The implications of ACB's remark are frightening. She meant quite clearly that the government has a compelling interest to stop discrimination against Black people but does not have a compelling interest to stop discrimination against LGBTQ people.

LGBTQ people heard that loud and clear, and we gasped in shock. There's nothing like hearing a statement like that to show us that we are indeed second class citizens, that we are strangers in our own land.

I wrote about it this Tennessee problem also, on Medium and in the Los Angeles Blade, and while I called out the legal implications, I also directly called out the United Methodist Church for tolerating anti-semitism.

I have been working hard since I wrote that story to get a comment from either the United Methodist Church or from the United Methodist News Service.

Neither the denomination nor their in-house new service will comment to me or, as far as I can see, has commented to anyone.

I expected them to contemn anti-semitism, what I got was complicit silence.

People should take this into consideration when choosing churches. They should understand clearly that the UMC tolerates anti-semitism.