Michael Brown's Deceptive Anti-LGBTQ Attacks, Part 5: Pronoun Meltdown

The WorldNetDaily columnist kept up his condescension toward transgender people, and he cheered that his fellow right-wingers and even his own granddaughter hate LGBTQ people as much as he does.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 12/12/2023

Michael Brown

If you decide not to acquiesce to the latest LGBTQ+ talking points on the job or in school, you will be vilified, marginalized and demonized. You will be excluded, marked, mocked and even canceled. You will be branded a bigot, a hater, a Nazi, to the point of losing promotions, jobs, scholarships and your reputation. Who wants any of this? Better to conform than to resist. At the least, better to be silent. That's certainly what the flesh wants to do.

Yet when we do this, compromising our convictions for the sake of our comfort, we compromise our very souls. This, too, is part of the Lord's warning, and it accurately describes the culture of the day. Lawlessness abounds. Wickedness has increased. The opposition to holiness is mounting. The resistance to the Gospel is growing.

Brown's Feb. 27 column was inspired by the film "The Jesus Revolution," arguing that Christians shouldn't reject others interested in the faith -- while also being condescending to those same people if they're not straight:

To say it once more: We cannot afford to repeat that same error in the days ahead, as thousands (millions?) of young people (and others) from many different backgrounds begin to pour into our churches, looking for God, looking for hope, looking for meaning, looking for truth.

I fully expect that among them will be many who identify as LGBTQ+, including men wearing dresses and carrying Bibles, and same-sex couples, telling us how they really felt the Spirit in our services.

Will we have wisdom to meet them where they are, helping them truly encounter the Lord while the Spirit convicts them and changes them? Will we have the patience to recognize that they are coming from many different backgrounds and, in some cases, are totally without biblical foundations? Will we have sensitivity without compromise? Will we walk in both grace and truth?

Seems like the answer is going to be no.

Brown spent his March 6 column insisting that LGBTQ people shouldn't be treated with empathy, and that transgender people deserve no empathy at all:

It is partly because of empathy that a disproportionate percentage of Gen Z'ers identify as LGBTQ+, even though only a small percentage of them are actively, let alone exclusively, involved in same-sex relationships and activity.

As a result, this quality of empathy, which can be very positive in and of itself, has been coopted in a destructive, negative way. And so, to give just one example, out of empathy, many teens will instinctively defend a trans-identified peer, not realizing that this peer is about to destroy his or her life via chemical castration and genital mutilation. Their empathy in the short term actually contributes to their friend's long-term pain.

And so, rather than lovingly help their friend not to mutilate and alter the healthy body God has given them, their empathy moves them to side with an act of self-destruction.

It's the same with the pursuit of justice and equality, in the name of which a male who identifies as female can compete against real females, not to mention share a locker room with them. Yes, this uncomfortable, unequal and potentially abusive situation is justified in the name of equality.

He added: "This reminds me of a quote by Ayn Rand (hat tip to John Hawkins for the quote): 'Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.' How easy it is to turn something good on its head." Strange that Brown is citing a woman who rejected religion to justify his hate.

In his March 13 column, Brown portrayed transgender people being allowed to have rights as "more evidence that the world is losing its mind":

In the midst of many positive things that are happening in America and abroad, including the beginnings of both spiritual and moral awakenings, there's also plenty of evidence that, on another level, the world is losing its mind. Here are some striking, recent examples.

Writing for Breitbart, Jack Montgomery reported, "Women and 'non-binary' people with breasts will be able to go topless at Berlin swimming pools after a ruling from the German capital's diversity ombudsman."

Indeed, "Dr Doris Liebscher, who heads the city's ombudsman office, hailed the change, saying: 'The ombudsman very much welcomes the decision of the bathing establishments because it creates equal rights for all Berliners, whether male, female or non-binary and because it also creates legal certainty for the staff in the bathing establishments.'"

But of course! There's no difference between a man's body and a woman's body, right? If a man can go topless, why not a woman? Equality for all!

And then this priceless paragraph (and note the gender pronouns): "The municipal government in the university city made the change in response to a complaint by a biologically male transman, who was banned from a pool for refusing to cover their breasts on the basis that they were a man, and men did not need to cover their chests."

