People forget that Christianity started out as a Jewish heresy, which is why the Old Testament is a part of the bible. Paul started in on the Gentiles when it was clear the Jews weren’t interested. Jesus, whatever his lineage, was the promised messiah, the one descended from David who would re establish the house ofdavid and the righteous kingdom of Israel. He failed to deliver the promised political changes, and was perhaps farm more interested his role as apocalyptic prophet than he was in a political undertaking.

The antiSemitism of historic Christianity is visible as early as the book of acts. By the time the gospel of John appeared, the Jews had been turned into devils who refused Jesus and caused him to be killed. The disappearance of Jewishness from both Jesus and his apostles was into full flower.

That’s why, in my opinion, it is so easy for antiSemites to avoid the obvious conrptradiction in their prejudice. They Christian mentality and the Christian mind were prepared for it from the earliest days of the church.that’s what happens when you’re on the losing end of a heresy charge.

One of the more disturbing (and perplexing) oddities is how anti-Semites try and use scripture as support. For some reason they seem to forget that these criticisms were made by Jews to Jews about Jews. Sure Paul makes a big deal about how there are some Greeks and how they are just as good as he is but for the most part this was at that time an internal dispute inside the tribe and the criticism of fellow Jews was to justify their outreach into non-Jewish communities.

But in the minds of bigots, not just the apostles and Jesus – but even the Old Testament heroes – are magically put into the non-Jewish category and “the Jews” are the problem.

I swear, I really wonder if the people who most claim to defend themselves by the Bible have ever read it or know anything about its writing, compilation and what was included or excluded and why.

I don’t disagree with most of your comment. However, I have a different recollection of this:

And THEN, after DADT became law, the media presented it as better than the previous status quo, and only SOMETIMES quoted gay groups, who always said it was worse than the military’s old policy.

As I recall, the community’s attitude was, “dammit, well at least it’s better than it was.” We were under the delusion that “don’t pursue” was actually going to be policy.

I think it took us some time to discover that the new policy was actually, “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t you dare leave any possible sign that some person who doesn’t like you can use to open an investigation against you.”

I remember this vicious old SOB with great clarity and unabated loathing. Dannemeyer, Dornan, and Schmitz. Orange County’s finest exemplars of absolute rock-ribbed self-righteous contempt parading itself as “morality.”

If you are referring to crypto-Nazi John Schmitz, I think his district was in Los Angeles county, specifically in and around the city of San Marino, adjacent to Pasadena. But John Briggs, famed for his anti-gay initiative, was one of the Orange county rightwing whacko politicians. Don’t know if he was antisemitic, though.

I didn’t know that bigot William Dannemeyer was still around. Somehow, it’s not a surprise that he is now, or is now publicly, antisemitic. Orange county has always been (in)famous for being whacked out and rightwing.

But as soon as he was sworn into office, he ran into a buzz saw of opposition led by fellow Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia.

It is SO NICE to see a gay or pro-person get this right! So often, most of the time, actually, I see MORONS claiming that Clinton sought at the beginning of his term to get rid of the military’s anti-LGB ban, screwed up, and got us Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue instead. Nope! As Jim said, Clinton said during his campaign he’d work to end the ban, but at the very beginning of his first term he was WAYLAID, or maybe I should say AMBUSHED by the military’s upper brass and their little toadies in Congress. The new administration was put completely on the defensive, and tried to fight what the top brass and its sycophants were doing, but lost the fight. The morons can claim whatever they want, but I remember that time quite while, and since then had to go through years of people, including on OUR SIDE getting this wrong before I started to see anyone get it right. Why that should be, I have no idea, with so many of us having lived through those years.

I hope someone can tell me I’m remembering this wrong, but one thing I remember from that time were the government proceedings, mostly congressional hearings, where NO openly lesbian, bisexual or gay person was allowed to speak.

And THEN, after DADT became law, the media presented it as better than the previous status quo, and only SOMETIMES quoted gay groups, who always said it was worse than the military’s old policy. It took the straight media, oh, excuse me, the mainstream media, YEARS to come around to our way of understanding DADT.

I’m not a big “gays in the military” booster, but I still feel anger and disgust when I remember those times. Back then, it seemed like we were the only people on our side.

I’ve always believed that for most out and proud bigots, if you scratch the surface bigotry you’re bound to find a bright, shiny bigot underneath. It’s too bad the living long is absolutely no antidote for stupid.