Sunday Morning Male Beauty

The Case for Trying Bush, Cheney and More for War Crimes

America has a very nasty history of what has been done to those deemed enemies - it started with the genocide against the Native Americans - but on occasion it has stood up for punishing those who committed atrocities.  The war crimes trials after World War II are a case in point.  Now, America seems to be shifted back to its old ways of talking about lofty ideals while allowing horrific deeds to go unpunished.  A piece in Salon makes the case of why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney among others need to be prosecuted for war crimes.  Here are select excerpts:

We’ve seen it in Ferguson, Missouri, with Darren Wilson getting off scot-free for killing Michael Brown. And we’ve seen it again in Staten Island, with Daniel Pantaleo getting off scot-free for killing Eric Garner. So why shouldn’t scores of CIA agents, contractors, higher-ups and other government officials—including former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney—get off scot-free for torturing hundreds of detainees, including some complete innocents?  That, apparently, is the reigning logic following the release of the Senate torture report.

But just as genuine legal experts have been appalled by the perversion of normal and normative legal process in the grand jury proceedings in St. Louis County and Staten Island, there’s been a sharp line drawn by human rights lawyers and advocates in response to the Senate torture report, calling for prosecutions to match the crimes. 

“The report talks a lot about how the CIA lied and covered up, but it doesn’t change the fact that the basic practices were authorized, you know, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, things like that.” But also, “George Bush approved waterboarding by his own admission, he approved the CIA renditions program,”  while Cheney  “was the driving force behind many of the illegal detention and interrogation policies to begin with.”

As for the legal obligations involved, “The torture convention requires that acts of torture be referred to the competent authority for the purpose of prosecution,” Roth said. “The United States has an obligation to prosecute torture.” Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, agreed. “The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes,” he said.

The need for such action is only made more urgent by the fact a new Pew poll shows 56 percent of Americans believe the lie that torture provided intelligence that helped prevent terrorist attacks, and relatedly that 51 percent think that “the CIA’s interrogation methods … were justified.”

As the Intercept’s Dan Froomkin tweeted, “If 56 percent of Americans think ‘CIA interrogation’ was effective, all that tells us is that they’ve been misled,” adding, “Just like 70 percent of Americans once though Saddam was behind 9/11, now 56 percent think torture worked. This is a massive indictment of the U.S. media.” But it’s not just the media. America’s entire elite infrastructure is indicted in this state of affairs, which is why America so desperately needs to have broad-based, high-profile torture trials on the model of the Nuremberg Trials following World War II . . . 

Al-Qaida’s whole aim with the 9/11 attacks was to draw the U.S. into a self-destructive conflict in the Middle East, and to expose and exploit our contradictions. And thanks primarily to the Bush/Cheney delusional response (and Obama’s limited willingness to alter direction), that’s exactly what has happened.

[E]verything the U.S. has done since 9/11 has been seriously misguided at best, and Obama’s policy changes have merely trimmed around the edges of what Bush and Cheney started, because he has been obsessed with trying to quickly unify the country, papering over  profound differences, rather than facing up to the genuine deep difficulties of overcoming them.

Obama invoked the shameful, discredited Nazi Nuremberg Defense (“I was only following orders”), when he said:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Not only is this an insult to the real heroes, who spoke out against the barbarism they were tasked with, the Nuremberg Principles, which came out of the Nuremberg Trials, explicitly rejected this defense:

Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

They also rejected the notion that those who give the orders are exempt:

Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

These two principles aren’t that hard to grasp, for anyone familiar with TV crime dramas. Both the hit man and the man who orders the hit are guilty of murder.  Street crimes, suite crimes, international war crimes—the same logic applies equally to all of them.

Bush and Cheney’s unhinged panic drove the entire process off the rails. Yet, even today they and their defenders continue to pretend that they were the tough guys, the realists, the ones who protected us. They need to stand trial in part simply so that this lie can be publicly put to rest. 

