Ex-Gay Watch

Anti-gay activist Dr Michael L Brown will be a guest speaker at NARTH’s conference in Arizona this fall.

Brown, who recently self-published a massive diatribe against the “gay agenda” titled A Queer Thing Happened to America, will appear at a plenary session on November 4.

We’ve already documented extensively Brown’s anti-gay rhetoric and his hostile, inflammatory stance towards gays and lesbians. To this history of homophobia, he recently added a skewed interpretation of the death of Lawrence King, the California teen shot dead by classmate Brandon McInerney. Writing on OneNewsNow.com, Brown placed the blame for Larry’s death on gay activism:

And how can I claim that gay activists are complicit in Larry’s death? To start, there are plenty of unstable children in our schools today, just like Larry and Brandon, yet gay activists are encouraging kids to come out at young and younger ages. This is downright irresponsible.

After all, it is gay activists who constantly remind us that LGBT kids are bullied and even beaten up at school. They tell us how dangerous the school environment is for kids who identify as LGBT, and yet at the same time, they praise kids like Larry for coming out at 10. They even want more Gay Straight Alliances in our middle schools, where pre-teens can declare their gay identity to their peers and faculty advisors without their parents’ knowledge. Why? So they can become targets of hatred and potential violence? If our schools really are so “homophobic” and dangerous, why not encourage these kids to keep their sexual orientation to themselves until they’re in a safer environment?

More of my review of A Queer Thing Happened to America  is forthcoming, as promised — when I have the stomach to pick it up again. Alas, discovering Brown had written seven pages comparing my arguments to those of NAMBLA left me literally feeling nauseated.

Hat-tip: Dr Warren Throckmorton.

The UK-based Christian group Anglican Mainstream has once again shown its extreme anti-gay propaganda is anything but mainstream.

In 2008, Anglican Mainstream published a book that included, among other homophobic essays, a vile anti-gay tirade penned by Ronald G Lee, in which the author said gays would spend most of their lives in pornographic bookstores until they die of AIDS and that gay Christians only go to church to cleanse their consciences from cruising for sex the night before. Canon Chris Sugden, the Church of England cleric who edited the volume, justified the inclusion by saying Lee deserved an equal hearing, and that “we love those struggling with same sex attraction too much to do otherwise.”

Now Anglican Mainstream has thrown its weight behind Dr Michael L Brown‘s new book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, a 600-page tome against the “gay agenda.” Anglican Mainstream blogger J Davies parrots Brown’s narrative that A Queer Thing is the book “publishers were afraid to touch”: Read more…

Evangelist and conservative Christian activist Dr Michael L Brown is a little disappointed but mostly deliriously excited that the publishing world was “afraid to touch” his latest book.

The back cover of his self-published tome, A Queer Thing Happened to America: And What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, lists blurbs by “a conservative pundit,” “a conservative publisher,” “a bestselling conservative author,” “the head of a New York City publicity firm,” “a publishing insider” and “a top literary agent” — all predicting what a flop Brown’s book would be.

To Brown, this is evidence that a gay agenda controls the media, making conservative publishers scared to publish this supposedly damning exposé of how homosexuals are destroying America, its faith and its families. Only to Brown, apparently, are blurbs like this a good thing: Read more…

We’ve met Dr Michael L Brown before. In The Fighting Words of Michael Brown, I analyzed the revolution- and battle-based rhetoric he uses to call evangelical Christians to rise up against gays and lesbians, and their rights. In Pedophilia, Hedonism & Impending Confusion, I revisited Brown’s anti-gay rhetoric and demonstrated how he misrepresented LGBT people with a classic “slippery slope” argument.

Now Brown is in the spotlight again with a book that claims to chronicle the rise of gay rights and, with the support of “massive research and extensive interaction with the GLBT community,” debunk the so-called homosexual agenda. A Queer Thing Happened to America: And What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been is, according to its author, a 700-page representation and demolition of the gay agenda, of which 100 pages are supporting footnotes.

