express, Bitcoin and memberships in Mar-a-Lago.

The Trump doctrine is very simple: There are just four threats in the world: terrorists who will kill us, immigrants who will rape us or take our jobs, importers and exporters who will take our industries — and North Korea. Threats to democracy, free trade, the environment and human rights are no longer on our menu. Therefore, no matter how unsavory you are as a foreign leader, you can be the United American Emirate’s best friend if you:

1.) Pay us by buying our weapons. . . .
2.) Pay us in higher defense spending for NATO — not to deter Russia, which is using cyberwarfare to disrupt every democratic election it can, but to deter “terrorism,” something that tanks and planes are useless against.3.) Pay us in trade concessions. And it doesn’t matter how lame those concessions are. All that matters is that Emir Trump can claim “concessions.”4.) Pay us by freeing any U.S. citizen you arrested on trumped-up charges to annoy Barack Obama and to intimidate human rights activists.5.) Pay us by grossly flattering our emir about how much of an improvement he is over Obama.6.) Be Russia, and you pay nothing.

[I]f you do any one of these six things the United American Emirate’s commitment to you — and it’s ironclad — is that you can do anything you want “out back.” You can deprive your people of whatever human rights you like out back. You can be as corrupt as you want out back. You can steal as many elections as you like out back. Just keep the arms purchases coming, the NATO dues rising, the phony trade concessions flowing and the compliments gushing — or be Vladimir Putin — and anything goes.

It took us decades to build the Atlantic alliance and it has brought us so many tangible and intangible benefits in the form of security, stability, growth and friendships. Trump could actually break it, not just crack it. 

I would add that like Middle Eastern autocrats, Trump similarly seems only too happy to allow religious extremists to work to trash the First Amendment and its guaranty of religious freedom for all, not just Christofascists.  America's image abroad is being destroyed. 

Conservative America's Cult of Ignorance

Isaac Asimov made the following statement: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”  We are currently seeing an epidemic of the embrace of ignorance where facts simply do not matter or, if they cut against the agenda of the current occupant of the White House, they are labeled as "lies" and news stories that point out the dishonesty of Der Trumpenführer and many of his fellow Republicans, then they are "fake news."  Such ignorance resonates most strongly with so-called conservative.  In the political realm, this means Republicans intent on prostituting themselves to the Christofascist element in the GOP base. 

So what is the drive force behind this phenomenon?  I would argue, the Christofascists themselves who reject anything that questions their childish, myth based religious beliefs.  Science and education are enemies of Christofascist belief.  By tying themselves to the Christofascists, Republicans now increasingly reject knowledge, science and true experts.  The result? The views and opinions of the ignorant are given the same stature as those of experts and the educated and society as a whole is the loser.  We have seen this before in history and then, as now, Christianity (at least in America) is the culprit.  The learning and knowledge of ancient Rome that did not support the Christian myth in its infancy was subsequently rooted out and books were destroyed.  Those who failed to conform to Church dogma were heretics to be literally killed.  The end result?  The Dark Ages.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the cult of ignorance that now dominates much of the political and social right wing.  Here are excerpts: 

In 2014, the Washington Post polled Americans about whether the United States should engage in military intervention in the wake of the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The United States and Russia are former Cold War adversaries, each armed with hundreds of long-range nuclear weapons. A military conflict in the center of Europe, right on the Russian border, carries a risk of igniting World War III, with potentially catastrophic consequences. And yet only one in six Americans—and fewer than one in four college graduates—could identify Ukraine on a map. Ukraine is the largest country entirely in Europe, but the median respondent was still off by about 1,800 miles.

Map tests are easy to fail. Far more unsettling is that this lack of knowledge did not stop respondents from expressing fairly pointed views about the matter. Actually, this is an understatement: the public not only expressed strong views, but respondents actually showed enthusiasm for military intervention in Ukraine in direct proportion to their lack of knowledge about Ukraine. Put another way, people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the most enthusiastic about the use of U.S. military force.

