HillaryClintonOffice.com launched hosting only one feature: a contact-button. She wants us to talk to her. #herewego 
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In today’s politics and media, you no longer have to be a member of the elite corporate world to make a significant impact. An influential part of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent popularity stems not from her own work, but from the success of an internet meme called “Texts with Hillary.” 
The site featured a series of captioned pictures of people supposedly texting Clinton alongside a captioned response of her on her phone. The messages and their replies were fictional, but that just evidences how a public figure can become a site for storytelling; stories that drew together conversations from the state of the music world to the State of the nation. 
In that spirit, I will compose this piece #OntheFuture with a series of textable/tweetable points that engage with Clinton as a person and as a figure in under 120 characters. 
“Can a man run the State department?” Secretary Kerry, that depends on what kind of State Department we want. #nojoke 
Everyone got a laugh when the new Secretary of State John Kerry said that he had “big heels to fill.” He may not be laughing when he has to fit his feet into them. 
Hillary Clinton, or any woman, serving for four years in such an important public office does in fact change the nature of the position. The experience and perspective she brought to the last four years are ones that cannot easily or possibly be replicated by Kerry. 
There is no return to the status quo, women are changing the world underneath our feet and for some it may require a change in traditional foot-wear. 
What does it mean that the most popular public figure in the US is a woman? A new standard model for all genders. #69% 
A public poll taken at the end of her term as Secretary of State put Hillary Clinton above all other public officials, including President Obama. Clinton’s approval rating ranked in the 69th percentile, while the President’s rating trailed her in the 51st percentile. No other politicians, Democrat or Republican, came any closer. 
While Clinton’s popularity extends beyond gender, neither is it inextricable from it. Such a high rating demonstrates and reinforces her as a model for aspiring politicians of all embodiments and identities. In other words, in a critical sense, woman is becoming the new standard for excellence. 
People speak about “the End of Men.” I wish they were more serious, so we could begin imagining what could come next.  #post-man? 
Some have objected that Clinton is not feminine enough. I wonder if they ever complain that their men are not feminine enough. The thought is not unreasonable. 
With more and more women running the workforce, hosting the greater majority and diversity of advanced degrees, becoming the chief money-earners and the heads of house-holds, women are setting new standards for all genders and how we are to discuss gender. 
Complaints that women are now expected to do it all are fitting, because while certain aged boys-clubs hold on to key positions, a vacuum is being created in their wake, in other locations in the male-network. Men are stepping out of school and the work-place, but are generally not stepping into available positions in child-care, house-care, etc. As it is, many men (as well as women) have felt failed by an untenable model of masculinity that has made them obsolete in certain respects without the desire or the action to create a new one. 
Ask “What comes next?” but let’s imagine beyond history; i.e. Clinton 2016 would not be Clinton 2008. #norshoulditbe 
Histories are inscribed in the present in our skin and bone, but things change and so the present as well as the future opens up potential for what may happen and what we may become. 
There is a comfort (1) in predicting that Clinton will run again for president in 2016, (2) running the numbers that might predict her success, and (3) reading Clinton as stepping down from the office of Secretary of State to prepare for the run. 
However, we should remember that (1) Clinton today is not who she was in 2008 and she may not now nor in four years desire the presidency in the same way, (2) the needs and demands of the country can change radically within a year so that in four years’ time Clinton may be in a very different position if she ran, and (3) Clinton exists outside of the political arena and it is impossible, perhaps even difficult for those that know her, even herself, to say for sure where her decisions today will take her. 
While I right now would be excited if Clinton ran for President in 2016, I don’t want to limit my desire to what I simply know. 
What I want more than Hillary Clinton running for President: half a dozen women for President + some more. #stackthedeck 
Do we want Hillary Clinton to run? Does she want to run? Is this what we should be asking? 
Let’s change the premise of the question, because my daughter(s) will be Hillary Clinton, but things we cannot yet imagine, facing an America demanding skills we don’t yet have ourselves. We are holding ourselves and our children back by imagining too small, by imagining too little too late, and we do that by trying to imagine for them. 