Coming Out and Becoming a Better Parent

My coming out in mid-life was not easy for me or for my children and truth be told, not divorce is any easy thing for the children involved.  Added to all of the other stresses is the gossip and homophobia that is still far to prevalent in society, especially the conservative community in which I lived in the closeted phase of my life.  I certainly was not a happy person while in the closet and that unhappiness and self-hatred had to spill over into my parenting.  Despite all of the turmoil, I like to think that I am now a far better parent and, I hope my children have learned that they need to live their lives to make themselves happy, not please parents or societal expectations.  In contrast, the Christofascists want gays to remain in marriages that are not working so as to pretend they have "prayed away the gay" and to please their imaginary friend in the sky.  A piece in Huffington Post by a woman who came out later in life reflects some of my thinking on this issue.  Here are article highlights:

I came out in the early 1980s -- into a thriving lesbian community that was fueled by the feminist movement and had some overlap with the gay male community. I always knew that there were different realities for gay people and that many still were in the closet. I dismissed these realities as not being connected to mine. It wasn't until I met Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed., and read her books . . . .   that I began to reconsider.

Kaye is an internationally known author and counselor to straight women who are married to gay men. She also counsels closeted gay men on how honesty can help them and their female spouses.

An opinion piece in The New York Times reports that "the openly gay population is dramatically higher in more tolerant states...." Based on factual research, the author concludes, "The evidence also suggests that a large number of gay men are married to women."

Of course, there are also many closeted lesbians who are married to straight men, something that was documented on The Huffington Post.

I came to the conclusion that homophobia is hurting us all -- the straight spouses, the closeted gay or lesbian spouse, the children and particularly the children of closeted gay parents who identify as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning). Ultimately I was left with more questions than answers. Here Bonnie answers them.

Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.: My counseling work specializes in straight women who unknowingly married gay men, and gay men who were hoping they were straight and believed marriage would "cure" those attractions for other men. I started this counseling after the end of my own marriage to a gay man in 1978. Since that time, I have worked with over 100,000 people in this situation, 96 percent women and 4 percent gay men.

Kaye: I believe these marriages are toxic. Marriages are based on honest communication, intimacy on a physical and emotional level, and fidelity. A gay husband isn't able to provide this to a woman in a sustaining way, as his urges to be with men heighten as the years go on. In many cases, the husband becomes either emotionally or physically abusive due to his frustration of being in the wrong place with the wrong gender. The marriage needs to end because both parties are losing out on what they deserve. However, families can be "redefined" after divorce and remain close as each partner has a chance to find his and her true soul mate. 

Kaye: Living a lie takes its toll on the whole family unit. They say that secrets destroy families, and this is certainly true. Most children are so sophisticated today that they learn the secret before their mothers do. Then they become keepers of the secret, which tears them apart. If they tell their mothers, they fear it will destroy her life. If they don't tell her, they feel a sense of betrayal because their father is cheating. 

Kaye: Children who are gay struggle so much more with dishonest gay parents. Children can sense or know when they have a gay father. His rejection of their homosexuality makes their struggle that much more difficult. They start feeling that "If even my gay father won't accept me, how will others?" 

Kaye: Straight spouses need to find support to go through this grieving process in order to move on. Gay partners have to learn that they have the responsibility to help with the collateral family damage that will take place once this revelation is out. The beginning is always filled with turmoil and angry feelings, but the goal should be to redefine the family but work together as much as possible. Sadly, many gay partners are so happy to finally be "free" they pursue what they feel they've missed for so many years and don't provide that support.

I do not have gay children and I did not cheat on my former wife for years as many closeted men seem to do - just check out Craigslist and other sites to see the large number of cheating married men - but life in the closet was emotionally and psychologically exhausting.   Especially when you factor in the toxic religious brainwashing I suffered growing up Catholic.  For children, being honest and genuine is so important, yet it is something you cannot give when you are lying to yourself and those around you.  Again, I believe coming out ultimately made me a better parent.  Certainly a far more honest parent.