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge.
 Attacks on established knowledge and the subsequent rash of poor information in the general public are sometimes amusing. Sometimes they’re even hilarious. . . . . When life and death are involved, however, it’s a lot less funny. The antics of clownish anti-vaccine crusaders like actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy undeniably make for great television or for a fun afternoon of reading on Twitter. But when they and other uninformed celebrities and public figures seize on myths and misinformation about the dangers of vaccines, millions of people could once again be in serious danger from preventable afflictions like measles and whooping cough.

The growth of this kind of stubborn ignorance in the midst of the Information Age cannot be explained away as merely the result of rank ignorance. Many of the people who campaign against established knowledge are otherwise adept and successful in their daily lives. In some ways, it is all worse than ignorance: it is unfounded arrogance, the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind.

Any assertion of expertise from an actual expert, meanwhile, produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy. Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous. This book, then, is about expertise.

[T]he result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing. 

The Ancient Mythological Origins of Christmas

Every year around the Christmas holiday season we see the Christofascists claim there is a "war on Christmas" as they seek to force their religious beliefs on all.  Thus, each year it is appropriate to remember that Christmas was a holiday created by the Catholic Church to commandeer pagan festivals and revamp them into something that satisfied the Christian story line.  It is likewise important to remember that the whole narrative of virgin births and of a god dying and rising to conquer death were not a new story lines in Palestine and the Roman Empire at the time the Jesus story came into being.  A piece in Salon looks at the real origins of Christmas.  Here are excerpts:

The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities – contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite.

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine.

Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god–even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.  The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such.

[I]t appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.

Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don’t always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.

Did Jesus Heal a Same-Sex Partner?

The Christofascists and the con-artists of the professional Christian set  love to insist that the Bible is "the inerrant word of God."  Except, of course when the actual language of Bible proves to be inconvenient - e.g., prohibitions against divorce, polygamy being the true biblical marriage structure in the Old Testament, prohibitions against lying, commands to feed the poor rather than amassing wealth, etc. - or, worse yet, cuts them off at the knee caps.  A column in the Huffington Post brings up another situation where the New Testament portion of the Bible proves unhelpful in the jihad against same sex couples.  What am I talking about?  The passage where Jesus heals the Roman centurion's lover or "pais" in the early Greek versions of the New Testament.   Here are column excerpts:

In this year's battles over same-sex marriage (there are referenda on the issue in Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, and Washington), opponents have tried to depict the issue as a choice between traditional religious values and some sinister homosexual agenda, between God and gay.   .   .   .   some people argue, what about the fact that the only sanctioned relationship in the Bible is between a man and a woman?

Well, in fact, that's not quite the case. The story of the faithful centurion, told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, is about a Roman centurion who comes to Jesus and begs that Jesus heal his pais, a word sometimes translated as "servant." Jesus agrees and says he will come to the centurion's home, but the centurion says that he does not deserve to have Jesus under his roof, and he has faith that if Jesus even utters a word of healing, the healing will be accomplished. Jesus praises the faith of the centurion, and the pais is healed. This tale illustrates the power and importance of faith, and how anyone can possess it. The centurion is not a Jew, yet he has faith in Jesus and is rewarded.

But pais does not mean "servant." It means "lover." In Thucydides, in Plutarch, in countless Greek sources, and according to leading Greek scholar Kenneth Dover, pais refers to the junior partner in a same-sex relationship.  Now, this is not exactly a marriage of equals. An erastes-pais relationship generally consisted of a somewhat older man, usually a soldier between the ages of 18 and 30, and a younger adolescent, usually between the ages of 13 and 18. Sometimes that adolescent was a slave, as seems to be the case here.

However, it is a same-sex relationship nonetheless. (It is also basically the same as the soldier/armor-bearer in the model of David and Jonathan, which I'll explore in a future article.) And what is Jesus's response? Does he spit in the centurion's face for daring to suggest that he heal the soldier's lover? Hardly. He recognizes the relationship and performs an act of grace.

