Michael Brown

Sen. Rob Portman has, unsurprisingly, been faced with a barrage of criticism from Religious Right groups since he announced that, inspired by his gay son, he had changed his mind to support marriage equality. But perhaps no one has been more upset with Portman than Ohio anti-gay leader Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values. Last week, Burress called Portman “a very troubled man” who is  “distraught over what’s happened to his son.”

On Wednesday, Burress took to “ex-gay” activist Michael Brown’s “Line of Fire” radio program to recount a conversation he had with Portman shortly before the senator’s announcement. Portman was “dejected” and “basically sad throughout the conversation,” Burress says. And while Burress had initially thought Portman was “looking for help for his son to walk away from the lifestyle” through "ex-gay" therapy,  it eventually became “obvious that he was going to embrace his son’s behavior, which was devastating, because he just gives his son no chance whatsoever of understanding, you know, that he doesn’t have to be that way.”

Burress knows who to blame for this change of heart in father and son: Yale University, where the younger Portman is currently a freshman. At Yale, Burress says, Portman’s son was “probably associating with the other homosexual activists” and ultimately “forced his dad’s hand on this thing.”

Burress: He called me the night before he went public and told me that he was the first one that he wanted to call, and we shared ideas and thoughts. And when he first called me, I thought he was looking for help for his son to walk away from the lifestyle, because I’m pretty sure that he knows that I spent four and a half years on the board of an international organization helping people walk away. And he dropped the bomb on me by saying he was going to change his opinion, which I still today cannot believe that he did that because this is a principled issue and you just don’t turn your back on principled issues.

Brown: Phil, do you think, and you wrote a very gracious but firm editorial that’s getting a lot of national exposure, do you think that he was unaware before this that his son felt that his homosexuality was not a choice? Because he announced it as if this was a new revelation.

Burress: Well, he knew about it for two and a half years. So, apparently in thinking back, he, they learned about it while he was a freshman in high school, and now he’s a, excuse me, a junior in high school, and now he’s a freshman at Yale. And I don’t think there’s any coincidence to this whatsoever that he came home, probably associating with the other homosexual activists at Yale, and I think maybe he forced his dad’s hand on this thing because, that’s just my gut feeling, because Rob started off the conversation by saying, ‘I’ve got some really bad news,’ and he was dejected and basically sad throughout the whole conversation. And it ended up being a conversation, a dad to a dad, but it was obvious that he was going to embrace his son’s behavior, which was devastating, because he just gives his son no chance whatsoever of understanding, you know, that he doesn’t have to be that way. And I told him that it’s not innate, it’s a learned behavior.

Later in the program, Burress promised electoral defeat for Portman if he runs for reelection in 2016. Burress notes that former Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine lost his bid for reelection in 2006 after opposing a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Burress neglects to mention that DeWine, who supported a federal gay marriage ban,  in fact lost to Democrat and gay-rights supporter Sherrod Brown.

Brown: What do we do now? Do we just say, ‘Another loss, throw in the towel, America’s capitulating,’ or can we bring about change?

Burress: We can bring about change alright, and what’s surfacing now is what happened to Mike DeWine, Senator Mike DeWine, when he opposed us in 2004. I chaired the marriage amendment in Ohio to change the constitution here in Ohio and Senator DeWine came out against us. And he’d been in the Senate for, I think, two or three terms, and obviously that cost him his election. When he ran again, he got beat because he switched his position. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the same thing’s going to happen, based on the emails and the calls we’re getting, is that people are not only devastated but are angry that they have somebody up there that they voted for to represent their point of view and their values and he’s turned his back on them. This is a non-negotiable issue with our organization and he will be listed on our annual, what we call Ohio Election Central, our reporting agency where we endorse candidates, as ‘unacceptable for public office.’