Cuba's Evolution on Gay Rights

Mariela Castro

With the United States finally beginning to change its failed policies against Cuba - despite the protests of many older Cubans who fled Castro's regime - some believe the evolution Cuba has made on gay rights could be a blue print for easing restrictions on other personal freedoms in the island nation.  One would think that 50 years of a failed policy that has not yielded desired results ought to send a message that remaining on the same course is an exercise in futility.  Of course, don't tell that to the today's GOP which cares little about objective reality and increasingly looks like a large insane asylum.  Personally, I'd like to see travel to Cuban opened up because over time open access to the rest of the world and an influx of capital and ideas is the quickest way to transform Cuba despite the efforts of the Castro regime.  But I digress.  Here are highlights from a New York Times piece on Cuba's evolution on gay rights:

In Cuba, street marches have historically been government-orchestrated events or dissident protests that are swiftly crushed by the authorities. So it was downright startling when, in May 2007, Fidel Castro’s niece sauntered down the street with a small army of drag queens waving gay pride flags.

Long before the Obama administration announced a dramatic shift in Cuba policy on Wednesday, asserting that isolating the island had failed, a couple of Western governments with close ties to the United States saw the potential to help gay Cubans, even though it meant working with a prominent member of the Castro family. Havana’s first observance of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia marked the beginning of a remarkable evolution of gay rights in the most populous island in the Caribbean, a region where hostile attitudes toward sexual minorities remain the norm.

Mariela Castro, the daughter of the current president, Raúl Castro, has led the charge on legislative and societal changes that have given rise to an increasingly visible and empowered community. In the process, she has carved out a rare space for civil society in an authoritarian country where grass-roots movements rarely succeed. Some Western diplomats in Havana have seen the progress on gay rights as a potential blueprint for expansion of other personal freedoms in one of the most oppressed societies on earth.

Norway and Belgium have financially supported Ms. Castro’s organization, the National Center for Sexual Education, offering a test of the merits of supporting certain policies of a government that the United States and European capitals have largely shunned because of its bleak human rights record. As the Obama administration begins carrying out its new Cuba policy, it should draw lessons from the impact others have had by engaging.

“It’s fine to criticize, but you also have to acknowledge that they’ve done good,” said John Petter Opdahl, Norway’s ambassador to Cuba, in a recent interview. Mr. Opdahl, who is gay, said his government gave Ms. Castro’s organization $230,000 over the last two years. “She has taken off a lot of the stigma for most people in the country, and she has made life so much better for so many gay people, not only in Havana but in the provinces.”

After the 2007 march, Ms. Castro, who is straight, began a public campaign to promote tolerance. She persuaded the government in recent years to offer state-paid gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment for transgender people. Last year, when the Assembly passed a labor code that protected gays and lesbians — but not transgender people — from discrimination in the workplace, Ms. Castro became the first lawmaker in Cuban history to cast a dissenting vote in protest. Her ultimate goal, she said, was codifying full equality under the law.

Gay Cubans say that discrimination remains a problem, particularly outside big cities. Still, last year, a woman in Caribién, a municipality east of Havana, became the country’s first transgender elected official. At the urging of Ms. Castro and gay bloggers, in 2010 Cuba began voting in favor of resolutions supporting gay rights at the United Nations, breaking ranks with allies in Africa and the Caribbean.

The Obama administration has spent millions of dollars promoting gay rights around the world and has made the issue a diplomatic priority. In the Dominican Republic, Washington took a bold stance last year when officials appeared unwilling to accept Wally Brewster, the openly gay entrepreneur President Obama nominated as ambassador. The State Department warned Santo Domingo that if it turned Mr. Brewster down, the country would find itself without an American envoy for a long time.

When Dominican officials acquiesced, they asked that Mr. Brewster be discreet about his sexual orientation. American officials responded that he, like all ambassadors in the region, would be expected to champion gay rights. To make the point, the State Department released a video of Mr. Brewster and his partner expressing their enthusiasm for the new job.

