MERRY CHRISTMAS OR HAPPY HOLIDAYS...

This is the time of year where the so called “Christmas Christians” become outraged at the demeaning of “their” celebration of the birth of their savior by those that would celebrate this time of year as a joyous and happy “holiday” instead of “Christmas”.

This so called “War on Christmas” is based solely on ignorance of basic history but in some cases (Fox News) on a fabricated attempt to stir the great unwashed into believing they are under attack.

Those in the know, are aware that this time of year was celebrated for thousands of years (way before Christianity came on the scene) as the Winter Solstice or the day when the days started getting longer and the nights shorter; a New Year.

It is worth noting that the Pilgrims (Puritans) that came to the new land of America did not celebrate Christmas at all because number one, the Bible did not mention it and two, because they considered it a “pagan” holiday which some Christians (in England) adapted as their own and called it Christmas.

The Puritans actually banned Christmas because it was based on a pagan celebration but also because it caused too much merriment which they considered a sin I guess.

Anyway, many of our Christmas traditions actually come from pagan traditions like decorating the Christmas tree and exchanging gifts and that includes Santa Claus also. Many very religious countries like Poland have tried to adapt the pagan practices to Christian practices like making Santa Claus into a Catholic bishop, etc.

Christmas did not become a federal holiday till 1870; before people would treat Christmas Day as any normal working day.

We are a very diverse population but all of us, I believe, look forward to celebrating this time of year for many different reasons but as humans, we all celebrate the  coming of the New Year as evidenced by our celestial calendar which is quite evident in our sky and not some religious belief.

History shows that early Christian leaders tried to assimilate existing pagan beliefs and practices into the Christian faith as did many other faiths but the original pagan element usually was based on some aspects of nature or the natural world and that is why we have “seasonal holidays”.

I don’t think any one wants to deny the Christians “their” specific holiday they call Christmas but Christians must be made aware that this time of year is not exclusively “their” holiday but they share it with many others who may not be Christian but still celebrate the “holidays” in their own way.

So whether you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays you are still wishing your fellow humans the best of everything in this time of rebirth in the New Year.

Gay Marriage Supreme Court decision ...?

Now that all the hoopla about the Supreme Court Gay Marriage decision is abated somewhat, it is time to examine why the dissenting justices were so pissed about this decision.

The one thing to remember about the Supreme Court is that it deals mainly with CONSTITUTIONAL issues. The rule of thumb is that if an issue is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, it then becomes a STATE issue; the individual states decide the issue.

In the Gay Marriage issue many states have decided the legality or non-legality of the marriage since our Constitution does not address the issue of marriage in any way.

As far as Scalia and the other conservatives on the bench, this was a state issue because it was not, in their minds, a Constitutional issue and that is why they decry this decision as a violation of democratic principles as practiced in this country.

The other justices did not see it that way and felt that the issue is addressed in the Constitution, not as a marriage issue but as a EQUAL RIGHTS issue as stated in the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to our Constitution.

No person shall be denied the equal protection of the law.

By denying certain people to participate in a legally binding contract that other people are allowed to participate in, violates the XIV Amendment...it is that simple.

I feel our Founding Fathers had an eye to the future when they crafted the Constitution and therefore had written some articles in general terms of basic principles.

I think no matter which way the decision went, the country as a whole was going to allow gay marriages period but the objection to this decision interests me and it will be fun exploring all the objections from all the objectors especially from the Catholic Church.

As far as the dissenting Supremes are concerned I understand that they do not want the court to tell the country how to think and behave but we have to remember that marriage between races was not allowed before the Supreme Court stepped in and said that individual rights were violated by this practice.

I am a firm believer in individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and am outraged at certain people trying to define and narrow those rights to conform to their own ideas of what those rights should be.

Truly these are historic times we live in but we still have work to do to make our society truly progressive and not mired in the darkness and ignorance of the past.

SUPREME COURT RULING ON OBAMACARE...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, decided to allow Obamacare to continue in its present format.

Republicans brought a very specious challenge to the Obamacare law based on four words “established by the state”. 

Chief Justice Roberts who wrote the opinion, said that the “intent” of the law by its “authors” was what was important in this case and not the interpretation, one way or another, of a phrase.

Judge Scalia read his blistering descent from the bench saying that Roberts picks the laws he likes and those he does not like so it basically is  SCOTUScare and not Obamacare (SCOTUS stands for Supreme Court of the United States).

The case did not involve the interpretation of the Constitution which is what the Supreme Court does. In this case it was basically an absurd challenge to the interpretation of the law’s actual language; it’s like challenging that a comma was in the wrong place.