• Jay Sekulow says the presence of international election monitors "can only be described as a troubling attempt to intimidate voters and poll works on Election Day."
• David Caton, president of the Florida Family Association, says MSNBC "is the most dishonest, most anti-Christian, and most pro-Islamist news network out there, bar none."
• Donald Trump continues to prove that he is a genuinely awful person, blaming President Obama for not releasing his records and thereby preventing Trump from donating millions for hurricane relief.
• Speaking of Hurricane Sandy, FRC is praying that the storm will cause people to "repent and turn to Jesus!" 
• Michael Brown warns that "if we have four more years of President Obama -- barring true, national revival in the Church that would lead to a cultural awakening -- it could well be that same-sex 'marriage' will be the law of the land and the norm taught in schools ... those opposing [his redefinition of marriage] will be officially classified as bigots, that public criticism of gay activism would be virtually forbidden, and that churches (and synagogues and even mosques) that differ with gay activism will be persecuted ... for their stands."
• Finally, the quote of the day from Stephen Prothero: "I used to believe that the purpose of the religious right was to infuse American politics with Christian politicians and Christian politics. I no longer believe that. The purpose of the religious right is to use the Christian God for political purposes ... I am perfectly happy to see [Ralph] Reed stump for Romney in Ohio and [Billy] Graham plump for Romney in an ad in The Wall Street Journal. Just don’t tell me they are doing so as Christians. They are doing so as shills for the GOP."

Patrick Wooden, a favorite pastor of the National Organization for Marriage, spoke to anti-gay writer Michael Brown on Line of Fire Radio yesterday where he went after President Obama and the Democratic Party’s endorsement of marriage equality. While he shied away from his usual topics about how gay men need to wear diapers until their early death as a result of a life of shoving cellphones, baseball bats and animals up their anuses, Wooden argued that President Obama is contributing to the pain of the “decimated” black community by favoring marriage equality and is sending a terrible message to black children.

My position is African Americans are people also, we want the same things that all other Americans want, we are a part of this country, we have built this country, so we should be counted also and considered. Our families, our homes have been decimated, and with the things that have happened in our community, do we need to add to it a President where little black boys and little black girls are hearing this great man in the most powerful position in the land say ‘I believe same-sex marriage is the direction that the country ought to go in.’ Then that same little black boy or little black girl looks to the heroes in the black community at the local level which are the preachers and the community leaders and the NAACP leaders and then they see the leaders line up and follow this man. What kind of message are we sending our children? And we’re the most vulnerable.

While Wooden said he doesn’t plan to vote for Romney since he is “a bishop in a cult,” he did warn that marriage equality will ultimately force churches to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies and end the freedom of religion. He said that the Democratic Party platform “actively supports evil” by endorsing abortion rights and gay equality, calling same-sex marriage “the greatest oxymoron that I know” and asserting that its supporters have embarked on “an evil endeavor.” Christians who back Democrats therefore are “sowing to the flesh and they’re going to reap corruption, they are sowing to the wind and they’re going to reap the whirlwind.”

The same God of the Bible who will not allow me to vote for the most pro-abortion, same-sex marriage president that we’ve ever had will not allow me to vote for a bishop in a cult. Now, some argue that well even though Mitt Romney is a Mormon there are social positions that he takes that those who are Christians agree with, such as Mitt Romney has said he will protect the sanctity of marriage, he does protect freedom of religion, things like that. Because we do know that at the end of the day this same-sex marriage thing is all about our maintaining the right to practice our religion the way we have been practicing it because if those on the other side had their way I think that where it’s headed is if all the laws were overturned churches could possibly, their 501c3 status could be challenged if they didn’t allow members of the same-sex to use their sanctuary to perform weddings and no true man of God will allow that.

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If any platform, if you look at the two platforms and as you said in your opening this show doesn’t support the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but of the two platforms only one platform actively supports evil. Abortion is evil. Same-sex marriage, the greatest oxymoron that I know, is evil. Those who are trying to redefine marriage, that is an evil endeavor. The Bible says let God be true and every man a liar, now when Christians line up behind anyone whether they’re black or white who are promoting evil, then they are sowing to the flesh and they’re going to reap corruption, they are sowing to the wind and they’re going to reap the whirlwind.

Truth in Action Ministries has embraced the work of anti-gay activist Michael Brown in recent weeks, producing a condensed version of his book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, called A Stealth Agenda, and inviting him to appear in short films describing the “radical homosexual agenda” as a deadly iceberg and another defending countries that criminalize homosexuality. Today, Brown appeared on the group’s flagship radio program Truth that Transforms where he was introduced by hosts Carmen Pate and John Rabe, who likened homosexuality to “bondage” and even “slavery”:

Pate: Homosexuality, those who are struggling with that lifestyle and are desiring to leave it, are hungry for truth, John. And so it’s so important when we consider that our government ignores the truth and instead supports an agenda that really keeps them in bondage. It’s important that we speak truth so they might find that healing and restoration.

