Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Just how crazed has the religious right (of all varieties) gotten over the gay pride parade in Jerusalem? This crazed:
For some of their followers, the issue is worth spilling blood over: An unknown extremist Jewish group pasted up signs announcing a $500 "reward" for every gay man or woman killed during the parade, which is scheduled for Nov. 10. Several ultra-orthodox rabbis have vowed to mobilize more than 100,000 protesters to shut down Jerusalem on the day of the parade, and police warn that some groups plan to pelt the marchers with apples jagged with razor blades.
The good news, though, is that for the first time in Israel, the batshit crazy Jews and the batshit crazy Muslims are united in a peaceful pact to destroy the gays:
Meanwhile, in a rare display of solidarity with Jewish extremists, an influential Islamic cleric is urging Muslims to stage a simultaneous protest inside the old walled city to draw away Israeli police who would otherwise be shielding the gay parade from harm. "Not only should these homosexuals be banned from holding their parade," says one Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim Hassan, who preaches at a mosque near Damascus Gate, "but they should be punished and sent to an isolated place." Hatred, it seems, can be a bridge to inter-faith harmony.
How heartwarming.
Comments
Thou. Shalt. Not. Kill.
Obviously, that wasn't simple enough.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | November 7, 2006 10:51 AM
Blake Stacey,
You seem to forget that there was no period after "kill" in Exodus. It can certainly be read as, "Thou shalt not kill, ... your neighbor." Also, I doubt these batshit crazy fundies really see the people they're against as human. Without that assumption, it seems they would believe that those "others" don't deserve of any kind of rights.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | November 7, 2006 11:35 AM
Blake: In any case, it does not say "kill." It says "murder," although I agree it has seldom been translated that way in the past. (Most modern translations like the NIV now read "murder"). I'm sure these whackos would say that a justified killing is not murder. And since God Himself says that pollution is to be excised from the community through ritual killing.....
As I have stated many times, this is an extremely slanted reading of the texts, but it is simple, and simple appears to be all these guys want.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 7, 2006 12:14 PM
Yes, it's so heartwarming to see the fundamentalist Jews and the Muslims working together...
Really, it warms the cockles of my heart. Or maybe that's heartburn. So hard to tell the difference when dealing with religion, you know.
Posted by: Mara | November 7, 2006 1:08 PM
Apples jagged with razor blades? Holy shit. That would be enough to make me stay home.
Posted by: FishyFred | November 7, 2006 1:24 PM
You guys are forgeting passages like this:
Posted by: Troy Britain | November 7, 2006 2:59 PM
Perhaps gays worldwide could offer to committ suicide en masse as a token of universal brotherhood between all the Jewish, Muslim and Christian fundies in the world. When those who find homosexuality so oppressive to their sensibilities realize we are finally all dead - all war will cease forever and the lion will lie down with the lamb.
It's all so simple.
Posted by: Uranius Pelican | November 7, 2006 4:31 PM
You would think that after what these people went through under the Nazis, they'd have learned a thing or two about the evils of bigotry.
Makes me sympathize a little less, really.
Posted by: Martin Wagner | November 7, 2006 9:15 PM
"Makes me sympathize a little less, really."
Because Jews deserve sympathy for the shoah only if they remain otherwise guiltless?
The Jewish state is like any other: A little fucked up. Your attitude, that Israel should be held to a differenct standard is part of the (global) problem.
Why do I think your last name and your opinion are not a coincidence.
Posted by: a | November 8, 2006 5:31 AM
I call bullshit. Israeli politicians have deliberately linked the policies of the Israeli state with the holocaust in an effort to tar and feather their critics. Predictably, they have overspent their political capital, and are now finding out that such a link cuts both ways.
The hypocricy is plain for all to see when political hacks in one moment want to justify atrocities with reference to a particular historical moment, and in the next moment claim that it is unreasonable to demand that they learn from that same historical moment. This goes for Israel and the holocaust, for the Serbs and the Blackbird Plains, for the Palestinians and the Occupied Territories, for Japan and Hiroshima, and for the US and 9/11.
- JS
Posted by: JS | November 8, 2006 8:07 AM
Um, JS? The people trying to kill the gays are religious extremists, not politicians.
Posted by: Skemono | November 8, 2006 1:03 PM
How do you know someone was gay if they're brought in dead for a bounty?
::confused::
Posted by: octopod | November 8, 2006 5:26 PM
Check for gayocysts in the blood?
Posted by: Coin | November 8, 2006 7:51 PM
My attitude is that a race whose history includes being on the business end of numerous definitive attempts at genocide ought to know better about the evils of hating and persecuting an entire group of people, especially to the point of offering bounties for how many killings you can commit. That they don't, and that they're willing to treat gays exactly the way the Nazis and medieval Catholics treated them, is more than a "little" fucked up.
Oh, maybe because...you're an idiot?
Posted by: Martin Wagner | November 9, 2006 9:47 AM