Ms. Machado said most gay rights activists on the island have not accepted support from Washington because its policy toward Cuba was predicated on regime change. “While the United States is the enemy of our state, we can’t work with them,” she said recently in an interview in Havana. “Any support you receive makes you a traitor.”

That entrenched view has stymied American efforts to promote things such as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. President Obama’s changed policy will make engagement with Americans more palatable.

The far right claims to care about human rights even though its actions tell a very different story as the GOP continues to embrace and and support homophobes, white supremacists and those who seek to keep women subservient to men. 

 

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

Did Bush/Cheney Authorize Nazi-Like Experimentation on Humans?

Various aspects of what the Senate torture report revealed in therms of the torture and war crimes authorized the the evil duo of Chimperator George Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Less discussed is a related aspect of what the CIA did under the authorization from the White House: experimentation on humans to find ways to break them.  It's something right out of the annals of what the Nazi regime and Gestapo did in Germany in the 1930's and early 1940's.  Any decent American ought to be horrified by this revelation.  Frighteningly, many are not and it speaks volumes about America's further moral descent under those who claim to be the champions of "Christian values."  The Nation looks at some of these less reported horrors:

Human experimentation, in contrast, has not been politically refashioned into a legitimate or justifiable enterprise. Therefore, it would behoove us to appreciate the fact that the architects and implementers of black-site torments were authorized at the highest levels of the White House and CIA to experiment on human beings. Reading the report through this lens casts a different light on questions of accountability and impunity.

The “war on terror” is not the CIA’s first venture into human experimentation. At the dawn of the Cold War, German scientists and doctors with Nazi records of human experimentation were given new identities and brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. During the Korean War, alarmed by the shocking rapidity of American POWs’ breakdowns and indoctrination by their communist captors, the CIA began investing in mind-control research. In 1953, the CIA established the MK-ULTRA program, whose earliest phase involved hypnosis, electroshock and hallucinogenic drugs. The program evolved into experiments in psychological torture that adapted elements of Soviet and Chinese models, including longtime standing, protracted isolation, sleep deprivation and humiliation. Those lessons soon became an applied “science” in the Cold War.

During the Vietnam War, the CIA developed the Phoenix program, which combined psychological torture with brutal interrogations, human experimentation and extrajudicial executions. In 1963, the CIA produced a manual titled “Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation” to guide agents in the art of extracting information from “resistant” sources by combining techniques to produce “debility, disorientation and dread.” Like the communists, the CIA largely eschewed tactics that violently target the body in favor of those that target the mind by systematically attacking all human senses in order to produce the desired state of compliance. The Phoenix program model was incorporated into the curriculum of the School of the Americas, and an updated version of the Kubark guide, produced in 1983 and titled “Human Resource Exploitation Manual,” was disseminated to the intelligence services of right-wing regimes in Latin America and Southeast Asia during the global “war on communism.”

In the mid-1980s, CIA practices became the subject of congressional investigations into US-supported atrocities in Central America. Both manuals became public in 1997 as a result of Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Baltimore Sun. That would have seemed like a “never again” moment.

But here we are again. This brings us back to Mitchell and Jessen. Because of their experience as trainers in the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, after 9/11 they were contacted by high-ranking Pentagon officials and, later, by lawyers who wanted to know whether some of those SERE techniques could be reverse-engineered to get terrorism suspects to talk.

[U]ntil the program was dry-docked in 2008, at least thirty-eight people were subjected to psychological and physical torments, and the results were methodically documented and analyzed. That is the textbook definition of human experimentation.

My point is not to minimize the illegality of torture or the legal imperatives to pursue accountability for perpetrators. Rather, because the concept of torture has been so muddled and disputed, I suggest that accountability would be more publicly palatable if we reframed the CIA’s program as one of human experimentation. If we did so, it would be more difficult to laud or excuse perpetrators as “patriots” who “acted in good faith.” Although torture has become a Rorschach test among political elites playing to public opinion on the Sunday morning talk shows, human experimentation has no such community of advocates and apologists.