Rabe: It’s absolutely true, Carmen, there is liberation for people who are enmeshed in slavery, and this is a form of it. It really is an agenda; this didn’t just sort of happen by chance, there is an agenda here.

Brown told Pate and Rabe that government officials, businesses, Hollywood and TV shows like Glee are boosting “homosexual activism,” which he called the “principal threat to religious freedom, freedom of conscience [and] freedom of speech”:

Brown: So their creativity, energy, gets them in high places in Hollywood, so kids are watching shows like Glee on TV and that pervasive message is coming. We have many politicians fighting these things, our own government says, ‘this is now a civil rights issue and we’re going to stand for this, we’re going to fight for this,’ major businesses are championing it. Across the board, court cases, decisions being made, homosexual activism has become the principal threat to religious freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, in America and in other countries around the world. If we don’t see it now, we’re going to have to apologize to our kids and our grandkids.

Filling in as host for the "AFR Mornings" program today, Bryan Fischer brought on anti-gay activist Michael Brown to discuss his recent column defending Kirk Cameron from a tweet by Roseanne Barr in which she said Cameron was “an accomplice to murder with his hate speech” by claiming that Michelle Obama must then also be "complicit in the suicides of kids who were bullied because of their obesity."

Fischer loved that line of reasoning, adding that it was "just ridiculous on its face" to think that being mocked, ridiculed, and condemned would lead gay kids to commit suicide.  After all, Fischer said, the AFA is "relentlessly hammered, condemned, criticized, [and] judged" every single day and nobody there is tempted to end their life just because they are being ridiculed:

While appearing on AFR Mornings with host Frank Turek on the American Family Association’s American Family Radio, anti-gay activist Michael Brown said that gay rights advocates are making LGBT youth who commit suicide “pawns in a larger political agenda” because they know “it’s a whole lot harder” for their opponents “to look at a kid and a family where there’s a suicide.” Brown, who blamed gay rights supporters for the murder of California fifteen year-old Lawrence King, told Turek that increased attention to suicides by LGBT teenagers are making people ignore other teenagers who commit suicide.

Of course, Brown offered no evidence to back up his claim that concerns about suicide among LGBT youth are undercutting efforts to prevent suicide in general. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center reported in 2008 that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth “are nearly one and a half to three times more likely to have reported suicidal ideation” and “nearly one and a half to seven times more likely than non-LGB youth to have reported attempting suicide,” noting that “stigma and discrimination are directly tied to risk factors for suicide.”

Later, Brown called gay rights advocates “completely intolerant” and Turek, who has called homosexuality a “road to destruction,” labeled them “the most intolerant people out there.”

Watch:

Brown: For every one kid, gay teen, that commits suicide because of bullying or because parents say ‘homosexuals go to hell’ or because they just feel ‘I have no future, I have no hope, I can never marry’ and so on, these should be weighty issues to us as Christians, this should hurt us, what if it’s our own kid? That’s why we need to look at every kid. But for every one that commits suicide for that cause, there are--is it dozens, is it scores, I don’t know the exact stats how it breaks down--but a whole lot more kids who commit suicide for other reasons, we never hear about them in the news! We don’t hear national campaigns about them!

So for me what is so concerning is these kids become pawns in a larger political agenda because it’s a whole lot harder to look at a kid and a family where there’s a suicide, it’s a whole lot harder to look at that and hold to our convictions than it is to look at say two forty year old men that want to be married. So we need a compassionate response but boy is this being utilized to push a whole agenda on our society and then an agenda that is completely intolerant, you cannot hold to your views.

Turek: The folks who say they are fighting for tolerance are the most intolerant people out there.

The Family Research Council today announced a Family Policy Lecture with author and radio show host Michael Brown next month where he will address the “the homosexual agenda” and “a clear and Christian response,” because “if we don’t do what is right today, we will have to apologize to our children and grandchildren tomorrow.” “Forty years ago, most Americans said they didn't know anyone who was homosexual and claimed to know little or nothing about homosexuality,” the FRC said in a statement, “Today, there’s hardly a sitcom without a prominent gay character and even school children are learning the meaning of ‘Gender: Queer.’