So, if I have this right, this is a biological male, who now identifies as a female (but is being referenced here as a "transman") and who (apparently) has female breasts, who is protesting the fact that he (who now claims to be a she) must cover his chest. But since men do not have to cover their chests and he is really a man (at least for the sake of the court case, since he otherwise identifies as a woman), then he, even as a she, shouldn't have to cover his chest (sorry, their chest). Is that correct?

This gentleman may be very sincere and may truly feel aggrieved. But turning logic and reality upside down will solve nothing.

Brown then cheered that anti-transgender hate is spreading:

The bad news is that the world is really losing its mind. The good news is that many others are now waking up and saying, "Enough is enough."

May God help these trans-identified individuals find wholeness within their natural bodies, and may the rest of society regain its bearings, before the slippery slope becomes a steep and treacherous cliff.

Brown spent his March 20 column complaining about the handling of an event by Charlie Kirk's right-wing Turning Point USA at the University of California at Davis and against the school's diversity policy:

Under the heading of "Diversity and inclusion," the UC Davis website states: "Respecting difference, striving for equity. The way we see it, the world is just too big to be bound by narrow perspectives. In an intellectually vibrant place like UC Davis, creativity connects ideas from the obvious to the outlandish. The most comprehensive solutions come from the most diverse minds."

Put another way, we warmly welcome all points of view that challenge the narrow bigotry of the right. As for those hateful, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, racist voices, they have no place on our campus. We are diverse! We are inclusive!

Does no one see the irony and the contradiction?

I have no doubt that hostile, narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant views against conservatism (and/or conservative Christianity) are expressed at UC Davis on a regular basis. And I have no doubt that students who hold to these conservative and/or biblically based views feel isolated and marginalized.

Once again, diversity and tolerance seem to be one-way streets, and this should be recognized whether or not one likes or dislikes Kirk and TPUSA.

Brown didn't explain why his hatred of LGBTQ people should be tolerated by the rest of us, or why he's trying to reframe that hate as "conservative and/or biblically based views."

Pronoun meltdown

In his March 31 column, Brown had one of his occasional glimmers of self-awareness of how condescending he is by lecturing to LGBT people about how terrible they are while pretending to have compassion for them:

I am fully aware that some readers of this article will be deeply offended, accusing me of extreme condescension and transphobia. In a word, they would say, "We don't need or want your help or compassion. To the contrary, it's people like you who create problems for us."

Yes, I fully expect such reactions, but it is love for God, love for people and love for truth that compel me to write.

To be clear, I am not saying that we can generalize about trans-identified individuals based on the recent mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville by a trans-identified female shooter. That would be cruel and unfair.

But I am saying that we should focus on the serious needs within the transgender community, needs that no amount of surgery or hormones can fully address.

In the words of Robert L. Vazzo, M.M.F.T., a California-based, licensed marriage and family therapist and professional clinical counselor, "We need to educate pastors that the human condition is full of contradictions, paradoxes, and failings due to the fallen condition of the human race. There are many physical and psychological phenomena that illustrate this including autoimmune disorders, inflammation, mental retardation, autism, and yes, transgenderism."

[...]

Vazzo's point was well-taken. There are underlying mental and/or emotional issues that lie at the heart of gender dysphoria, and affirming people's struggles and delusions is the worst thing we can do.

Treating transgender people as if they are not only diseased but having the equivalent of "mental retardation" is not the way to show compassion, Mike. Still, Brown went on to hype that gun massacre as well as a planned "transgender day of vengeance" that was later called off, as well as ranting about "the social insanity of allowing biological males to compete against biological females." Brown closed with leaning into his compassion schtick again:

Do I believe that a disproportionate number of trans-identified people are violent? No. Do I believe that, as people, they are a special menace to society? Certainly not. Are they our enemies? God forbid. Jesus died for them the same way He died for each of us, and we must recognize that our fight is with spiritual forces, not with people (see Ephesians 6:12).