Not all at the CIA and within the military bought into torture and experiments on human beings.  A piece here looks at these unsung heroes who supported decency. 

Virginia's 20 Craziest Politicians

Lowell has a great list of Virginia's craziest politicians at Blue Virginia and not surprisingly, 85% of them are Republicans.  Included in the pack of asylum escapees are the GOP's 2013 "dream team" of Cuccinelli, Jackson and Obenshain.  And one can never leave out spittle flecked homophobe Del. Bob Marshall.  When one looks at the insanity of these Republican's I can only shake my head and think "WTF happened to the party I once supported."   Here are excerpts on some of these GOP loons:

The following list is inspired by GQ's just-published "America's 20 Craziest Politicians" (Steve King, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Joe Barton, etc.). For my list, I'm sticking to Virginia elected officials, people who have been Virginia elected officials, or current/past candidates for elective office in Virginia.  . . . . note that the vast majority are Republicans - shocker, huh? - and it's not for lack of trying to come up with Democrats to make it more "even" - the fact is that today's GOP attracts "teh crazy" like....well, crazy!).  Anyway, enjoy!

1. E.W. Jackson (R): Has anyone ever heard anything come out of his mouth that wasn't at least a bit "out there?" OK, need specific examples of this guy's insanity?  For starters, he's obsessed with Barack Obama (e.g., how Obama's supposedly not a Christian, how he's supposedly an anti-Semite, blah blah blah); how "Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was;" how gays are "frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally," who are attempting to "poison our children, divide them from their parents and the teaching of the church and basically turn them into pawns for that movement so that they can sexualize them at the earliest possible age." What's truly shocking about this guy isn't so much that he's an extremist and an all-around lunatic, but that the Virginia GOP nominated him for Lt. Governor of our state in 2013! What does that say about them? Anyway, E.W. Jackson has the "honor" of being #1 on this list.

2. Ken Cuccinelli (R): Again, where do you even start with this guy?  I mean, this is someone who - in addition to the de-rigeur-among-wingnuts climate science denial - also tried to make it easier for people to discriminate against gay people, claimed that Virginia can disobey federal laws it disagrees with, believes the government is tracking his kids via Social Security numbers, and talks to a toy elephant named "Ron", is a "birther," rants about a "vast left-wing conspiracy" and the "Humanist Manifesto," claims that liberals "cannot tolerate god" and that Barack Obama has "helped destroy this country," compared immigrants to rat families, etc, etc. Most appallingly, "the Cooch" actually was elected to be Virginia's Attorney General, where he spent four years on a bunch of crazy, mostly failed, crusades. He also was, appallingly yet again, the Virginia Republican Party's 2013 nominee for governor of our state. It says a great deal about said party that they'd nominate such a lunatic, not to mention extremist, as Ken Cuccinelli. Come to think of it, maybe Cooch should have been #1, and E.W. Jackson #2, on this list?

4. Del. Bob Marshall (R):  We nicknamed him "Sideshow Bob" for good reason. Seriously, the list of his lunacy is endless. Check out, for example: "Sideshow Bob" Marshall Completely Unhinged Over Demise of His Anti-Gay Hate Amendment, Video: "Sideshow Bob" Elaborates On His Vicious Homophobia (That's right, according to "Sideshow Bob," it's all about "blood transfusions," "sodomy," and being "worried about this guy whose got eyes on me." Can we say "he's got issues?" Uh huh.); Does Bob Marshall Agree w/ Rev. Ellison that Haitian Earthquake Was God's Punishment for Voodoo?; Virginia lawmaker: Children with disabilities are God's punishment to women who previously had abortions.; Chief Sponsor of Virginia 'Personhood' Bill Calls The Affordable Care Act 'Rape'; Robert Marshall, Virginia Delegate, Pushes Bill To Study Whether State Should Have Alternative Currency; etc. Seriously, with Bob Marshall, the "Sideshow" truly never ends!

