I didn't even think about the blood libel when I wrote this, but you make a very good point. I was raised in a form of Christianity very similar to the popular forms practiced in Williamson County, a Christianity that goes out of its way to be pro-Israel, in which Christians think of themselves as wholehearted supporters of Jewish people, who would never spread the blood libel, which most of them have probably never heard of in any case.

As an aside, the sort of support conservative Christians express for Jews doesn't usually feel genuinely respectful, not to my Jewish friends and my late Jewish partner, anyway, because the support seems grounded in fundamental misunderstandings of Judaism, in Christian end-times prophecy, and in enthusiasm to proselytize.

But back to the blood libel. Yeah. The sensationalized stories Christians in Williamson County are telling themselves about drag queens eating "living bleeding hearts" fit a distressing pattern of demonizing people who are different, of telling increasingly horrific tales about people whose values are different.

Any traditional scapegoat, any human Other, can tell tales like the blood libel.

What's scary here, as in similar cases, is that the story sounds so crazy that people on the outside don't take it seriously.

Well, at the meeting last week where four aldermen voted to deny a permit for the Pride festival, a woman held up a sign with a bleeding heart.

She wasn't kidding. Nor were her neighbors who cheered her on. They believe the story. That's how it works.