But I do believe that trans-activism, sponsored enthusiastically by the Biden administration, is a real threat to our societal stability. And, more importantly, I believe that we need to recognize that the transgender community is filled with wounded and hurting people, and even with endless affirmation and unlimited medical options, their pain will not go away.

Let's continue to do our best to find constructive ways to help them, even as they view us as enemies, accuse us of genocide and, in some cases, threaten us with vengeance.

Brown had a pronoun meltdown in his April 5 column, first responding to a father whose college-age daughter was asked to identify her pronouns:

I immediately wrote back, "I would not list mine for sure," adding in jest, "or else I'd say my pronouns are 'He is Lord.' They either accept this or they don't."

I continued, "I would not comply, and the school has no right to require it."

The father fully agreed, being reinforced in his own convictions.

Brown then cited a "former lesbian feminist professor" who declared that her use of "transgendered pronouns" was a "public sin," adding:

Having interacted extensively in the past with trans-identified Christians (in particular), and having dealt with the question on a more personal level with a trans-identified, non-Christian relative, I do understand the extreme sensitivities involved in this discussion.

I can honestly say, without judgment or condescension, that I fully understand why some Christians would argue for the use of PGPs for the sake of compassionate outreach. I really do get it. Why risk hurting someone who has already been hurt many times? Why risk driving someone away who might be very fragile emotionally?

But at the end of the day, reality is reality and truth is truth, and to collaborate with someone's deep, heartfelt confusion is to hurt them more than to help them.

Do you agree?

Brown once again showed his true sympathies in an April 12 column, lashing out at anyone who refuses to hate transgender people like he does, denigrating them by declaring that they suffer from a "mass delusion":

I have often written about "transanity," by which I mean the social madness that has swept our nation (and other nations). It has reached the point that biological males share locker rooms with biological females and compete against them in sports, often obliterating female records and accomplishments in the process. It has gone so far that a Supreme Court justice nominee could not answer the question, "What is a woman?" And it has reached the point that minors are undergoing chemical castration and young teenage girls are having full mastectomies, with the avid support of the Biden administration. This is what I mean by transanity.

How can it be, then, that so many Americans strongly support those who identify as transgender? How can it be that the current administration is fighting so passionately to guarantee the "rights" of trans-identified kids, meaning, the "right" to identify contrary to biological realities and the "right" to undergo irreversible chemical or surgical changes to their bodies? Has everyone become complicit with this social madness?

Part of the answer is yes, we have lost our minds, corporately speaking. We are celebrating the emperor's new clothes, which are not clothes at all. We have embraced a mass delusion.

Brown complained that it's hard to personally hate transgender people for the heck of it, then blamed social contagion for them existing:

But the other part of the answer is that there is a compelling, personal, pro-transgender argument. It is something we will need to understand if we are to have a full perspective of the challenges at hand, remembering that we are dealing with both people and issues.

To be sure, I do believe that the vast majority of young people identifying as transgender today have been heavily influenced by the society at large, without which many would never have been confused about their gender identity.

Brown then took another stab at compassion:

But, to repeat, we do need to understand the pro-transgender argument and why some are so passionate about it.

In short, there are people, young and old alike, who have been deeply tormented with the sense that they are trapped in the wrong bodies. Try as I might to understand how this feels, I can't come close to wrapping my mind around it. It must be something terrible to live with.

But there are people who have felt like this for decades, suffering silently and feeling that hormone therapy and sex-change surgery are their only hope.

There are people who truly believe that accepting their transgender identity saved them from suicide. And there are parents who feel that the truly loving thing is to affirm their child's perceived identity. They are convinced that this is the path to wholeness.

And, just as quickly, he rejected that idea of compassion:

Naturally, we would push back against many, if not all of these points, especially the idea that affirming our child's trans-identity is a healthy and good thing to do. There are plenty of professional counselors, therapists and psychologists who would heartily disagree.

As expressed by the American College of Pediatricians, "Americans are being led astray by a medical establishment driven by a dangerous ideology and economic opportunity, not science and the Hippocratic Oath. The suppression of normal puberty, the use of disease-causing cross-sex hormones and the surgical mutilation and sterilization of children constitute atrocities to be banned, not health care."