5. Senator Dick Black (R): A few items include Dick Black on Spousal Rape, "Nighties," etc.; Republican Loudoun-sanity Continues: Dick Black Rails Against Gays in the Military; VA Sen. Dick Black (R) Praises "Extraordinary Gallantry" of Syrian Armed Forces; Sen. Dick Black (R-Homophobia): Polygamy "just more natural" than homosexuality . Yeah, this one's certifiable. 

8. Sen. Mark Obenshain (R): I had heard stories about this guy's nuttiness for years, but I didn't really focus on him until last year's AG race. Then, it came to light that Obenshain had tried "to force women to report miscarriages to police," introducing legislation to require that "when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff's department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred...and that a violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor." There's lots more craziness with this guy, but I'd say that's enough right there to put him on the Top 20 craziest Virginia politicians list. We'll see if Republicans nominate him again for statewide office in 2017, after he narrowly lost (phew -- close call!) to Mark Herring in a recount last time around.

14. Michael Farris (R): He ran for Lt. Governor in 1993 against Don Beyer (D) and lost, 54%-46%. Thank goodness, too, because aside from being a right-wing extremist, he's also just plain crazy. For instance, "Farris was featured on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° on December 7, 2012 as a leading opponent of U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act." Why? In part, according to Farris, because "[t]he definition of disability is not defined in the treaty, and so my kid wears glasses; now they're disabled; now the UN gets control over them." Cuckoo! Cuckoo! 

Yes, there are Democrats on the list, but they comprise only 15%.  What is truly frightening is that the GOP crazies are "mainstream" for today's Republican Party of Virginia.

U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Stay Marriage Equality in Florida

In a move that ought to be hand writing on the wall as to how the appeal from the ruling from the Sixth Circuit upholding state marriage bans is going to fare, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to extend a stay in Florida delaying the effect of lower court rulings that struck down that that state's gay marriage ban.  The immediate result: same sex marriages will begin in Florida on January 6, 2015.  The larger result?  It seems inconceivable that the Supreme Court would allow marriages to occur in more and more states if it planned to uphold the Sixth Circuit's reactionary ruling that took a position that had been argued by a white supremacist group that had filed an amicus brief.  Indeed, such an action would be akin to an expost facto law - something barred by the U.S. Constitution. Here are highlights from The Advocate:

In a ruling late Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will allow same-sex couples to begin marrying in Florida on January 6. But that doesn't mean that clerks will actually issue licenses.

A federal judge ruled in August that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and stayed his decision until early January. The state had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to extend that stay, but the justices have now declined. Ordinarily, emergency requests from Florida are heard by Justice Clarence Thomas, but he referred Florida's petition to the full court. According to Friday's decision, only Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia were in favor of granting the state's request, and so it was denied.

Unfortunately, couples who attempt to obtain licenses January 6 may still be turned away. The Florida Association of Clerks and Comptrollers has warned its members that because the state's marriage ban remains on the books and because litigation is still ongoing, issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples remains a criminal act in Florida. Clerks who issue licenses could face up to a year in jail, the group said.

It's hard to imagine that law enforcement officials would actually prosecute a clerk who decided to test that law. But will there be a clerk brave enough to stick his or her neck out? That remains unknown.

If a clerk did decide to issue a license, and if a prosecutor decided to then charge them with breaking the law, that clerk would likely be in a good legal position to defend their actions. But such a defense would probably be costly, so they would also need to be in a good financial position to defend themselves. That would require the support of national civil rights groups, like potentially Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Human Rights Campaign.

"Every day these couples and their families are denied the protections and benefits that come with legal marriage, they risk real and serious consequences," said HRC legal director Sarah Warbelow in a Friday statement. "We look forward to the day that all couples are able to have their relationships recognized as valid under the law."