Brown couldn’t find anyone to publish his book, a fact he puts down to fear. Read it and “find out why the publishing world was afraid to touch it,” he says. “Family values” apologist Bill Muehlenberg props up Brown’s theory in his enthusiastic review: Read more…

PFOX stands for ‘Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays’–despite the fact that the organization is not run by ex-gays, and repeatedly and openly expresses a vituperative disdain for all things gay.

One of their more outlandish claims is that there are twice as many “ex-gays” as there are gays. In census terms, that’s about 18 million ex-gays.

You can read about their latest escapade below (For recent coverage, see Google):

Shareholders ask Walt Disney to Include Ex-Gays in Company’s Non-Discrimination Policies:

“It is about time Disney treated ex-gays with the respect they deserve,” said Bobbie Strobhar, the stockholder who submitted the shareholder resolution. “Former homosexuals are true models of courage who have been vilified by gay activists.”

Dr. Michael Brown weighs in on the matter via Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink, to assert that ex-gays are some of the most discriminated against in America:

Disney Stockholders Mull Resolution to Protect Ex-Gays
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“If you’re going to have these discrimination laws in policies, then by all means include these as a special class of people,” Brown said.

I think it’s worth noting that Brown refers to those who identify as formerly-gay as “these.”

That succinct little bit of bluster is in light of an email in which he steers readers to an article—written by NARTH’s Prof. Robert Gagnon—that Brown describes as “exposing the very real dangers of the [then] proposed “Employment Non-Discrimination Act””–>

Gagnon’s article on the evils of ENDA is dated Oct. 23, 2007.

<–Brown’s Coalition of Conscience email (no longer in service), is dated 10-25-07, two days later.

The screen cap of the cached email above would seem to concur with those dates.

Here’s a snippet of Gagnon’s article that Brown links to:

Don’t ENDAnger Your Liberties in the Workplace

The bill will virtually codify you as a bigot so far as the federal government is concerned if you oppose homosexual practice on moral grounds.
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If you are not convinced that this will be the outcome, try including “pedosexuality” (i.e. pedophilia), a sexual orientation toward children, under the rubric “sexual orientation” [emp mine]

Given that Mr. Brown is still a fan of Robert “pedosexuality” Gagnon, yet supports the inclusion of “ex-homosexuals” in anti-discrimination policies, are we then to assume he also supports ex-pedophiles being included in anti-discrimination policy?
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Further, and on a much lighter note, if Disney’s “ex-gay” employees are afforded non-discrimination protections, will they then hold ex-gay days?

The celebration of Gay days at Disney is traditionally marked by the wearing of red.

So what’s the color of ex-red?

Dr. Michael Brown has a radio show called “In the Line of Fire.” On June 12th, 2009, the first hour (40 min.) of that program was entitled “Building a Bridge of dialog with the Homosexual Community.” (Transcript is here.)

This was mostly in response to Wayne Besen’s speech at Grand Valley University, and the panel discussion on the harm caused by the “ex-gay” industry—which was in response to the (then) forthcoming Love Won Out conference.

Wayne clarifies in a post called “‘Love Won Out’, What’s the Point?“:

Wayne Besen: I’m on my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan to give a presentation at Grand Valley State University on the harm caused by the “ex-gay” industry. My speech, followed by a panel discussion, is in response to Focus on the Family’s traveling road show, Love Won Out, which will be in town on Saturday. Having countered several of these conferences, I must confess, I still don’t understand what point they are trying to make…

Dr. Brown seemed to take the exclusion personally, and complained vociferously about his *unfair* treatment by those who claim to be “tolerant” and “inclusive,” and points out on quite a number of occasions that the university received more than “TEN THOUSAND” emails in support of his being included on the panel. No mention of the fact that Focus on the Family — The sponsor of the Love Won Out conference that he was speaking at — put out the call to have said emails sent to the university in a CitizenLink Action Alert.

(For the sake of reference, Dr Brown takes quite a fancy to the challenge of defending himself against what he considers to be unfair characterizations of him or his positions, as evidenced here at Ex-Gay Watch, 1, and 2, and also on Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s blog, 3.)