It shows us how desperate the Republicans are to scuttle a law that is doing people some good while not having a law to replace the one they want to repeal. In fact, the Republicans were scared that if the Supreme Court sided with them they would have to come up with a replacement law immediately to save millions of people from having their medical insurance cancelled; see how fucking childish this whole issue is?

I was impressed with Roberts (this time) for looking at the “intent” of the “authors” in writing this bill.

It is a good time to compare this to the “Separation of Church and State” understanding in the First Amendment in our Constitution. Many argue that the exact language is not in the Constitution therefore cannot be interpreted as being in the Constitution. 

The “authors” of the First Amendment including Thomas Jefferson explicitly stated that “ a wall of separation between Church and State” is exactly what they intended when writing the First Amendment.

To show you how this legal approach is not de rigueur in other cases, take the Second Amendment. The authors of the Second Amendment had clearly established the legality, if not a duty, to bear arms (have arms) but ONLY as part of a well-regulated MILITIA. Since we do not have militias in this country anymore (we have national guards), this does not grant individual a Constitutional right to bear arms.

So when it comes to the Supreme Court; they do what they want to do.

CONFEDERATE FLAG: How symbols change through time and circumstance...

I have been watching the national reaction to the horrific, racist massacre that occurred at a Charleston, South Carolina black church, a few days ago.

It was interesting to see how the nation (or is it just the media) fixated on the Confederate Flag as the main symbol if not the actual reason for the massacre by a deranged 21 year-old racist who posed with the flag in his many on-line postings.

The Confederate Flag as a symbol of the pre-civil war South has a special meaning to Southerners past and present. As a history nut, I can tell you that our Civil War was not fought over the single issue of slavery although obviously it was a big factor.

Many of those who died fighting for the South never owned slaves or had anything to do with slavery. Southerners were different from the people living in the North. They were more rural, had little industrialization and therefore were much poorer but they had a fierce spirit of pride about who they were and what they stood for.

Even though defeated and humbled after the war, that spirit was kept alive in the symbolism represented by the Confederate Flag which flew over the many monuments to the Southerners killed during the Civil War.

South Carolina took the Confederate Flag off the dome of its statehouse and moved it to a nearby monument to Southern soldiers killed in the war. They realized then that flying the Rebel flag over their seat of government was improper seeing as the Confederacy was history.

As Southerners saw the flag a symbol of the Rebel spirit, blacks saw it as a symbol of slavery. The killer of the nine black people in that church saw it as a symbol of white supremacy and therefore racism.

I am reminded of the story of the SWASTIKA symbol that we associate with the brutal Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler and all the terrible things he did to humanity under its banner. Many do not know that the so called Nazi symbol was actually a symbol noted in pre-historic days and later as a symbol depicting someone or something as very lucky or auspicious.

I was amazed on my trip to India to see business cards with that symbol and on a number of occasions, as tattoos on seemingly normal people. I thought are they all Nazis? I later learned that the symbol is sacred in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. The swastika symbol is also present in Chinese script and called a manji.

In the West, the swastika is still a Nazi symbol and will always be a symbol of evil. The symbol is still used by neo-Nazis or racist skinheads throughout the West.

The negative reaction to the Confederate Flag after the Charleston massacre was not overwhelming at first. Southern Republicans tried to deflect the public cry to take down the flag since it was now a symbol of racism and was an insult to the people massacred in Charleston as well as an insult to the whole nation.

Southern Republicans tried to explain the flag’s historical significance to the South but the popular sentiment demanded the flag to come down.

One black politician from South Carolina called the whole flag issue as total bullshit; talking about a symbol instead of real racism on the ground in this country.

The pendulum has swung to the other side so quickly that not only Confederate flags are coming down in the South but statues and monuments to Southern soldiers who died in the Civil War are in danger and this is unfortunate, I hope cooler heads prevail.

The Civil War is our history and those who died on both sides of the conflict were Americans, one side dying to preserve a union and the other side dying trying to secede from that union.

Ironically after the war, Southern blacks moving to the North to find jobs in the factories were met by rabid racism from the people who liberated them from slavery.

One hates to see one man and one terrible act change the perception of a once proud Southern symbol into something despicable from now on and forever but that is exactly what happened.

Some Southerners will argue that this should not be allowed but for all intents and purposes, the flag now represents racism and anybody with the flag will be labelled a racist whether they are racists or not.

These are truly historic times.

FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA: A saint or not...

In September 2015, Pope Francis will visit Washington, DC and canonize FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA as the first Hispanic saint in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal article THE POLITICAL ASSAULT ON CALIFORNIA’S SAINT by Allysia Finley (June 5, 2015) decries the fact that there is a lot of objection to this sainthood.

