Israeli Prime Minister is such a liar that even Donald Trump is calling him out. Hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene is accusing him of committing genocide. Ouch.
Bibi denied claims that he’s starving Gaza, and said, “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza. We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza – otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”
He’s a liar. Israel has bombed convoys bringing in humanitarian relief to Gaza, and it won’t allow aid from the United Nations to enter Gaza half the time.
The World Health Organization said Sunday there have been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under the age of 5, up from 11 deaths total in the previous six months of the year.
Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the number even higher, reporting 82 deaths this month of malnutrition-related causes: 24 children and 58 adults. Yesterday, it said that 14 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas government, is headed by medical professionals and is seen by the U.N. as the most reliable source of data on casualties. U.N. agencies also often confirm numbers through other partners on the ground.
The WHO also said acute malnutrition in northern Gaza tripled this month, reaching nearly one in five children under 5 years old, and has doubled in central and southern Gaza. The U.N. says Gaza’s only four specialized treatment centers for malnutrition are “overwhelmed.” Children are going days without eating.
Palestinians want a full return to the U.N.-led aid distribution system that was in place throughout the war, rather than the Israeli-backed mechanism that began in May.
55 trucks from the United Nations’ food program entered Gaza yesterday, and they were all looted by starving Gazans. There are also food drops, but that’s not enough.
Witnesses and health workers say Israeli forces have killed hundreds by opening fire on Palestinians trying to reach food distribution hubs or while crowding around entering aid trucks. The Israeli Defense Force says it has fired warning shots to disperse threats. But as we’ve learned throughout this war, the IDF lies.
The UN needs the IDF’s permission to bring food into Gaza, and they claim the military denies them over half the time. The Hamas police would protect the trucks from being looted by hungry Gazans, but they stopped after being shot at by the IDF. (snip-MORE)
While meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Kier Starmer, Donald Trump said he had been invited to Epstein’s Island, but that he turned it down and “never had the privilege” of visiting the island. It was right then that PM Starmer realized he was sitting with a lunatic who is most likely a pedophile.
Trump deflected to other people, saying, “I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. I never went to the island, but (former Treasury Secretary) Larry Summers, I hear, went there, he was the head of Harvard. And many other people that are very big people, nobody ever talks about them.”
That word salad makes you wonder how much Adderall Trump snorted before his meeting with Starmer.
There are no records of Bill Clinton ever going to Epstein’s private island, so I don’t know where Trump got the number 28 from when he can’t even find one visit. The thing is, Donald Trump is a liar and a golf cheat. More on that in a minute.
Trump said, “I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn him down. But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”
All of Donald Trump’s moments are pretty bad, at least for other people. Saying you never had the privilege of visiting a pedophile’s island is not a good moment. Neither are the moments he flew on Epstein’s private jet, or the times he partied with Epstein while they were ogling young women. (snip-MORE)
I wasn’t an adult in 1972, but it was a relief to me, that there was no more death penalty! Four years later, it was back, and I cannot explain how that happened. My town had a death penalty trial almost immediately. A teacher had access to an execution film; the state was required to keep that on record for a while, whenever anyone sat on Ol’ Sparky; we viewed it before the trial (no one present was on the jury, of course.) It was medieval. And, here we still are in 2025, killing people in the names of everybody who lives here. There are ways to work against it; let me know if there is interest in comments.
July 29, 1970 Signing the contract After a five-year strike, the United Farm Workers (UFW) signed a contract with the table grape growers in California, ending the first grape boycott. Exploring the United Farm Workers’ History
July 29, 1972 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote. The Court called the wide discretion in application of capital punishment, including the appearance of racial bias against black defendants, “arbitrary and capricious” and thus in violation of due process guarantees in the 14th Amendment [see July 28, 1868]. Influence of race on imposition of the death penalty
July 28, 1917 Anti-Lynching Parade in New York City, 1917 W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Read about W.E.B. DuBois Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, and the film
July 28, 1932 Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression. More on the Bonus Army (It’s WaPo; you can read it for free, but you have to sign in) Film of the confrontation in Washington (Watch on YouTube for free without sign in)
July 28, 1965 Pfc. John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens. [Khe Sanh, February 1968.]” Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar. 1968. cover President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled. Lyndon Johnson told the nation Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please Though it isn’t really war We’re sending fifty thousand more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese — part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” Full lyrics of the song President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.””