Now, could pais really just mean "servant"? There are several reasons why this makes no sense. First, one would not expect a Roman centurion to intercede, let alone "beg" (parakaloon), on behalf of a mere servant or slave. Second, while Luke refers to the young man as a doulos (slave), the centurion himself specifically calls him a pais; this strongly suggests that the distinction is important. Third, we know that the erastes-pais intimate relationship was common practice among Roman soldiers, who were not allowed to take wives, and whose life was patterned on the Greek model of soldier-lovers.

If I and dozens of other scholars (some of whom are listed below) are correct, this is a radical act. Jesus is extending his hand not only to the centurion but to his partner, as well. In addition to Jesus' silence on homosexuality in general (he never mentions same-sex intimacy, not once, despite its prevalence in his social context), it speaks volumes that he did not hesitate to heal a Roman's likely same-sex lover. Like his willingness to include former prostitutes in his close circle, Jesus' engagement with those whose conduct might offend sexual mores even today is a statement of radical inclusion, and of his own priorities for the spiritual life.  

No doubt local loon Pat Robertson, Bryan Fischer, Rick Warren, and Maggie Gallagher all pretend that these passages are a part of the Bible as they relentlessly denigrate gays and same sex love.

Other takes on these New Testament passages can be found here and here.  The former looks at the historical basis for Hebrew opposition to homosexuality:  the Hebrews looked down upon their neighboring nations and people and deliberately set themselves apart as God’s Chosen People through the strict dietary and living codes of the Torah.  Here are relevant highlights:

Hebrew scripture and culture had roots in the same Mediterranean soil as their neighbors, but also the Hebrew people quite deliberately set themselves apart as God’s Chosen People. The Torah governed every detail of life from cradle to grave and served as an impenetrable wall around the Jews. One aspect of the Torah was a strict prohibition of homosexual activity among men. (The Hebrew scriptures contain no prohibition of lesbian activity.) Some scholars maintain that the Torah prohibition of male homosexual activity among the Jews was meant to protect the ritual purity of the Jews and cannot be seen as a condemnation of homosexuality in general. In other words, maybe the neighbors do those things, but we would never do them (Countryman, 1988).

The apostle Paul, whose letter to the Romans is often cited to condemn homosexual activity, could hardly be expected to have been comfortable with homosexuality. Paul began life as a Jew and a Pharisee, a strict observer of the Jewish Law. He inherited his tradition’s harsh attitude toward homosexual activity, probably without understanding the boundary-marking aspect of that condemnation. This attitude hardened in the three hundred years before Christ, as the armies of Alexander the Great and his successors occupied the Levant. Alexander brought in Greek ideas, including the glorification of the body and the idealization of physical beauty, both male and female. The former found expression in the gymnasium, where young men and boys exercised their bodies gymnos, or naked, as older men looked on, offering encouragement. Alexander also erected statues of their pagan gods that boldly displayed the virtues of the male body, often modeled after the beautiful, naked young men in the gymnasium. The revolt of the Maccabees against foreign occupation in 160 BCE began with the establishment of a gymnasium in Jerusalem and the erection of a Greek idol in the Jewish Temple (I Maccabees 1:14 and 54). For 300 years Jews had reason to connect the abhorrent idea of idolatry as practiced by the Greeks in the temples to their suspicious fascination with each other’s bodies at the gym.

The Romans, who of course absorbed much of Greek culture, arrived in Palestine as political and military occupiers in the first century BCE. The Jews increasingly set themselves apart from these foreigners.   .   .   .  Jewish culture and attitudes contributed to the context of the centurion and his servant, and so did Roman culture. The two cultures diametrically opposed each other with regard to homosexuality.

Unfortunately, ignorant preachers - many of whom attended two bit bible colleges that could not even meet normal accreditation standards - know little about the real history of the ancient world.  Consequently they are all too often among those who mindlessly repeat the far right lie that societies that have embraced homosexuality have fallen.   Yes, the Roman Empire ultimately fell, but  not because of homosexuality.  Indeed, as previous blogs have explored, the Church itself was a leading force that undermined the Empire.  And, whatever their failings, the Roman Empire and the city states of classical Greece endured for longer than the United States has existed and surely surpassed the levels of art and knowledge in Judea throughout their combined nearly 1,000 year duration. 