I remember taking my kids to San Diego for a vacation and then travelling along California’s coast from one mission to the next and then flying out of Los Angeles; Father Serra founded most of those missions.

The fact that Spanish missionaries did devastating damage to the indigenous population of Central and South America is well documented. Not only did they destroy their culture but they also destroyed their history by burning ancient texts thought of as satanic because the missionaries did not understand them.

In California, Father Serra took thousands of natives into his missions where he taught them Christianity and methods of farming, etc. He thought of the natives as children who needed a firm hand to put them on the right road to salvation. Yes, he destroyed their way of life and therefore their culture and true that many thousands died when the Spanish introduced diseases that the natives could not fight since they had no immunity to them, but was he doing what he thought was right?

Franciscan missionaries were instructed to bring the pagans to Jesus, first and foremost, and that is what they tried to do; Father Serra was no exception and did the bidding of the Catholic Church.

He was said to have protected the natives from rapacious marauding Spanish conquistadors as well as from drought and famine; just to add a few positives to this issue.

I have never thought much of the Catholic institution of sainthood mainly because of the process which allows popes to make people into saints just because they want to; the process is made to fit the desired outcome. Pope Paul V was a doofus that screwed up the social policies of the Church to the point that Catholics now just ignore Church teachings on certain issues; he will be made a saint. Pius XII was a Nazi sympathizer and Jew hater; he will be a saint. Pope John Paul II, very popular among the masses, but one who allowed priests to molest young males by protecting them and ignoring the issue all together; he will be a saint.

So you see that people being canonized saints is just a political ploy meant to give certain Catholic ethnic groups someone to call their own.

I would not make a big deal about Father Serra’s canonization because the Catholic Church will do what it wants to no matter what the criticism. I would make some noise though, in pointing out how absurd the process is and how much damage forced conversions did to native peoples around the world. 

Criticism of these canonizations should be loud and clear as a means of preserving the facts of history since canonizations tend to re-write and obscure the facts of history behind a veil of manufactured holiness.

ABERCROMBIE HIJAB DECISION IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!

My last blog was about my disappointment in the Supreme Court decision against Abercrombie & Fitch and in favor of a Hijab wearing Muslim woman.

Today an article in the Detroit Free Press titled: IT’S NOT JUST ABERCROMBIE: WE’RE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR PROMOTING INCLUSION by Fatina Abdrabboh of the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee, Michigan Office.

She mentioned that the Supreme Court case rested on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits employers from the ability to fail or refuse to hire or discharge any individual…because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

She further stated that the Supreme Court victory supported the rights of Americans to religious accommodation.

Number 1, the hijab wearing woman in the case NEVER asked Abercrombie to “accommodate” her religion’s practice therefore Abercrombie NEVER discriminated against her because of her religion.

Secondly, wearing a hijab is not a Muslim religious practice. Nowhere in the Quran is it stipulated that a woman MUST wear a hijab or even a burkha. In fact, Muslim women either wear a head scarf (hijab) or they do not; either is acceptable. Some non- Muslim women also like to wear scarfs as in the Polish “babuszka”.

If it is not mandatory for Muslim women to wear a hijab (only to dress modestly) the wearing of a hijab is a personal choice of the woman and/or a cultural habit depending on which Islamic culture they belong to, than the case of discrimination because of religious grounds is baseless.

Since Abercrombie originally did not hire the woman in question because she did not comply with their “dress code” and since their dress code has nothing to do with religion and the hijab is not a religious requirement, the case against Abercrombie was a miscarriage of justice.

SUPREME COURT WAS WRONG IN ABERCROMBIE & FITCH...

The Supreme Court just voted 8-1 in favor of a Muslim woman that wore a head scarf (hijab) who was denied employment by Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

I was an employer for over 30 years (manufacturing) and am a social liberal.

Employers are OBLIGATED to accommodate (WITHIN REASON) the religious practices of workers and applicants unless they impose an UNDUE HARDSHIP on the business.

Justice Antonin Scalia, according to the Wall Street Journal’s “Justices Back Religious Rights” article by Jess Bravin (June 2, 2015) said that because federal law gives faith-related expression FAVORED TREATMENT, it is affirmatively obligating employers to accommodate things they could otherwise refuse.

The verdict which was 8-1 was based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prevented employment discrimination which, at the time, had more to do with race than any other factor.