In this radio program, he vacillates between claiming persecution by the LGBT community, and pursuing the notion of dialogue with the LGBT community.

In the attempt to demonstrate the fundamentally corrupt nature of the event, he quotes from Besen’s book, Anything But Straight:

[5:08-5:50] Michael Brown: here’s one from Wayne in his book “Anything But Straight,” “Reparative therapists” — so these are people who help—psychologists, psychiatrists, or ministries who help people dealing with unwanted same-sex attractions. [Which now includes Dr. Brown]

“Reparative therapists are detestable, money hungry con-artists who lure and bamboozle susceptible people with misleading promises and false hope. One reason these quacks practice this chicanery is to cash in on this lucrative industry, but one cannot dismiss raw hatred as the primary motive that drives these charlatans to extreme lengths to denigrate lesbians and gay men.”

Delightful. That was the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that was put forward by Wayne last night. Read more…

Pentecostal leader Michael Brown continues to throw homosexuality into the mix with an array of exotic sexual fetishes, including pedophilia, zoophilia and coprophilia, sexual arousal from human feces.

In January, we looked at Brown, the latest evangelical leader to join Love Won Out‘s roster of conference speakers. Ex-Gay Watch found Dr Brown’s rhetoric to be aggressively militaristic. Those who read the discussions here and on Warren Throckmorton‘s website will be familiar with his argument that nothing separates homosexuality from any other manner of non-conventional sexual practices.

Last week, Brown appeared on the Concerned Women for America (CWFA) radio program, alongside Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth. The subject was evangelical Wheaton College’s decision to invite left-leaning, pro-gay evangelical Jim Wallis as a speaker. Without a hint of irony, host Matt Barber condemned the decision, saying that Wallis’s views were

… unequivocally unscriptural. That’s why I have a problem. I’m all for academic freedom, but if something is just so on it’s face!

All for academic freedom, except when something is “unequivocally unscriptural.” A strange sort of academic freedom, which appears to amount to “academic freedom except when I disagree.”

Then Michael Brown entered the conversation to reiterate the same arguments he has made here on XGW and elsewhere. His contention amounts to the claim that nothing distinguishes homosexuality morally from any other sexual practice, no matter how bizarre or offensive.

No moral line between homosexuality and pedophilia

Broadening the definition of “orientation” as widely as possible, Brown asks:

Are all sexual orientations gifts from God? Zoophilia, or coprophilia, the sexual stimulation by faeces, or bestiality, I mean things that everyone would be repulsed by, or paedophilia. Are those gifts from God? … How do you distinguish which sexual orientation is a gift from God and which is not?

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Read more…

Tough-talking Pentecostal Dr Michael Brown is the latest Christian leader to be added to Love Won Out’s roster of conference speakers. In this article, we profile Dr Brown, and ask whether the ex-gay movement’s newest friend might only drag it deeper into “culture wars”.

Who is Brown?

Brown is an Old Testament scholar, a revivalist, a Pentecostal apologist, an evangelist to Jews and an unabashed moral crusader.

He is President of the FIRE School of Ministry, a non-denominational Charismatic Christian training college that grew out of the controversial “Brownsville Revival” (also known as the “Pensacola Outpouring”) of the 1990s. After a split between Brown and John Kilpatrick, then Pastor of the Brownsville Assembly of God, FIRE eventually relocated to Concord, North Carolina.

Since then, Brown has founded the Coalition of Conscience, a Charlotte-based network of conservative Christians working together for “moral and cultural change through the gospel,” and who want to “make an impact for righteousness” in the city. Chief among their activities has been opposing the Charlotte Gay Pride Parade.

Brown is a noted apologist for charismatic revival, particularly that which came out of Toronto in the early 1990s – a revival that divided evangelicals and became known for the exotic behaviour of its participants, including hysterical laughter, fainting (being “slain in the Spirit”), “spiritual drunkenness,” shaking and animal noises. He is also a Messianic Jew, and has an apologetic and evangelistic ministry dedicated to persuading Jews of “the Messianic credentials of Jesus (Yeshua) of Nazareth.” Read more…