Trans-identified people are not our enemies, even if they consider us as such. And as much as we oppose their activist agenda – and we should oppose it wholeheartedly and unreservedly – we must always care about them as fellow image-bearers of God and objects of His redemptive love.

Brown did it again in his April 14 column cheering the rise in anti-LGBT hate:

Before speaking recently at an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., a pastor approached me and said that we had met 20 years ago when I spoke at a particular church in Virginia. Then he said, "You warned us back then about all the stuff that would be coming with gay activism and how everyone thought you were crazy. And now," he added, "it has all happened."

I smiled at him and said, "The same God who showed me what would happen with LGBTQ+ activism back then also showed me there would be a pushback!"

Day by day, that pushback continues, as the radical left continues to overplay its hand.

Brown was particularly gleeful over right-wing rage against Bud Light for working with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. And he tried yet again to pretend he hates only "activism" and not people:

As I've said endlessly over these years, my issue is with the activism, not with the people. (In fact, I addressed that again just a few days ago.) But I will continue to speak out against the corrosive effect that LGBTQ+ activism is having on our nation while reaching out to individuals on a personal level.

Thankfully, more and more Americans are pushing back, be they parents who are offended by drag queens grooming their kids or by major companies pushing males as females.

May the pushback continue to gain ground (but without crushing LGTBQ+ people in the process).

Oh, please. Brown would be more than happy to see people like Mulvaney crushed for the crime of being transgender in public -- after all, crushing activism inevitably means crushing people, which is entirely the point.

'Disastrous cultural trajectory'

Brown used his April 19 column to list the existence of LGBT people as further evidence that the country is on an "inevitable and disastrous cultural trajectory":

Many things can seem innocent and innocuous in their early stages, just like a rocket that is the slightest bit off target. Nothing to worry about! In the end, though, it will miss its target by many miles. The wrong trajectory, however so slight, ends up with a major deviation from the original target and goal.

That's one reason why I often use a full gamut of letters when speaking about gay and trans activism, namely, LGBTQ++. It's a constant reminder of the trajectory, which originally started with just the G before quickly adding the L, then the B. Then it was T, then Q (which was part of the early foundation of, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it"), then beyond.

That's why websites answer questions such as, "What Does the Full LGBTQIA+ Acronym Stand For?" This same website has a section titled, "Understanding LGBTQ2S+ and other expanded acronyms."

But of course. Once you deviate from foundational, societal norms, the possibilities are endless.

Another site offers, "68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression." And a nonbinary reference page lists a number of multi-genders, including abigender, ambigender, bigender, demiflux, genderfluid, pangender, polygender and trigender, all defined with the utmost seriousness. Again, this is what happens when you deviate from "male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27).

That's why the list of preferred gender pronouns has become absolutely (and sadly) laughable, yielding questions like this: "Is bun/bunself a valid pronoun? My friend was calling me a transphobe since I said it's not valid."

One responder answered, "I don't understand neopronouns (for example, Someone said they prefer 'bug/bugself' as pronouns). Is this even respectful to the LGBTQ community?" Seriously!

More broadly, the larger trajectory of gay activism has inevitably led to this current moment in history, which includes: 1) The continued assault on our families and children, as Washington state has "passed a bill allowing children to legally be taken away from their parents for not consenting to gender transition procedures on their child."

Brown complained in his April 24 column that teaching kids not to hate LGBT people is a bad thing and somehow a form of "grooming":

Yes, the thinking of the children must be changed, and at the earliest ages possible. Or in the words of a gay drag queen who participated in Drag Queen Story Hour’s for children, the goal was to “groom” the little ones (not meaning here in a pedophilic, sexual way, although that may have been the goal for some, but in terms of changing their thinking about gays and sexuality).

In his April 26 column, Brown groused that "progressive" Christians don't hate LGBT people enough and that the Bible demands that they do:

When it comes to homosexual practice, progressive Christians argue that the biblical authors were not familiar with loving, same-sex relationships, otherwise they would have blessed them. Instead, it is claimed, they were familiar with abusive same-sex relationships, such as pederasty or prostitution or promiscuity.

But this argument breaks down on numerous levels.