Abercrombie & Fitch, at the time, had a dress code policy that did not allow head coverings and had nothing to do with religious practices, just a plain dress code. In fact religion was never mentioned in her employment interview and she did not ASK for the company to accommodate her wearing the Hijab on the job.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only one dissenting from the opinion and said that his understanding of the Civil Rights Act was that it banned INTENTIONAL DISCRIMINATION and not neutral policies like dress codes that “happen” to interfere with some religious practices.

In this matter I will have to agree with Justice Thomas (who I never agree with) that religious practices should not and cannot dictate how a business is run and to especially to “negate” company policy which is in place for all to see and abide by.

What I really disagree with is that the court has elevated religious practices to a level above all other factors in employment which according to our constitution is tantamount to “endorsing” religion as something our government feels is to be treated as “special” and “above” all secular factors. To me this is constitutionally problematic since our First Amendment bans our government from endorsing any and all religion.

I think the company made a mistake by not showing Samantha Elauf (the Hijab wearer) their dress code policy and asking her if she could abide by it. If she could not, it had every right to deny her employment as the rules of employment were clearly stated at the outset.

Elauf said after the verdict that she is happy that the court recognized that THIS TYPE OF DISCRIMINATION is wrong which to me is nonsensical since the company was not discriminating at all but just enforcing its dress code policy.

It is too bad that Abercrombie & Fitch did not want to defend itself in this case since it had many arguments they could have used in their favor but as a retailer, I can understand that they did not want to spoil their image with a bunch of customers.

I can defend a Muslim woman’s right to wear a hijab but I could also defend a company’s dress code policy as something that contributes to its positive image as a fashion seller and deviating from this policy as being detrimental to the image it is trying to maintain.

I think our Supreme Court is being unduly influenced by a desire to show Muslims how accommodating this country is and leaving common sense and basic fairness at the doorstep.

CNN series FINDING JESUS: Mary Magdalene...

The last of the CNN series FINDING JESUS was on Mary Magdalene.

This topic does not help us “find” Jesus or clues of him on earth but it is a tantalizing tale with many “ifs” that people just love to speculate about and people have been speculating about her from the very beginning.

When I was growing up Catholic, Mary Magdalene was thought of as a prostitute whose sins Jesus forgave. Well that is now considered FALSE and blamed on Pope Gregory the Great (not so great) who claimed that the UNNAMED prostitute in the Bible who washed Jesus’ feet in oil and dried them with her hair was actually Mary Magdalene…he made that up we now know.

Actually Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Gospels twelve (12) times which suggests she was a real factor in the life of Jesus. Many historians feel her role was downplayed by the Gospel writers because she was a woman in a patriarchal world and therefore could not be given important status.

The fact that Mary was the first person Jesus “chose” to appear to after his resurrection, according to the Gospels, gives her a status totally elevated above the apostles. In fact, The Gospel of Mark portrays most of the apostles as dumb as dirt type people who had trouble understanding the message of Jesus.

Non-canonical gospels discovered throughout the world such as the Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Phillip and even The Gospel of Mary suggest a much larger role for Mary in the life of Jesus. Historians believe that there may be a grain of truth in some or all of them. Some of these gospels state that the apostles, especially Peter, were extremely jealous of Mary since Jesus spent so much time with her talking and kissing; imagine that!

In fact, some historians consider Mary as the “Apostle to the Apostles” as they speculate that Jesus confided in Mary more than in the male apostles who were not as bright?

Some have romanticized the role of Mary saying she was the wife of Jesus, maybe his lover and even saying that there may have been children produced by the union; imagine that!

It seems clear that Mary as well as other female camp followers did provide money to the Jesus group; they had to eat you know. If Mary was the financial sponsor of Jesus’ mission, some historians believe she was much older than the common understanding of her as the same age as Jesus since the chance that a young woman was wealthy is less than an older woman who may have inherited her wealth from a dead father, etc.

You may be aware of the fact that MUHAMMAD the inventor of ISLAM was also taken under the wing of a wealthy older woman who he married and loved and who was his mentor for many years.

Anyway, Mary disappeared from history soon after the resurrection. The Gospels say Peter took over as leader of the group but it was JAMES, the brother of Jesus who really did. Mary was marginalized because of her gender as were other women in early Christianity who were actually bishops in the Church at one time; men always won in those days.

Mary Magdalene is a biblical figure which we probably will never know the truth about but she is enough of a factor for historians and historical fiction writers to speculate about. Too bad the Catholic Church chose to marginalize her as well as other females as it may have made the lot of women in the world a little easier.

This CNN series on Jesus has ended but another series has begun on a different channel. This one explores what “may have” happened after Jesus was crucified. I say may have because the gospels do not cover this period in detail so I am anxious to see what the writers have come up.