Rather than demand that Clinton run in 2016, let us instead work to ready the ground for who we need when the moment comes. If we need Hillary Clinton in four years, then I hope there is room enough for six of her to show up; and many more others. 
How do we educate, train, burgeon their possibilities, give the loans, grants, scholarships, healthcare, the co-workers, the environment, the language, the ideas, the confidence to become unthought-of realities that are at best better and at very least other than the nightmares that we are able to imagine? How do we explore our blind-spots? How do we ask the right questions? That is where we meet ourselves in the present, thinking #OntheFuture by looking at this moment as an opportunity in its limits and its uncertainty. 
Let’s change the question from “Is America ready?” to “How do we make it more ready?” and “Let’s do it.” #makeitbetter 
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<pre>Image from: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/state-department-responds-claims-clinton-faked-illness-191054821.html</pre>

Texting with Hillary #OntheFuture

The discomfort at difference is a critical sensation and gift that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed we would share in  
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I am uncomfortable (while) writing this article, recognising Martin Luther King Jr. and his day of national remembrance—critically uncomfortable. 
Purchasing my passivity with benefits called “power” and “privilege”, I am made culpable for perpetuating systematic violence under the banner of whiteness—I am uncomfortable with that. 
The correct feelings, society has taught me, are to be simultaneously grateful, guilty, and complicit in “how far we have come”. As if distance is always a good thing. I would rather feel implicit and implicated. At some point my Polish features shifted from a marker of Eastern European insurgency to generic white ascendency, from backwater Catholic to acceptably Christian-Non religious, from dangerous to domestic, from one of “those” to one of “us”. Frankly I miss my friends on the outside and being allowed to publicly articulate all the costs of being brought into the fold—I am uncomfortable with this. 
I am suspicious of or outright fear anyone that fights intensely to be comfortable—not comforted, but comfort-able—able at any moment to feel “fortified” “with” their relation to others. I wonder, how many things are they missing, excluding and ignoring that which make them un-com/fort/able and where those things are supposed to go. How far will they go to remove this difference which disquiets them? 
One answer we have been receiving in addition to nominal inclusion is the offer to forget that we are ever or were ever excluded. How often do we hear people say they want to be “post-racial”? Is this not a dream of those that don’t want to feel guilty, contingent, responsible, or different? Who would get access to this world, what bodies, cultures, and alliances would be broken? Race as a way of knowing is also a way of meeting, of forming alliances as well as distinctions. 
Because I am now marked as white, I am regarded as a neutral and natural member of the dominant society, but I am aided in my ability to slip free at times and retain (even add critical mass to my discomfort) by my gender as a trans-woman. It does not make me an expert on race, nor does it excuse either my ignorance or my relations to others (directly or systematically) because of race, but it does allow me to better understand difference and the tactics people deploy to remove such disturbances from their world. 
Trying to be kind to me, people say they “don’t think genders (should) exist”; once again, assuming my complicity—as though I would go through the expense, suffering, and discomfort of being transgender if I didn’t care very much about gender. My gender gives me immense pleasure; it is my way of existing, feeling, fighting, associating and distinguishing myself. We need more genders, not less, and more and better ways of relating to gender. 
My gender, my difference from the properly white collective, marks me as more disposable, more marginal, always and already the recipient of prejudice. One can hardly be blamed if they slip up or slip into perpetuating systems which displace me, recites the public mind, because that is just the life of someone in my shoes—the shoes of an-other. 
Don’t get me wrong, people generally want to “do the right thing,” but they also want the disturbance to go away as quickly as possible. They tolerate or excuse my presence, in an act they view as charity motivated perhaps out of a kind of guilt. When they get the chance, however, many are ready to inform me or show suggestive body language that my presence does inflict a kind of injury and they want me to know that they are in fact bearing it—bearing me. 