July 28, 1982 San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.
My thanks to Charlotte Clymer for the news! Here’s a snippet:
The Good Lord’s Porn Enthusiast by Charlotte Clymer
Hands can never be idle when they’re in prayer. Read on Substack
(snip) So, it came as some surprise when reports emerged that Mr. Walters is being accused of displaying pornography on a television in his office during an executive session of the State Board of Education this past Thursday, according to a few board members in attendance.
Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage—both of whom were appointed this year to the Board by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitts—were the only two in a position to see the screen and were understandably shocked. Here’s what Ms. Carson said:
I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like, ‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was watching.
I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully, like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, ‘What is on your TV? What am I watching?’ He was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ He stood up and saw it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,” Carson recalled. “And I said, ‘Turn it off. Now.’ And he was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ So he acknowledged it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, ‘I can’t get it to turn off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off.’ And I said, ‘Get it turned off.’ So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn’t address it. He didn’t apologize. Nothing was said.
Mr. Deatherage concurred: “I don’t know if he turned it off or switched the channel, I don’t remember. I was surprised that when he came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn’t ever hear an apology for that being on, and he didn’t seem to be fazed that it was on.”
Republican leaders in the State Senate are now launching an investigation into the matter, which they described as a “bizarre and troubling situation.” All seem unanimously perplexed and concerned. (snip-please do go read the rest; Charlotte closes with some excellent wordplay!)
July 27, 1919 A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams. The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23 colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future . . . .” The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station. Gangs and the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.
July 27, 1953 After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March. Korean War Memorial photo: Heather Stanfield The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces. There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died. There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict.
July 27, 1954 The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ’90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war. “They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country’s only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.” Jacobo Arbenz More about Arbenz The real coup story through official U.S. documents
July 27, 1996 Trident sub being loaded Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles). Details of the action
If Texas Wants To Play Dirty, Kathy Hochul, Gavin Newsom, And JB Pritzker Are Ready To Get In The Mud by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Texas using its ‘hey let’s do something about flood warnings’ special session to cheat like the dickens. Read on Substack
The Texas Lege is in special session and putting together a redistricting plan aimed at adding five new Republican-leaning congressional districts, in hopes that might improve the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House in next year’s midterms. No, there hasn’t been another Census that you forgot about, they just want to rig the electoral map for Daddy Trump.
During a committee hearing on the gerrymandering plan Thursday evening, a Democratic candidate for Congress, Isaiah Martin, was tackled and arrested because he wouldn’t yield the floor after his time expired. Martin was testifying to a state House committee against the plan, which is likely to chop up the 18th Congressional District where he’s running to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in office in March.
“You need to have shame. History will not remember you for what you have done. It is a shame,” Martin yelled out as he was shoved to the ground. “It’s horrific for what you have done. You should all be ashamed. America will rise up against you!”
Martin was booked into Travis County Jail on charges of “criminal trespass, disrupting a meeting or procession and resisting arrest,” but eventually all the charges were dropped. But not quickly: Instead of simply being booked and released Thursday, Martin was held in the jail for about 26 hours, only getting out at 9:30 p.m. Friday — and then he told reporters he plans to be at a second redistricting hearing being held today in Houston.
The special session of the Lege was called to pass disaster relief following the deadly flash floods in the Texas hill country a few weeks ago, but Republicans decided — after Donald Trump told them to do it — that it was also a dandy opportunity to try to prop up the slim and increasingly unpopular GOP majority in Congress.
Before his time ran out and his mic was cut off, Martin condemned Republicans for turning a deadly disaster into a power grab:
“And you choose, after we literally got out of one the worst mass casualty events in our state’s history, to go and gerrymander people out of their seats. That’s what you have chosen to do with your time,” Martin said. “Because you are scared of Donald Trump. You are scared and terrified because you are seeking an endorsement.”