NOM - The Face of Ignorance and Bigotry

Even as the USA is sliding downward in the competition for high levels education and a strong economic future as noted in the previous post, the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") continues to exemplify the open embrace of ignorance, superstition and bigotry that are making the nation less competitive. With the Christianists, it's all about forcing their religious beliefs and small, wrongheaded world view on all Americans. Our economic competitors must jump for joy when they see the batshitery that passes for reasoned discourse within the GOP's Christianist and Tea Party base. With all of the huge problems that America is facing, the far right's biggest concern is keeping LGBT individuals second class citizens under the civil law and projecting an image of the nation as unwelcoming to those who aren't white and far right Christians. Here's a sampling of the bullshit being disseminated by NOM (as, of course, it asks for money):

With a high-stakes presidential election, Congress up for grabs, legal battles headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and state-level battles raging over same-sex marriage from Maryland to Minnesota, from New Jersey to Washington, from Iowa to New Hampshire, the stakes could hardly be higher. And all of us at the National Organization for Marriage are gearing up to fight the anti-marriage assault like never before.

Look no further than the presidential campaign, where the issues of marriage and religious freedom have come up again and again, with nearly all the Republican presidential candidates issuing forceful statements in defense of marriage and the faith communities which sustain it.

[D]ozens of fights at the state and national levels will pop up over the next two months, and we must be prepared. Already this year, major new pushes to legalize same-sex marriage have erupted in Washington State and New Jersey.

And with just days left before the South Carolina primary, we are at a critical moment in the race for the GOP nomination for president. NOM is committed to making sure voters have a marriage champion who will stand as a clear alternative to President Obama this November.

Remember, we are fighting to stop a small group of zealots from discarding 3,000 years of human history and redefining our country's biblical traditions on sex and marriage as the equivalent of bigotry. If we lose, the result will be the absolute destruction of marriage in America...in your state, in my state, in all 50 states!

So please take action today—forward our TV ad to anyone you know who needs to see it. And please make one urgent financial gift to help NOM continue to lead the fight for marriage.

As I have said before, the nastiest, sleaziest whore has more integrity than the folks at NOM who one must remember are making an nice living for themselves while peddling hate and division and seeking to undermine religious freedom for all but themselves. Just as Christianity was a major cause for the fall of the western Roman Empire, so to it is potentially shaping up to be a cause for the decline of America.

Was Rome Felled by Gays or Christianity?

One of the often repeated mantras of many Christianists, including loons at Focus on the Family, Family Research Council among others (not to mention their political whores in the GOP), is that the acceptance of homosexuality caused the fall of the Roman Empire. Some would also extend this allegation Ancient Greece as well. Never mind the fact that Ancient Greece reached the pinnacle of its power under Alexander the Great who had a documented male lover. Lies and ignorance are sadly synonymous with Christianists and more and more Republicans. For me, when someone makes this unfounded statement, it is prima facie proof of their utter ignorance of accurate history and, moreover, their utter unfitness to hold any elected office. They are simply too plain ignorant and stupid.
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The ultimate irony is that if anything contributed to the fall of the western Roman Empire it was the rise of Christianity. Not an acceptance of homosexuality or other types of sexual license for that matter. Indeed, the curriculum in one history course at Utah State University - not exactly what one would call an effete liberal university - has this to say about sexual morality and the fall of Rome:

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Rome did not fall because of the distractions pursuant to sexual indulgence. Given the universality of Christianity which the Romans had adopted as their exclusive religion by then, the conduct of those living in the fifth century after Christ was relatively sober. Indeed, if the data point to any venereal villains across the great expanse of Roman history, it is the Julio-Claudians who oversaw the height of Roman power in the first century CE and were truly perpetrators of immorality at large. So, to make an argument relating sexual behavior to Rome's "fall"—and to judge it fairly from the historical evidence—involves the ludicrous conclusion that the erotic felonies of a Caligula or Nero, in fact, sustained Rome's triumph, instead of corroding it at its core. That suggests that, to prevent the collapse of their society, the Romans should have kept the orgies up, so to speak, which is patently ridiculous. Simply put, sex—reproduction maybe, but not sex!— had little or nothing to do with the troubles that brought the Romans to their collective knees in later antiquity.
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A column in the Chicago Sun-Times looked at this issue last December, in fact, after Illinois Rep. Ronald Stephens on the House floor blamed "open homosexuality" for the fall of Rome. True to form, Stephens is a Republican who was parroting some bullshit provided to him by some Christianist activist (it definitely sounds like the lies put out routinely by The Family Foundation here in Virginia). Here are highlights from the Sun-times column that took Rep. Stephens to task:
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"If you look at the sociological history of societies that have failed," said Stephens (R-Greenville), "what are some of the commonalities - One of those is that open homosexuality becomes accepted." A common idea: Mighty Rome toppled because it allowed those light in the togas to prance unchallenged through the Forum. We're on our way to ruin, too, not because of ascendant China or a collapse of political discourse, but because we allow gays and lesbians to live their lives with only moderate harassment.
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That's funny. Not ha-ha funny, but ironic funny, and demands we shine a light down this well of ignorance. First, the Roman Empire -- even lopping off the first 700 years, from Rome's founding to Julius Caesar -- lasted 500 years. We should only fall so quickly.
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If tolerance didn't topple Rome, what did - Let us consult Edward Gibbon, whose classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire isn't read in high schools, at least not Downstate, apparently, the way it once was. Gibbon puts the blame -- and this really is too delicious -- not on homosexuality, but on Christianity, which he says made the Roman population more worried about their place in heaven than about barbarians at the gate. "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion," Gibbon concludes, famously, in his epigram.
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To top it off, the Huns, unlike Rome's Christian emperors, were not on the anti-gay bandwagon, but practiced a warrior homosexuality, according to some scholars (evidence is fragmentary; it isn't as if some Vandal penned a Teutonic Tales the City).
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To fault Ancient Rome for coddling gays is like blaming the Nazis for bad civic art.
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Admittedly, the Sun-Times column rightfully makes fun of Rep. Stephens and his Neanderthal constituents who elected him to office. But it does speak the truth as to Gibbons' conclusions which are elaborated upon in a piece written by the late Arnaldo Momigliano, an Italian historian who taught at Oxford, the University of Chicago and University College in London. for many years. The piece was published in the Oxford Press nearly 50 years ago, so the thesis is not something new (neither are Gibbons' conclusions). Here are some highlights:
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[T]here is a direct relation between the triumph of Christianity and the decline of the Roman empire. But, of course, it will not be a simple return to Gibbon. What Gibbon saw as a merely destructive power must be understood on its own terms of Civitas dei - a new comonwealth of men for men. Christianity produced a new style of life, created new loyalties, gave people new ambitions and new satisfactions. So far nobody has written a realistic evaluation of the impact of Christianity on the structure of pagan society. I shall not attempt such a task here. I shall confine myself to a few elementary remarks on the impact of Christianity on political life between the fourth and the sixth centuries A.D. We all know the basic facts.
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The fact that the aristocracy played a role of increasing importance in the affairs of the Church is only one aspect of what is perhaps the central feature of the fourth century: the emergence of the Church as an organization completing with the State itself and becoming attractive to educated and influential persons.
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The State, though trying to regiment everything, was not able to prevent or suppress the competition of the Church. A man could in fact escape from the authority of the State if he embraced the Church. If he liked power he would soon discover that there was more power to be found in the Church than in the State.
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Gibbon was simplifying a very complicated issue when he insinuated that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire, But he perceived that the church attracted many men who in the past would have become excellent generals, governors of provinces, advisers to the emperors.
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Moreover, the Church made ordinary people proud, not of their old political institutions, but of their new churches, monasteries, ecclesiastical charities. Money which would have gone to the building of a theatre or of an aqueduct now went to the building of churches and monasteries. The social equilibrium changed - to the advantage of the spiritual and physical conditions of monks and priests, but to the disadvantage of the ancient institutions of the empire.
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When Alaric captured Rome in 410 many people asked themselves whether the ruin of Rome was not the sign that Christianity was bad for the empire. The Christian answer to these doubts prevailed.
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[T]he conclusion remains that while the political organization of the empire became increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and unsuccessful, the Church was mobile and resilient and provided space for those whom the State was unable to absorb. The bishops were the centres of large voluntary organizations. They founded and controlled charitable institutions. They defended their flocks against the state officials. When the military situation of the empire grew worse, they often organized armed resistance against the barbarians. It seems to me impossible to deny that the prosperity of the Church was both a consequence and a cause of the decline of the state.
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People escaped from the state into the Church and weakened that state by giving their best to the Church. This is a situation which in its turn requires analysis and explanation. But its primary importance cannot be overlooked. The best men were working for the Church, not for the state.
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Monasticism is the most obvious example of the way in which Christianity built something of its own which undermined the military and political structure of the Roman empire. . . . in the West, after having contributed to the weakening of the empire, the Church inclined to accept collaboration with the barbarians and even replacement of the Roman authorities by barbarian leaders. In the East (with the partial exception of Alexandria) the Church appreciated the military strength of the Roman state and the loyalties it commanded.