They aren’t asking me to leave (isn’t that nice of them?). Or if they are asking, they want to do it nicely, because they know (or think they know) that I am not making anyone uncomfortable on purpose; that I don’t want to make them (or their parents, their grandparents, their employer, their town, their parish, or anyone not as charitable as them) “uncomfortable.” 
But I take pride when I do affect them, disturb them, make them uncomfortable. Not because I wish them ill, but because making them uncomfortable is my gift to them. They are having a “trans” moment, I say. They are experiencing difference, acknowledging that they participate in a system that tries to eliminate or pacify such difference, perhaps even feeling that they have suffered a personal loss for participating. 
Yes, I hope for more genders, more difference, more possibilities and more demands to come out of ourselves and relate to the world in its newness, its contingencies, and its discomfort with us. Thus, in a critical sense, we need more races and more and better ways of relating to race. We cannot and should not simply try to homogenize everything, white-wash everything until we are one nominally comfortable people; that simply covers things up, pacifies critical discomfort, and dangerously threatens to eliminate differences and the very memory of difference. 
Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of different children playing together, studying together, and working together, as a collective family. Few memberships exemplify differences between people more than being in a family. He asked us to love one another, but, again, family or not, it is the ones we love that give us the most discomfort. It is that bond of filial love that prohibits us from simply “getting rid of the disturbance” and instead demands that we live with, become affected by, and inhabit the space of disturbance. It asks us to count the cost of such fellowship and to remember why we pay it. Affectively, Dr. King dreamed we would share in his discomfort. 
So long as I am uncomfortable, I have a greater ability and a greater compulsion to move or step aside or set down my place for the sake of another; even if it is only a local and temporary act. By making another uncomfortable, I continue to provide them with an embodied mechanism by which they can see, pursue, and ally with lives that their “privilege” has denied them. Discomfort not only allows us to acknowledge our contingency with each other, our convivial and parasitic method of living, but offers us opportunities for exchange, change, and perhaps even escape—not escape from this world, for we are all in this together, but into difference, into yet other ways of being and being with, feeling and feeling with, comforting and discomforting with us all—and on this day in particular, I can show my love and respect for him, by being uncomfortable (along) with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
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<pre>Image from : http://www.redbubble.com/people/capdeville13/works/9864274-martin-luther-king-jr?p=t-shirt&amp;ref=work_carousel_work_portfolio_1</pre>

Uncomfortable (Along) with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The tragic events around us remind us of the enduring lessons of love and courage that we can learn from  
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A week ago, in my last women’s studies seminar of the semester, we were asked to each suggest one thing we would want to leave behind to our daughters. In the moment, I could think of no better gift than courage: the ability to face the impossible and the unthinkable with dignity. 
The killing of 20 children and young adults in an elementary school in Connecticut seemed impossible and unthinkable. Words cannot contain all the affects these events have on us. But we search for words like we search for a reason and for an end to such violence, nonetheless. This search is necessary. Such tragedies lay bare some of the countless failings we are all responsible for perpetuating. 
And yet, somehow, there always is a remainder in our search to bring meaning and control to such horrors, something left over that escapes our understanding. We cannot yet police all possibilities, much less all impossibilities. How can we think ahead and plan for the unthinkable? That is why amidst all the yelling and vengeance, all the bandages and reforms, we must also recognise the unintergratable fragments: the absent and the unknown. 
We have lost. We have failed. Many things will come from this, but not all the potentials that have been foreclosed, not all the things that might have come to be because these children (and they were all someone’s children) have been killed. Nothing, no lesson, no happy accident will bring back what has departed. Many things can be replaced with something else, but not absence. Absence lingers among us, however silent or invisible, like an angel or a ghost of things we may not even remember. Not all failures “get better” or turn into successes, if we go on at all it is by living with them, all the absent potentials and present impossibilities. 
We can live with absence, but how do we live with the unknown? With fear? How do we move on when the unthinkable can and does happen every day? We need courage. Courage is more than simply what we perform in dangerous circumstances, when the chances are against us. Courage can be how we face a circumstance that does not offer us any possible good outcomes. Courage is how we change the game when the rules in play have told us we have already lost. Courage dignifies us by denying that the meaning of lives and actions can be reduced to outcomes. 