Dems Name ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ Tune In Three Notes
Also on Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s not ruling out the possibility of redistricting in her state if Texas and Ohio insist on artificially juicing Republicans’ chances. Speaking at an unrelated event in Buffalo, Hochul answered a reporter’s question by saying, in effect, hell yeah, if they’re gonna play dirty, we’re not going to take it sitting down: (vid on the page)
“All’s fair in love and war. We are following the rules. We do redistricting every 10 years. But if there’s other states violating the rules and are trying to give themselves an advantage, all I’ll say is, I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries.”
In answer to a follow-up question, Hochul added, “I’m not surprised that they’re trying to break the rules to get an advantage. But that’s undemocratic, and not only are we calling them out, we’re also going to see what our options are.”
That could be easier said than done, because unlike Texas, New York actually has a bunch of dumb clean-government laws aimed at preserving electoral fairness, including a constitutional provision specifying that redistricting can only be done once every 10 years, following the US Census. Lousy stinking good government!
In 2022, the state’s highest court threw out a Legislature-drawn electoral map that gave an advantage to Democrats (22 D-advantage seats and four R-leaning seats, compared to the prior map’s 19-8 split), so the maps were redrawn by a state court. That gave Republicans a chance to win more seats in Congress, but the good news here is that thanks to Trump’s fuckery and to their support of the Big Ballocky Buggery Bill that everyone hates (and that not even Republican voters are all that fond of), many of those narrowly elected Republicans are likely to be in trouble next year anyway.
“This is not a bluff,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Friday afternoon, minutes after meeting with Democrats from the Texas House. “This is real, and trust me, it’s more real after listening to these leaders today, how existential this is.”
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois issued a similar pledge. “Everything is on the table,” he said on Friday.
Pritzker added that he considered redistricting in between Censuses to be “cheating,” but if Texas Republicans go ahead and “take this drastic action, then we also might take drastic action to respond.”
As in New York, redistricting in either state could be a heavy lift, since Illinois’s electoral maps were already redrawn in 2021 to add one Democratic district and eliminate two Republican-advantaged ones — a move that also led to more extreme Republicans winning their primaries for the remaining R-leaning seats.
In California, district lines are drawn by an independent commission, but Newsom said Friday that he’s considering several different options that could change that process in time for the 2026 election. That could include maybe a voter referendum, or getting a two-thirds vote in the state Lege to allow changes. He said after meeting with the Texans, “We have got to fight fire with fire,” emphasizing that it’s really up to whether Texas goes ahead with its gerrymander.
And back in Texas, Democrats in the Lege are considering all their (very limited) options. Friday’s trips to meet with Pritzker and Newsom took place while the special session was in recess, but the idea of blocking a quorum in the state House by skedaddling from the state — a time-honored tradition in Texas politics — is just one thing Dems are looking at if it becomes necessary. If they do that, each member could be fined $500 a day for being absent, under a 2021 rule change Republicans passed after the last time Democrats went on Rumspringa, that time to delay passage of Republicans’ voter-suppression bill, which eventually passed anydamnway, because electoral fuckery is a time-honored tradition for Texas Republicans, the end. (snip)
July 26, 1953 In his first move to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, 26-year-old Fidel Castro led 134 other young revolutionaries to unsuccessfully attack the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Castro had concluded that armed struggle was the only way to unseat Batista, who had taken power in a military coup in 1952. The Cuban Revolution is known as the July 26 Movement, and is celebrated annually there. The Moncada Barracks, still showing a few bullet holes and pockmarks from that fateful early morning assault in 1953, is now both a historic site and an elementary school.
July 26, 1967 H. Rap Brown, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was ordered arrested by then-Governor Spiro Agnew, who accused him of inciting a riot through his speech two days earlier at a civil rights rally in Cambridge, Maryland. At the event, Brown declared, “Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down . . . If Cambridge doesn’t come around, Cambridge got to be burned down.” Shortly after the speech, Brown was hit in the head by buckshot from a policeman’s shotgun. That night the segregated elementary school on the black side of town and 20 businesses burned down (there was no looting), some along Race Street, the racial divide which neither black nor white were expected to cross. H. Rap Brown following the disturbances in Cambridge, Maryland. What happened in Cambridge
July 26, 1990 The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It prohibited discrimination based on disability in employment, in public accommodation (e.g., hotels, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, health care facilities, convention centers), in transportation services, and in all activities of state and local governments. The law did not go into effect until January 26, 1992.