Brown’s hostility to gays and lesbians will surely be welcomed by the aggressively anti-gay group, as he previously claimed that “gay activism” was to blame for the brutal murder of the openly gay California teenager Lawrence King and “hypersensitive” gays intend to throw Christians “in jail.” Hopefully, FRC will show the trailer to his book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, where a young boy enters the nightmarish world of having same-sex parents:

The FRC urges attendees to leave “retreat mode” and “stand up and be counted”:

At a time when it is more important than ever for Christians to stand up and be counted, many of us seem to be in retreat mode. We do not want to sound offensive or be considered "irrelevant." But retreat spells defeat, and when we willingly shut ourselves out of public debate, we reward intimidation.

The public debate about marriage and the homosexual agenda continues. But if we don't do what is right today, we will have to apologize to our children and grandchildren tomorrow.

Join us at noon on Thursday, January 5th as author, professor, and radio host, Dr. Michael Brown explains the homosexual agenda and motivates to a clear and Christian response.

Forty years ago, most Americans said they didn't know anyone who was homosexual and claimed to know little or nothing about homosexuality. Today, there's hardly a sitcom without a prominent gay character and even school children are learning the meaning of "Gender: Queer."

Dr. Brown's recent book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, chronicles the amazing transformation of America over the last 40 years and addresses the question, "Is there really a gay agenda, or is it a fiction of the Religious Right?"

Michael Brown, the author of A Queer Thing Happened To America, dedicated his Monday radio show to equating the child abuse scandal at Penn State University to SB 48, the California law that ensures that history textbooks include the contributions of prominent LGBT figures. He said that while people are outraged over the crimes allegedly committed by Jerry Sandusky, “it is equally outrageous that gay activists want us to celebrate, in history, men who are known for similar acts in their own lives, be they consensual, or other.”

Listen:

Remember that SB 48, mandating the celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender history in all California schools for all children in all grades is now law. The outrage over the alleged pedophile acts of Sandusky is only matched by the gay silence over the pedophile acts of Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman and others. Why the extreme outrage, the absolutely rightful outrage, the absolutely correct outrage over the alleged acts of Jerry Sandusky, and yet this teaching about people who had similar interests, you’re gonna now celebrate them in our children’s schools, this is outrageous.

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I want to make clear, that while there is outrage, rightful outrage, absolutely rightful outrage, sickeningly grievous outrage over the reports of the alleged acts of Jerry Sandusky on boys and young men, it is equally outrageous that gay activists want us to celebrate, in history, men who are known for similar acts in their own lives, be they consensual, or other.

Cindy and Mike Jacobs host a weekly television program called "God Knows" where they discuss current events, like how abortion curses the land and how such sins then causes natural disasters.

On the last two episodes, the guest has been anti-gay activist Michael Brown, author of "A Queer Thing Happened to America" who explained that the ultimate agenda of gay activists is to put Christians into jail:

Mike Jacobs: So what is their ultimate goal, Michael? Do they have an agenda that they're marching down a path with?

Brown: There are absolutely gay activist organizations with tens of millions of dollars of funding, left and right, corporate America backing them as sweethearts. Even out president supporting them ...

Cindy Jacobs: Oh huge, celebrating in the White House ...

Brown: With an absolute agenda. The agenda is the complete normalization of homosexuality and the complete removal of any opposition to it whatsoever.

Cindy Jacobs: And that's us.

Brown: Here it is in a nutshell: the activists who came out of the closet about forty years ago first said "we demand our rights." Then they began to point to others and said "you have to accept our rights." Then they began to point to conservatives, especially conservative Christians, and said "we're taking away your rights." And next thing, they want to put us in the closet.

Cindy Jacobs: Or in jail.

Brown: Or in jail. In fact an attorney friend of mine said "cycle it once more: it's not just they came out of the closet and want to put us in the closet; they were put in jail, they want to put us in jail."

When Mike Jacobs asked why this topic is such an intense issue that creates such heated reactions, Brown asserted that it was because gays are "hypersensitive" because they know are not "affirmed by God":