It was the day of the Connecticut shooting, as I was getting off the train from DC to Chicago and had been disconnected from all the news of the day that an exchange from the film, “A Lion in Winter”, played through my head. It is when the sons of the king are getting ready to be put to death and one says to the other, “you fool, as if it matters how a man falls down,” to which to other replies “when the falling is all that is left, it matters a great deal.” I tweeted that and when I got home and read the tragic events of the day those words took on a whole new force for me. 
We go ahead because we have to, time keeps passing and things keeping moving, transforming. There is no way to prevent the impossible from happening again, but we can practice the courage to face it however it comes. It allows us to do things, because they must be done, even if we fail, even if we lose, even if we die before we know what came of them. We do what must be done because impossibilities defeat other impossibilities all the time and they can happen through us. 
As stories begin to come to light of the last moments of these kindergarteners, first graders, and school teachers not long out of college, we hear more about how people faced impossible circumstances with dignity. We hear the story of Victoria, a first grade teacher that hid her students in closets and cabinets when she heard the gunshots, then went to the door. When the shooter arrived, she told him that the students were in the gym. He shot her and moved on. 
Because of what she did, she died. Because of what she did, her students lived. We cannot imagine that such a shooting would ever happen to us, nor can we fully imagine what our reaction would turn out being at that moment. But when the impossibility of a gunman aiming to kill these children arrived, it was met by the impossibility of a young woman to face him so that others might live. They did live, and she didn’t, but even if they hadn’t, or she had, what she gave was her dignity in the face of an act of terror. This doesn’t resolve the absence or nullify the fear of the unknown, but shows us how we might face them. 
In the weeks that follow, we will be reminded about gun control laws, the inglorious glorification of murders and violence in the media, mental health, the different faces of terror and terrorism, as well as the uncountable other tragedies that occur every day in other places in the world. These conversations need to happen, because they are one way we do what must be done in the face of events that stare us down and say a violence-free-world is impossible. Sometimes the best way to thwart those statements of finality is to just carry on, somehow. 
I am not so cynical so as to discount one of the perhaps overprescribed and misunderstood methods of carrying on: love. As David Bowie and Queen once took the time to remind us: “These are the days it never rains but it pours…it’s the terror of knowing what the world is about; hearing some good friends screaming, ‘let me out’….Keep coming up with ‘love’ but it’s so slashed and torn&#8230;Can’t we give love that one more chance?” I don’t think it is now any less tacky to say that than when they did, but I don’t think that it is any less needed either. But what do I mean when I say this? Perhaps, nothing more than another “tired and broken hallelujah.” 
Then again…Living amidst poverty, violence, and hate acts on us perpetually, but there is untold, forgotten, absent, unthinkable and impossible goods that happen every day amidst all that because of people having the courage and dignity to take every opportunity to give the world one more gift of love. This is not a love that desires anything but to give itself and let the receiver do with the gift what it will. It is by this kind of love that things have come into being that would have otherwise been foreclosed. It is this gift of love that gives the world not what is just, but provides it with better than it deserves and more than it can handle. 
One of the gifts of this tragedy is change, another may be courage, and certainly one is absence. All may be more than we can handle and certainly more than we deserve, but we carry them with and within us regardless. It is our daughters (and sons) that in this case have left us something behind. These angels have left their message and departed, so that we may carry it on a little longer. Take it, feel it in your hands, and pass it on. As it carries on, it may carry us with it.
<pre>Image from: http://www.heraldsun.com.au</pre>

Carrying On When the Impossible Happens

While some have seen the re-election of president Obama as a sign that America is heading towards a more &#8220;moderate&#8221; disposition, the election season has highlighted a more conflicted image of the nation which is arguably more conservative and insular 
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&#8220;I&#8217;m voting for the nigger, because I couldn&#8217;t stand to vote for that liar,&#8221; a man in line tells &#8220;Obama for America&#8221; volunteers. He is dressed in warm flannel, slacks and has a gun-rack on his truck. This is not only Election Day here in Virginia, but the first frost. Perfect hunting weather. 