July 24, 1974 The United States Supreme Court (U.S. v. Nixon) unanimously ordered President Richard Nixon to surrender tape recordings of White House conversations regarding the Watergate affair. Speaking for the Supreme Court in front of a packed and hushed courtroom, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (a Nixon appointee) rejected President Nixon’s claims of executive privilege (virtually total confidentiality for the White House) because the need for fair administration of criminal justice must prevail. The White House feared review of the recordings by a U.S. district judge would reveal, among other crimes, impeachable offenses. Listen to the tapes online (It’s a YouTube playlist!)
July 24, 1983 Canadians and Americans spanned the international border at Thousand Islands Bridge, linking New York and Ontario, to protest nuclear weapons and border harassment of peace activists. Thousand Islands Bridge
July 24, 1983 Women tagged a U.S. warplane with anti-nuclear graffiti at Greenham Common, an air base in England. The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp had been set up just outside the perimeter of the base in 1981 to get U.S. Cruise missiles, some of which were deployed at the base, out of their country. Other tactics included disrupting construction work at the base, blockading the entrance, and cutting down parts of the fence. Read more about The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
Mesopithecus pentelicus thrived in the rainforests of the late Miocene, 7 million years ago. Credit: Mauricio Antón
Small, slender and short-lived, with broad noses, big, dark-adapted eyes, living underground, and in the shadows of a shattered, steamy, chaotic world. Richard Musgrove asks: will this be us in 10,000 years?
Climate change is the greatest challenge in human history – current trends could have us eventually approaching extremes not seen on our planet for 15 million years. Will a destabilised global climate wreak economic havoc, leading to societal collapse, mass mortalities, even extinction? Or will we pull ourselves out of this spectacular self-imposed nose-dive?
Which raises the question – what if we don’t? How will humanity change on a much hotter Earth?
Numbers matter
Uncharted territory approaches as we nudge the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, on track for a potentially catastrophic 2.7°C by 2100. What about 2200, or 3200?
Globally, days above 50°C have doubled since the 1980s – in Australia, Pakistan, India and the Persian Gulf – with the ‘feels-like’ temperature often higher. Even immediately reduced carbon emissions will still mean lingering planet-wide heating and associated effects for many thousands of years.
Our adaptability has led us this far, but what does evolution have in store for our species if we don’t rise to face our greatest challenge? The answer is unlikely to be in the mirror.
Nothing sweats like us (snip-MORE)
===========
Medicaid ‘gamers’ are the new ‘welfare queens’ by Aaron Rupar
Republicans are taking strawman arguments to absurd extremes. Read on Substack
Earlier this month, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed a grotesque budget bill that (partially) funds massive tax breaks for the wealthy and a ramped-up ICE goon squad by cutting cutting $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and an additional $185 billion from federal food assistance programs, all while adding $2.8 trillion to the deficit.
Not surprisingly, the bill is massively unpopular. As a result, Republicans are gaslighting Americans about its impact, particularly regarding the cuts to Medicaid, which are expected to cost 10 million Americans their health coverage.
The Medicaid cuts could result in more than 16,000 extra deaths per year, researchers say. Republicans have tried to distract from that reality with a combination of blatant lies and misdirecting rhetoric. To hear them tell it, they’re only cutting supposed waste, fraud, and abuse. So when you lose benefits, they’re here to explain why it’s probably your own damn fault.
The lazy gamer myth
Republican messaging surrounding Medicaid cuts borrows heavily from Ronald Reagan’s playbook. (snip- MORE)
Of course, there are innumerable instances when the Bible has historically been used to enforce the idea that gender is a divinely ordained binary, with male and female genders that are distinct, complementary, and assigned at birth.