First, are these progressive Christians claiming that loving, committed same-sex relationships did not exist throughout history? If so, what does that say about the fleshly and sinful nature of same-sex relationships? Was there no true, gay love in the ancient world? Is it only a recent phenomenon? That alone would be a bizarre and self-defeating argument.

Second, there is plenty of evidence that at least some of the biblical authors would have been familiar with committed gay couples. Some scholars have even argued that the situations Paul dealt with in Corinth would be very similar to the situations we deal with today.

Third, Paul taught that homosexual practice was fundamentally wrong, a violation of nature (meaning, the way that God created men and women). This was a matter of natural law, of biology, of divinely intended function, not a matter of societal practices or preferences.

Fourth, Jesus certainly understood human nature, and He only reinforced biblical teaching about sexuality and marriage. Or are you telling me that He was unable to gaze into the hearts of LGBTQ people and see their struggles? (A professing gay Christian once used that very argument: Jesus really didn't know what was in people's hearts. So, this "gay Christian" chose to downgrade who Jesus was rather than recognize the error of his ways.) Since Scripture tells us plainly that Jesus did, in fact, know what was in every human heart (see John 2:24-25), we must accept His judgment on the matter. God established marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life (see Matthew 19:4-6), and all sexual acts committed outside of that union are sinful and defiling (see Matthew 15:19-20).

Fifth, the idea that the biblical authors simply didn't understand same-sex attractions is to say that they were not inspired by God and that they did not have divine insight into human nature and the nature of sin. Again, this is a completely self-defeating argument, since, if you can succeed in proving that the biblical authors didn't get these things right, then you have just undercut the authority of the Scriptures.

Brown ranted about "cultural capitulation" in his May 10 column: "A current example would be the cultural mandate that requires us to give our preferred gender pronouns or to deny biological realities when talking with a trans-identified person. We rightly say no to that mandate for many reasons."

Brown spent his May 15 column praising how his teenage granddaughter hates LGBT people as much as he does (which, of course, he framed as "common-sense wisdom"):

"They no longer teach about the birds and the bees but about the birds and the birds and the bees and the bees and the bees that used to be birds and the birds that used to be bees."

Those were the spontaneous comments of our 16-year-old granddaughter as she explained to my wife and me what was being taught in her high school.

We were all together near Lynchburg, Virginia, celebrating the college graduation of our oldest grandchild, Ellie, from Liberty University when our youngest grandchild, Riley, learned that she had been penalized for failing to complete a class assignment.

Until then, her grade had been an A, but it now dropped down to a C. What happened?

It was a gender and sexual orientation assignment in a health class where Riley had to supply definitions for the standard LGBTQ+ terms, including words like genderqueer. But of course! I can actually point you to books for toddlers with similar vocabulary lessons. Certainly, all teens must be able to tell the difference between a cisgender person and a self-identified genderqueer individual, right?

In the past, with her parents' full approval and encouragement, Riley had opted out of other assignments, some of them with sexually explicit material. And her teacher had always accommodated these requests. But this time, while away with family and doing the assignment remotely, she simply failed to turn it in, hence the penalty in her grade.

We encouraged her to write to her teacher, explaining that the class violated her personal religious and moral beliefs, which she did immediately.

Thankfully, the teacher responded quickly, saying that she would never ask a student to complete an assignment that made them uneasy. Wonderful!

But this is hardly the norm in many of our school systems today, from children's schools through our universities. There is often a high price to pay for failing to conform.

Brown concluded by expressing his desire for other teens to follow his hate:

The bad news is that a whole generation of young people has been heavily indoctrinated, from the schools to social media, and from many authority figures to movies and TV, resulting in deep confusion and uncertainty. (I'll write more about this shortly; for the moment, see this recent report documenting how the number of high school students identifying as somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum has doubled since 2015, now at 25%.)

We had better pay careful attention to what our children are taking in, doing our best to provide positive, clear and compassionate environments for their own growth and development. And by all means, let us keep pushing back in the schools. Young lives are at stake.

Should we be similarly concerned that people like Brown are trying to indoctrinate young people into hating anyone who's not heterosexual? He's silent about that.