Coming back together after the election, my colleagues on the campaign and I discuss how electing and re-electing an African-American president has hardly moved the country as a whole further down the supposed &#8220;post-racial&#8221; road. Instead it has made many parts of the country more overtly racist and increased ethnic tensions as well as Islamophobia. 
This November 7th, 2012, President Barack Obama is re-elected for a second term, an accomplishment which his predecessor had called a &#8220;mandate&#8221; affirming the direction he has guided the country. The Obama campaign used similar logic when formulating their slogan for the 2012 campaign: &#8220;Forward.&#8221; 
Lacking the same ideological flourish that &#8220;Change,&#8221; &#8220;Hope&#8221; and &#8220;Yes We Can&#8221; afforded him in the 2008 campaign, &#8220;Forward,&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;ve Got his Back,&#8221; and &#8220;Fired Up and Ready to Go&#8221; bring with them military associations of a leader rallying his troops for a final push. No longer able to claim the grassroots outsider’s mantle, Obama plays the role which his opponents cannot claim in this presidential election: he is already president. 
Being the president of the United States at this time is not likely to make one popular. The national and international economies are still struggling; joblessness, lack of healthcare, and poverty are still dangerously high. The country is embroiled in numerous military campaigns abroad, with even more conflicts and drone attacks on the horizon. Gender, sexuality, racial, religious, disability, and immigrant minorities, among others, are still under attack and the president has at best shown a more moderate position towards their interests. 
Working on the Obama for America as a fellow for the last several months of the president&#8217;s re-election campaign, I became well schooled in all the accomplishments of President Obama during his first term. It is an impressive list, all things considered, and evidence that much of the promises made during the first campaign were tried and many accomplished, with a few surprises including the retraction of &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221; and Obama&#8217;s endorsement of gay marriage. 
Nonetheless, the general mood around our local campaign headquarters is more somber and measured than I remember the 2008 campaign being. This is not only because we know with even more certainty that Obama is not going to totally transform how US politics function, but we have witnessed over four years a frightening shift in Congress and in the country as a whole. 
Contrary to the &#8220;Forward&#8221; narrative that we are trying to instate and despite some &#8220;leftist&#8221; accomplishments, this country is more conservative than ever. The country is more liberal than before, but increasingly more &#8220;neo-liberal,&#8221; which shares more ideologically, if not rhetorically, with the Tea-Party than the Democrats of old. Some have tried to term the direction of the country as &#8220;Moderate,&#8221; but if the country could be grouped together under any one identity then the candidates should have had an easier time in courting votes. No, what this neo-liberal conservatism amounts to is a kind of siege mentality. 
The population feels under attack, not only by foreign and terrorist groups, but by America. Mistrust, apathy, fear and anger are incredibly high among voters that I spoke to throughout the election season. People don&#8217;t like the government right now. People don&#8217;t like big  businesses, either. People aren&#8217;t very keen on people in general. If the electorate could have had their own slogan this election, it would have been something like &#8220;Protect me, pay me, and then leave me alone&#8221;. 
As the debates made clear, the United States has become less and less interested in presenting itself as the knight in shining armour, going out and doing good at home and abroad, but is more comfortable at revealing its collective interest having high-walls, scared enemies, and a pulled-up draw-bridge. It&#8217;s a picture we saw presented by the country as a whole and by individual families and workers that just want to survive &#8220;the danger&#8221;, however long it lasts. 
While I am encouraged in some respects by the jump in states that either legalised same-sex marriage or voted down its ban, as well as by the number of states loosening their drug policies (ones that disproportionately see queers and people of colour jailed at troubling rates), the &#8220;progress&#8221; of these ballot measures remains towards the sentiment that we don&#8217;t care what you do in your own homes, just so long as we are free and safe in the protective walls of our own house. 