Vatican Crony Blames Homosexuality for the Fall of Roman Empire

Apparently, if one wants to be awarded the Order of Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great by the Vatican, one way to enhance your chances is to make outrageous and unfounded statements against homosexuality. Roberto De Mattei - described as a "devout Roman Catholic" and who has already demonstrated that he'd fit right in with some the USA leading Christofascists by saying the Japanese tsunami was ‘divine punishment’ - has now said homosexuality was the cause of the Roman Empire. Never mind the real causes of Rome's collapse, just blame it on the gays - one of Pope Palpatine's favorites past times. There seems to be no end to the lengths the Vatican will go to denigrate LGBT individuals. The Daily Mail has a sampling of the batshitery issuing from the Vatican's favorite historian. Here are highlights:
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Roberto De Mattei . . . said: ‘The collapse of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the Barbarians was due to the spread of homosexuality. ‘The Roman colony of Carthage was a paradise for homosexuals and they infected many others.’ The 63-year-old added: ‘The invasion of the Barbarians was seen as punishment for this moral transgression. ‘It is well known effeminate men and homosexuals have no place in the kingdom of God. 'Homosexuality was not rife among the Barbarians and this shows God’s justice comes throughout history.’
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Last night fellow historians, gay rights groups and politicians expressed outrage. Paola Concia, an MP with the Democratic Left, said: ‘I have tabled an urgent call for the education minister to intervene.’
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Italian homosexual groups said the professor’s comments were ‘based on superstition, ridiculous and outrageous’ and called on him to resign from his Rome-based post. Historian Emilio Gabba, a leading light in Roman history, said: ‘It is highly improbable homosexuality led to the fall of the Roman Empire.’
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Professor Lellia Cracco Ruggini, an expert on Roman history from Turin University, said: ‘There is no proof Rome had a high number of homosexuals. I can safely say Rome did not fall because it was gay.’
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Professor De Mattei co-operates with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Historical Sciences and has been awarded the Order of Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great in acknowledgement of his services to the Roman Catholic Church.

More Inconvenient Truths About "Traditional Marriage"

Even though Christianists will refuse to acknowledge historic truths because they so often threaten the Christianists' fear and hate based house of cards faith constructs, it is important that rational citizens and news outlets be pushed to know the real truth when it comes to the history of civil marriage. And the truth is not - what a shocker - what the Christianists shrieking against same sex marriage would have the public believe. It is crucial that the larger public come to face the reality that when Christianists rant, it is almost always a lie. Not only was "biblical marriage" typical polygamous, but the role of the secular government in regulating marriage long trumped the Church's control over marriage. If anything, the default mode of allowing churches to drive secular marriage that has been seen in the USA is more of an exception than the historic rule. A piece in Huffington Post looks at the real history of the interaction between church and state over the centuries and reveals (as always seems to be the case with the anti-gay religious extremists) that Maggie Gallagher, and company are once again lying. Here are some article highlights:

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It is widely claimed by the Religious Right that marriage is a "religious institution," not a civil matter. The facts, unfortunately, are not so simple. State control of marriage is much older than people think and Christianity never spoke with one voice regarding marriage.
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The fourth century Christian emperor Theodosius, as part of what historian John Boswell called a campaign of "greater and greater totalitarian control over personal aspects of Romans' lives," decreed that only Christianity would be allowed to exist. He also banned gay marriage.
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The increasingly theocratic despotism of the later Empire often led to intervention in matters such as personal religious convictions or private sexual expression which would have been considered entirely individual under the earlier emperors."
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The Church got involved only after this intervention on its behalf. Christian law professor Daniel Crane wrote that, "as the power of the church grew, it gradually sought to establish control over marriage directly." But it was only in 1546 that the Roman Catholic Church declared that a marriage was only valid if performed by a priest, with two witnesses. Even this was more a slap at the Reformationists and a means of "wedding" believers to the Roman Church. The idea that marriage was a "sacrament" had more to do with the politics of the day than it did with theology.
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The Protestants denied marriage as a sacrament entirely. Crane wrote that Reformationists saw the state, not the church, as the prime custodian "of matrimony as a civil institution." The authoritarian John Calvin passed the "Marriage Ordinance of Geneva" requiring a state permit to marry.
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Catholics saw marriage as a church sacrament. Protestants said it was a relationship between a couple and the wider community, and thus more a political concern than a religious one. Witte wrote, "Enlightenment exponents emphasize[d] the contractual (or private) perspective."
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Exponents of the Enlightenment advocated the abolition of much that was considered sound and sacred in the Western legal tradition of marriage. They urged the abolition of the requirements of parental consent, church consecration, and formal witnesses for marriage. They questioned the exalted status of heterosexual monogamy, suggesting that such matters be left to private negotiation. They called for the absolute equality of husband and wife to receive, hold, and alienate property, to enter into contracts and commerce, to participate on equal terms in the workplace and public square. They castigated the state for leaving annulment practice to the church, and urged that the laws of annulment and divorce be both merged and expanded under exclusive state jurisdiction.
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The rise of classical liberalism, with its companion, capitalism, meant that income was no longer a function of the family as whole. Sociologist Barry Adams, in Christopher Street, observed: "Capitalism laid the groundwork for voluntary relationships based on personal preference, the precondition for 'romantic love.' Capitalism did not cause romantic love, it allowed it to flourish."
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[M]odern conservatives see themselves as the heirs of the classical liberal/capitalist tradition. Yet that tradition is responsible for the evolution of marriage over the last few centuries. What modern conservatives are witnessing in the gay marriage revolution is just another logical step toward implementing the values of classical liberalism, with its emphasis on private contract and individual rights. Like it or not, it is the premises that they claim they share with classical liberals that have brought us to where we are today. I for one think that a good thing, even if conservatives don't.