Indeed, the Bible’s general attitude toward gender is expansive, with verses exploring God’s focus on the interior over the exterior, the distinction between sex and gender, the role of eunuchs in scripture, and more.
Here are 10 Bible verses that show a biblical approach to gender that is as varied as the colors in a rainbow.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Day and night. Water and dry land. Male and female. The creation poem might sound like it’s dealing in binaries, but we know that all of these things have transitional elements. Day and night contain transitions at dawn and dusk; the spectrum of water and dry land includes tidal plains and coral reefs; and people who are intersex, genderqueer, nonbinary, and more can be found between “male and female”.
Genesis 25:27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.
Jacob is described as “smooth” (Genesis 27:11) and stays in the tent where he cooks – traditional female attributes in the ancient world. Yet he is chosen over his “hairy” brother Esau, a skilled hunter, to lead God’s people, showing that God does not place value on traditional gender norms.
Isaiah 56:4-5 For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
Eunuchs were men who had been castrated, especially those employed to guard the women’s living areas. They represent clear historical examples outside of the gender binary in the Bible and are welcomed into the temple and to the community of worship.
Matthew 19:11-12 But [Jesus] said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
The disciples ask Jesus to clarify the explanation of gender in Genesis 1 as it relates to divorce. In answering them, Jesus offers this non-judgmental example of eunuchs that invokes a range of genders. This indicates the law should be flexible enough to allow for this range, instead of being too narrow to recognize its existence.
Galatians 3:27-28 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
The apostle Paul explains that unity in Christ is what’s important, superseding the concept of gender and other identity markers.
Mark 11:17 [Jesus] was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
In this verse, Jesus is referencing Isaiah 56, when eunuchs are welcomed into the community at temple. He prioritizes welcoming all people, regardless of gender.
Acts 8:38-39 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.
1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
When the prophet Samuel was charged by God to look for a new king, David didn’t seem as king-like as the other options presented to Samuel — but he was still the right choice. Once again, we see that God does not share the human preoccupation with external biological features. Our physical bodies do not determine deeper matters of our identity.
Romans 2:29 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.
As with the example of God choosing David because of what was in his heart, here the Bible says that physical alteration (like being circumcised) isn’t what matters to God — it’s what’s in the heart.
Genesis 16:13 So [Hagar] named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi,” for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Hagar changes the name she uses for God, reflecting a change in how she recognizes who God is — not a change in God’s own identity, but an uncovering that leads to a fuller understanding and affirmation of God’s identity. Similarly, someone may choose to change the gender (and the name that goes with it) that they identify with as a reflection of a greater understanding and affirmation of who they are, out of a desire that the world may better know and understand them, too.
Heather BradyHeather Brady is the audience engagement manager at Sojourners.
July 23, 1846 Author Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax as a protest against the Mexican war, which in turn led to his writing “Civil Disobedience.” This essay became a source of inspiration for Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. From Thoreau’s essay: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau Out of Thoreau’s jailing grew a legend: The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked, “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied, “Why are you not here? Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Thoreau was not alone in his opposition: Thomas Corwin of Ohio denounced the war as merely the latest example of American injustice to Mexico: “If I were a Mexican I would tell you,‘Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead.’” Henry Clay [former speaker of the House and presidential candidate] declared, “This is no war of defense, but one of unnecessary and offensive aggression.” Abraham Lincoln also opposed the war, and lost his seat in Congress as a result. The entire essay (in annotated form)
July 23, 1967 Detroiters angry at loss of jobs and, especially, at the abusive and virtually all-white police department, started rioting in what became known as the Detroit Rebellion. The intitiating incident was an early-morning raid on a blind pig (Detroit for after-hours drinking club) on 12th Street. The violence spread elsewhere in the city, and led to President Lyndon Johnson’s calling out 8000 members of the National Guard. Order was not restored for six days. In the end, there were 43 known dead, 347 injured, 3800 arrested, 1000 families homeless. Thirteen hundred buildings burned to the ground and twenty-seven hundred businesses were looted. Online documentary on all aspects of what happened, “Ashes to Hope” The Rebellion from a 40-year perspective
Scottie's Playtime 