One might be inclined to read the reelection of President Obama as an affirmation of the &#8220;Forward&#8221; movement of recent <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2012/09/17/on-the-health-of-a-nation/">Healthcare Reform</a>, and while at a federal level it has been protected, in three states its jurisdiction has been curtailed with a fourth offering a ballot measure to curtail its affects on their state healthcare by voting it down. Here we can see the uneasy assemblage that is the United States displaying its powers and tendency of working in cross directions, despite increased Federal powers over the last decades, the states can continue to forge divergent paths both from other states and from the country as a whole. 
Thinking back on the Virginian hunter that voted for Barack Obama, while continuing to hate him as a person and a political figure, I wonder at the President&#8217;s slogan: &#8220;Forward.&#8221; In some ways, the country is forging ahead, but in so many conflicting directions that to many of us, depending on where we are looking, it might as well be called a &#8220;Backward&#8221; movement. On the whole, as a member of the Obama for America Campaign, I feel like we have won a battle, but in a war of contrition. We won by moving to the middle, by using the terminology of conservatives and siege-warfare. From this crossroad and war-zone, “Forward” may lead nowhere or anywhere.
<pre>Photo Credits: Bill Tiernan/Virginian-Pilot/AP</pre>

The Post-Campaign Question: Which Way is “Forward”?

While the discovery of a manuscript suggesting that Jesus may have been married may prove an interesting historical document, such assertions have little impact on the theological discourse within Christianity 
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Recently, some attention has been given to a newly discovered fragment of text which suggests that Jesus may have been married. Reporting on this, the Huffington Post published an article entitled, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-dantonio/jesus-had-a-wife_b_1893481.html">“What if Jesus had a Wife?”</a>, by Michael D’Antonio. 
“The ancient Coptic document includes the phrase ‘Jesus said to them, my wife’ using a term that undoubtedly references a woman who was his spouse and not some metaphorical partner”, writes Antonio. 
What is most significant about the discovery of this text and the conversation around it, particularly this article&#8217;s approach, is that many people have different understandings of what the Bible is and how it came to be. For many, the news that there are other texts that speak about Jesus or give alternative narratives from the early centuries of the Common Era, alongside the canonical Gospels, is a real shocker. It shouldn&#8217;t be. 
That there are four Gospels in the Bible testifies to the fact that there were multiple narratives with enough important differences that could not be collapsed into one story, and instead had to be kept separate  &#8211; some may even say, competing. It also evidences that, from early on, the church had disagreements over what we would now call &#8220;historical facts&#8221; of Jesus&#8217;s life and how we are to understand Christ, God, and the world, although the distinction between history and philosophy, theology and ethics were not so compartmentalised in most of these communities. 
As such, when the Bible was being composed under the reign of Emperor Constantine, and Christianity was being reformed into a state-sponsored organisation, there were debates over which texts to include. They did not simply collect all the existent narratives, assume they were all valid and prudent for endorsement, and send it off to the printers. Delegates may very well have been aware of versions of the texts that we have found in the Dead Sea Scrolls or some iteration of the text that this fragment came from, and for whatever reason, they deemed many things unworthy of inclusion in the Bible. 
For instance, the Gospel of John, dated as the most recent of the four canonical Gospels, was composed after all those who might have been alive during Jesus’s time had died. While it was a favourite of the church for its high Christological and theological commentary, it was almost not included by the compilers of the Bible because it contained what was considered too much radical Greek, gnostic philosophy &#8211; with it, a preference for the mind over the body. Again, the concern was not exactly to give historical accuracy, as it was more to convey a world view which had developed from Jesus&#8217;s life, through his community (largely via oral transmission, with the aid of some letters and scrolls), and testified to a certain understanding of the world. 
Let&#8217;s assume for a moment that this new gospel was rejected on the grounds that in its version of the narrative of Jesus&#8217;s life, he took a wife and perhaps even had children. There may be more problems that come from affirming this, than there are benefits for one&#8217;s relationship with God. 