Professional Christians Ignore the Pagan Roots of Christmas

As we near the apogee of the Christmas season and fussy, busybody, anti-gay Christianists continue to hyperventilate over the repeal of DADT, it's important to remember the artificial construct on which these modern day Pharisees have built their propaganda machine - especially when they whine about those who use the term "Happy Holidays" in lieu of the de rigor "Merry Christmas." The truth is that there is little new under the sun and as history tells us, the story line of death and rebirth around the time of the winter solstice goes back for centuries before the Church's selected birth date of Christ. Yes, I have touched on this issue before, but with Del. Bob Marshall continuing his religious based crusade against LGBT Virginians, it's appropriate to touch on the subject again. Bob Felton at Civil Commotion looks at the topic as does ReligiousIntolerance.org. with an extensive review of solstice religious observances from around the world. The long and short of the matter is that Christians merely bootstrapped their religious celebration onto existing observances and that much of the "holiday traditions" are in fact pagan hold overs. First this from Bob Felton:
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It is the day of least sunshine; it signifies the start of lengthening days and, soon, better hunting and freshening fields. It is the low-point in the eternal cycle, and there is no end of myth accompanying this day, all pointing toward and celebrating rebirth.
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By the third century CE, there were many religions and spiritual mysteries being followed within the Roman Empire. Many, if not most, celebrated the birth of their god-man near the time of the solstice. Emperor Aurelian blended a number of Pagan solstice celebrations of the nativity of such god-men/saviors as Appolo, Attis, Baal, Dionysus, Helios, Hercules, Horus, Mithra, Osiris, Perseus, and Theseus into a single festival called the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” on Dec-25.
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Many symbols and practices associated with Christmas are of Pagan origin: holly, ivy, mistletoe, yule log, the giving of gifts, decorated evergreen tree, magical reindeer, etc. Polydor Virgil, a 15th century British Christian, said “Dancing, masques, mummeries, stageplays, and other such Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalian and Bacchanalian festivals; which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them.” In Massachusetts, Puritans unsuccessfully tried to ban Christmas entirely during the 17th century, because of its heathenism. The English Parliament abolished Christmas in 1647.
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The Christianists - and the leadership of the Catholic Church - rely upon the ignorance of their audience to further their agenda of power and control (and money raising). While it's fine and good to celebrate Christmas if one so desires, it is important to understand that its uniqueness is subject to serious doubt and in many ways it is a revamped holdover from much earlier religious beliefs. Here are a few highlights from ReligiousIntolerance.org:
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ANCIENT EGYPT: The god-man/savior Osiris died and was entombed on DEC-21. "At midnight, the priests emerged from an inner shrine crying 'The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing" and showing the image of a baby to the worshipers."
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ANCIENT ROME: Saturnalia began as a feast day for Saturn on DEC-17 and of Ops (DEC-19). About 50 BCE, both were later converted into two day celebrations. During the Empire, the festivals were combined to cover a full week: DEC-17 to 23. By the third century CE, there were many religions and spiritual mysteries being followed within the Roman Empire. Many, if not most, celebrated the birth of their god-man near the time of the solstice. Emperor Aurelian (270 to 275 CE) blended a number of Pagan solstice celebrations of the nativity of such god-men/saviors as Appolo, Attis, Baal, Dionysus, Helios, Hercules, Horus, Mithra, Osiris, Perseus, and Theseus into a single festival called the "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun" on DEC-25. At the time, Mithraism and Christianity were fierce competitors. Aurelian had even declared Mithraism the official religion of the Roman Empire in 274 CE. Christianity won out by becoming the new official religion in the 4th century CE.
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BUDDHISM: On DEC-8, or on the Sunday immediately preceding, Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day (a.k.a. Rohatsu). It recalls the day in 596 BCE, when the Buddha achieved enlightenment. . . . Being an Eastern tradition, Bodhi Day has none of the associations with the solstice and seasonal changes found in other religious observances at this time of year. However, it does signify the point in time when the Buddha achieved enlightenment and escaped the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth through reincarnation -- themes that are observed in other religions in December.
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DRUIDISM: Druids and Druidesses formed the professional class in ancient Celtic society. They performed the functions of modern day priests, teachers, ambassadors, astronomers, genealogists, philosophers, musicians, theologians, scientists, poets and judges. Druids led all public rituals, which were normally held within fenced groves of sacred trees. The solstice is the time of the death of the old sun and the birth of the dark-half of the year.
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IRAN: Shabe-Yalda (a.k.a. Shab-e Yaldaa) is celebrated in Iran by followers of many religions. It originated in Zoroastrianism, the state religion which preceded Islam. The name refers to the birthday or rebirth of the sun.
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CHRISTIANITY: Any record of the date of birth of Yeshua of Nazareth (later known as Jesus Christ) has been lost. There is sufficient evidence in the Gospels to indicate that Yeshua was born in the fall, but this seems to have been unknown to early Christians. By the beginning of the 4th century CE, there was intense interest in choosing a day to celebrate Yeshua's birthday. The western church leaders selected DEC-25 because this was already the date recognized throughout the Roman Empire as the birthday of various Pagan gods. Since there was no central Christian authority at the time, it took centuries before the tradition was universally accepted.