The Court's move is a rebuke to Pam Bondi who has enthusiastically prostituted herself to the Christofascists.  It is telling that both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito did not support extending the stay.  Is it possible that even a reactionary like Alito now supports same sex marriage?  Perhaps he and Roberts see the future and they have decided that they do not want to be on the wrong side of history and looked back upon with derision.  Meanwhile, expect NOM and other hate groups to work hard to shake down the ignorant for money. 

Did Historical Jesus Ever Really Exist?

The folks at the Washington Post best brace themselves for spittle flecked rants from the "godly folk" who will no doubt take great offense at a story that raises the relevant question of whether the Jesus of the New Testament ever existed.  If not, Christianity's already damaged story line (e.g., the human genome project says Adam and Eve never existed) virtually collapses.  Here are excerpts from the piece:

The first problem we encounter when trying to discover more about the Historical Jesus is the lack of early sources. The earliest sources only reference the clearly fictional Christ of Faith. These early sources, compiled decades after the alleged events, all stem from Christian authors eager to promote Christianity – which gives us reason to question them. The authors of the Gospels fail to name themselves, describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources – which they also fail to identify. Filled with mythical and non-historical information, and heavily edited over time, the Gospels certainly should not convince critics to trust even the more mundane claims made therein.

The methods traditionally used to tease out rare nuggets of truth from the Gospels are dubious. The criterion of embarrassment says that if a section would be embarrassing for the author, it is more likely authentic. Unfortunately, given the diverse nature of Christianity and Judaism back then (things have not changed all that much), and the anonymity of the authors, it is impossible to determine what truly would be embarrassing or counter-intuitive, let alone if that might not serve some evangelistic purpose.

The criterion of Aramaic context is similarly unhelpful. Jesus and his closest followers were surely not the only Aramaic-speakers in first-century Judea. The criterion of multiple independent attestation can also hardly be used properly here, given that the sources clearly are not independent.

Paul’s Epistles, written earlier than the Gospels, give us no reason to dogmatically declare Jesus must have existed. Avoiding Jesus’ earthly events and teachings, even when the latter could have bolstered his own claims, Paul only describes his “Heavenly Jesus.” Even when discussing what appear to be the resurrection and the last supper, his only stated sources are his direct revelations from the Lord, and his indirect revelations from the Old Testament. In fact, Paul actually rules out human sources (see Galatians 1:11-12).

Also important are the sources we don’t have. There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All we have are later descriptions of Jesus’ life events by non-eyewitnesses, most of whom are obviously biased. Little can be gleaned from the few non-Biblical and non-Christian sources, with only Roman scholar Josephus and historian Tacitus having any reasonable claim to be writing about Jesus within 100 years of his life. And even those sparse accounts are shrouded in controversy, with disagreements over what parts have obviously been changed by Christian scribes (the manuscripts were preserved by Christians), the fact that both these authors were born after Jesus died (they would thus have probably received this information from Christians), and the oddity that centuries go by before Christian apologists start referencing them.

So what do the mainstream (and non-Christian) scholars say about all this? Surprisingly very little – of substance anyway. Only Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey have thoroughly attempted to prove Jesus’ historical existence in recent times. Their most decisive point? The Gospels can generally be trusted – after we ignore the many, many bits that are untrustworthy – because of the hypothetical (i.e. non-existent) sources behind them. Who produced these hypothetical sources? When? What did they say? Were they reliable? Were they intended to be accurate historical portrayals, enlightening allegories, or entertaining fictions?

Ehrman and Casey can’t tell you – and neither can any New Testament scholar. Given the poor state of the existing sources, and the atrocious methods used by mainstream Biblical historians, the matter will likely never be resolved. In sum, there are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence – if not to think it outright improbable.

In terms of historical fact, the Jesus story has no more documented support that the stories of the Olympian gods, the Egyptian goddess Isis or the middle eastern god Mithras.  Wanting a story to be true, in short, does not somehow magically make it true.

Friday Morning Male Beauty