D’Antonio’s article took the opinion that Jesus having a wife somehow gives women equal status among men. Anyone who believes this should look at marriage law and norms in this period, because they will find that far from making women equal, it would rather confirm an inequality &#8211; even an ownership &#8211; of women under men. If we are to be Christ-like in this way, this would most likely result in regarding women, ultimately, as property. By omitting marriage in the story, there is more ambiguity as to Jesus’s relations with, and his opinion of, the status of women. 
What’s more, since Christian teachings &#8211; at least of the Roman Catholic Church &#8211; are also that marriage is an &#8220;earthly&#8221; not an &#8220;eternal&#8221; affair, so that the vow remains &#8220;until death do us part&#8221;, the marriage bond between Jesus and his alleged wife would be voided after his death and give no fixed understanding of her relation to the now Resurrected or Risen Christ. 
On the matter that this would change the celibate status of priests, that may be true, but the significance of this change may be greatly diminished by an understanding of the history of that doctrine taught by the church. Firstly, the current list of sacraments (seven in the Roman Catholic Church) were only agreed upon in the latter half of the church&#8217;s history and marriage was almost not counted because it was regarded too much as a civil and &#8220;earthly&#8221; affair instead of as a spiritually imperative ritual. We may find it hard to believe that there was a time when the church did not generally consider marriage to be any of its business. For Catholics, marriage remains today the only sacrament exclusively performed by non-priests, since the priest only officiates the ritual. 
It is also not until this past millennia that priests have been unable to marry. For more than half of church history, priests have been free to marry, and generally historians agree that the celibacy of priests was established primarily to ensure that the family of the priests did not receive the right to church-owned land and money. The Eastern Orthodox solved this dilemma by letting priests marry but not bishops, and it is bishops that own the property of the church, not priests. 
I do not believe that if Jesus was married, that Christian perspectives on sex would radically change. For Catholics, much of the church teaching on sex is based on Natural Law, which is a school of theological philosophy and not greatly scriptural. While I have great problems with the legitimacy of Natural Law as a school of thought, it does prove that, for Catholics at least, scripture is not the sole source of teaching or authority, nor is it taken entirely or equally as literal fact. 
As such, &#8220;Conservative&#8221; Christian arguments on how sexuality should be treated, in or out of marriage, would not be greatly affected by the discovery that Jesus was married unless it went into explicit detail. Likewise with &#8220;Liberal&#8221; Christian arguments, the mere fact of Jesus being married would not necessitate a particular view of sexuality or gender. 
What this shows us is that while the historical facts surrounding Jesus, as we would currently understand them, may have some relevance to our understanding of his life, they have little effect on the theological truths on which faith usually rests. As such, I would contend that reforms among Christians, especially Catholics, regarding the valuation and treatment of sex and gender should be made &#8211; but are perhaps more effectively made on philosophical and political grounds. Historical or scientific confirmation that Jesus of Nazareth had a wife is not likely to have much of an effect on a Christian’s understanding of Christ and the church, certainly not as much as  people from outside of the discourse of faith would expect.
<pre>Photo Credits: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865562689/New-Christian-gospel-indicates-Jesus-may-have-had-a-wife.html?pg=all</pre>

So What if Jesus Had a Wife?

The Democratic National Convention sets a message on healthcare 
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In politics, it’s usually not about winning &#8220;the game&#8221;, but about determining which game is being played. For Democrats and Republicans, if they can make the presidential election about issues they are strong in, or more importantly, perceived to be strong in, they will likely win the day. 
That is why, as I watched the Democratic National Convention, one conversation that the speeches and pundits kept on returning to was healthcare. 
With the passing of the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, the Democrats have a strong and very public hand to play. Now, the president and the Democrats did not convince everyone that Obamacare was in their best interest when the bill was being debated in Congress, and they have not currently convinced everyone of that fact either, but to a certain extent they don&#8217;t need to. What the long fight over the bill has done and what the continued noise about it does now, is equate the Democrats and the president with healthcare reform. 
Those that oppose it probably wouldn&#8217;t vote for the president, for a variety of reasons. Those that are indifferent to it (the group that Democrats need to win), will now likely explore healthcare to determine whether or not they will vote for the president. While the bill had flaws, they will likely find that it was needed, and that Democrats at least made attempts to improve conditions. If undecided voters don&#8217;t look into the details of the bill, again, they will at least have the general impression that it is an area where the Democrats demonstrate strength. 
Marketing healthcare as a central issue in this campaign, the Democrats brought out a variety of public figures that would carry the message to their expected audiences. Carol Berman addressed concerns of the elderly, a large voting block, citing free preventative care and cheaper drugs, while raising fear of Governor Romney&#8217;s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program: 
&#8220;Seniors will get a voucher to purchase health insurance, but the voucher won’t keep up with the costs, which could push people into private insurance plans&#8230;even though many seniors are on fixed incomes, it could add up to $6,400 more a year in out-of-pocket costs.” 
The Honorable James Clyborn and Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago and President Obama&#8217;s former Chief-of-Staff, spoke on the benefits of Obamacare for families, children with pre-existing conditions, those that develop illnesses which could cause their plan to get dropped, and young adults having trouble finding work and needing to remain on their parents plan. 
The First Lady, Michelle Obama, echoed the president&#8217;s position on women&#8217;s healthcare, strongly asserting that the president &#8220;believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our healthcare.&#8221; 
Next to President Obama, the arguable winner of the Convention was former President Bill Clinton. His address aimed to counter the tone of the Republican National Convention, particularly Congressman Ryan&#8217;s speech, by focusing on policy specifics and fact-checking; quoting a Romney Campaign pollster that they &#8220;are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Indeed, Clinton&#8217;s success on this point of public perception was confirmed the next day when the veracity (what Stephen Colbert refers to as &#8220;truthiness&#8221;) of his information was ranked highly and contrasted to the lack of truthiness found in Ryan’s speech. 
&#8220;Look, here’s what really happened&#8230;There were no cuts to benefits at all,&#8221; Clinton explained on the changes to Medicare. “What the president did was&#8230;cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service&#8230;he used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program&#8230;to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent until 2024.” 
Clinton spoke on the dangers of voting for the Romney-ticket, citing that it &#8220;want[s] to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming 10 years. Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids. But that’s not all. A lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid.&#8221; 
&#8220;It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions,&#8221; Clinton said, invoking a growing contingent of advocates for people with disabilities. &#8220;And, honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to do everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.&#8221; 
With Clinton giving details and statistics, by the time President Obama took the stage, he could focus on the rhetorical style he does best: disciplined but sweeping speech aimed to inspire. 
The president underlined the diversity and needs of voters spoken to by the other Democrats. &#8220;I refuse to ask students to pay more for college&#8230;or eliminate health insurance for millions of Americans who are poor, elderly, or disabled – all so those with the most can pay less.” 
Then addressing those disappointed by the lack of progress on numerous issues, the president argued that one of his primary promises since 2008 has been to lay foundations for long term systemic change, as opposed to the Republican program of cutting taxes and regulations. 
&#8220;This is the choice we now face&#8221;, the president said. &#8220;This is what the election comes down to. Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way; that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing. If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick. If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that’s just the price of progress.” 
The president concluded by framing how the popular movement and promises which first put him into office connect with the last four years which in turn relate to the vote on 4 November. &#8220;The election four years ago wasn’t about me. It was about you. My fellow citizens &#8211; you were the change. You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage. You did that. You’re the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he’d be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance. You made that possible.&#8221; 
&#8220;If you turn away now – if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible…well, change will not happen&#8230;Only you have the power to move us forward,&#8221; the president added, tying in the public as co-responsible for the success of his presidency and the health of the nation. &#8220;I’m hopeful because of you.&#8221;
<pre>Image from: http://www.news24.com/World/US-elections-2012 </pre>

M W Bychowski