Michael Brown's Deceptive Anti-LGBTQ Attacks, Part 2: 2020-21

The WorldNetDaily columnist unironically complained that he would be seen as a "homophobic bigot" for his history of acting like, well, a homophobic bigot -- such as his repeated attacks on Pete Buttigieg.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/21/2023

Michael Brown

Brown wrote a February 2020 column attacking Pete Buttigieg, who was running for president at the time, that began by ranting that "Choosing an out and proud 'married' gay man to run for president, let alone become president, would contribute to the further degeneration and moral confusion of our society along with further attacks on our most fundamental rights."

Brown admitted he would be seen as a "homophobic bigot" for saying that, and, yes, that's pretty much what he is, his repeated denials notwithstanding. He did, take issue with "moderate Canadian evangelical" Randall Rauser's statement that his attacks on Buttigieg shows he has "an irrational fear of and/or antipathy toward gay people" that's more than a little hypocritical, given that "Evangelicals like Brown fall over themselves to excuse Trump's grotesque immorality," prompting him to do exactly that:

First, I have never excused the president's past immorality. In fact, I probably called attention to it as much as any evangelical leader during the primaries. To say, I "fall over [myself] to excuse Trump's grotesque immorality" is to speak a lie.

Second, to this day, like a broken record, I draw attention to aspects of the president's behavior that I find destructive and harmful. In fact, shortly after the National Prayer Breakfast, I wrote an article addressing the very issues Rauser mentioned regarding Trump's response to the words of Jesus.

So, to brand me hypocritical for speaking out against Mayor Pete's proud homosexuality is to be either misinformed, dishonest, or both.

But there is a much bigger issue the critics are missing.

President Trump is not flaunting his past immorality, nor is he pushing it presently. Instead, when the ugly tape of his lewd comments went public, he said, "I've never said I'm a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I'm not. I've said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize. ... I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down."

In stark contrast, Mayor Pete has talked about how his homosexual relationship to his "husband," Chasten, has brought him closer to God. He has kissed his partner at public rallies. He is pushing his homosexuality, not apologizing for it.

You better believe that he will do everything in his power to normalize homosexual relationships even more in the eyes of America. He will also do his best to marginalize those who are convinced that these relationships are contrary to the will of God.

Note to Brown: If you really think Trump was being sincere and truthful when he issued that non-apology, and that the years subsequent to that statement haven't shown that those words reflect exactly who Trump is, you're being terribly naive. By taking Trump's words at face value when there's every reason not to do so, Brown is, in fact, excusing his immorality.

(Brown would do a lot of flip-flopping over Trump during his presidency, spending much of it encouraging evangelical support for him because he delivered on their agenda but not admitting the hypocritical immoral folly of that until after the Capitol riot. Also, we don't recall Brown ever accusing a male politician kissing his wife at a public rally of "pushing his heterosexuality.")

Brown then tried to parse between people and behavior, even though he couldn't do so with Buttigieg:

It is not so much that homosexual practice is worse than adultery or fornication. Rather, it is the fact that there is an aggressive, gay agenda that has systematically undermined biblical morals for decades. It has also sought to silence all dissenting voices, becoming the principle threat to our religious and moral freedoms.

That's why I've been active in resisting LGBT activism since 2004, reaching out to individuals with compassion but resisting the agenda with courage.

And so, it is not the people whom I oppose. (God forbid. I've made that clear hundreds, if not thousands of times.) It is not even homosexual acts that primarily concern me (although issues of health and safety should not be ignored).

It is an aggressive agenda that I oppose, one that I and others have tracked carefully for many years. ... It is an agenda that would only be fueled with great intensity by an out and proud gay president.

Fellow ConWeb outlet CNSNews.com -- which had similar hatred of anti-LGBTQ people in general and Buttigieg in particular, both during the campaign and when President Biden appointed him to be transportation secretary -- also published Brown's attack on Buttigieg.

When someone pointed out that Brown isn't not exactly being silenced for his anti-LGBTQ activism, what with all the attention he was getting for bashing Buttigieg, he devoted a column a couple weeks later to insisting he really is being silenced because, among other similar things, the Southern Poverty Law Center "put me on their list of 30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right, seeking to defame me by linking me with neo-Nazis and other violent extremists." He continued playing the victim:

As for whether a President Buttigieg would try to marginalize Bible believers like me, what we do know is that he has already done that very thing. He has already used his campaign platform both to celebrate his homosexuality and to denigrate the Christianity of those who differ with him, including Vice President Pence.

[...]

LGBTQ+ activism has already had a deleterious effect on society in many ways, some of them outright oppressive. We could expect more of the same – really, much more – with an out and proud gay president.

No fearmongering here, and, for the record, no paranoia. I plan to continue to speak out regardless of cost or consequences.

I'm simply sounding the alarm in advance. A word to the wise is sufficient.

Of course, Brown never stopped to consider that his "speaking out" is an attempt to silence LGBT voices, since irony escapes him.

Brown was back to attacking Buttigieg a couple weeks after that, bashing him for giving "a national platform to a 9-year-old who wanted advice on coming out as gay." Let the gay-bashing rant begin, with the added bonus of suggesting gays are pedophiles while also denying that he was forwarding such a idea:

Remember. This child is only 9 years old.

He is pre-pubescent.

He is only a few years removed from thinking that boys who like girls have "the cooties." (Do you remember hearing that in kindergarten and the first grade?)

And surveys have indicated that plenty of teenagers who identify as gay no longer do so when they reach adulthood.

[...]

How dare any of us put a 9-year-old child like this on public display, now branding him for life as gay. What if Zachary wants to "take it back" in a few years? What then?

Let me put this in a larger context for a moment. Perhaps the light will go on for you as you continue to read.

If there is one accusation that gay men hate more than any other it is the accusation that they are pedophiles. That all (or most) homosexual men are interested in having sexual relationships with boys. That it is not safe to leave a boy alone in the presence of a gay male. That all (or most of them) are child abusers. Every gay man with whom I have talked over the years has categorically and emphatically rejected these accusations. And I, for one, believe them.

In my view, the real danger is one of older homosexuals influencing impressionable children. Of indoctrination more than seduction. Of persuasion, not rape. That's one reason I raised concerns about the potential, negative impact of a President Pete Buttigieg.

Of course, there is no denying the well-known tradition of "man-boy love" in homosexual history, from the "mentoring" of ancient Greece to the NAMBLA societies of today. Calling it "intergenerational intimacy" does not make it any less heinous.

Brown sure moved from Buttigieg to NAMBLA pretty quickly there, didn't he? Complete with a malicious suggestion that Buttigieg was part of NAMBLA, even. Yet he concluded by insisting that "My warnings are not exaggerated."

Back to the hate

With his feelings about Donald Trump settled at last, Brown used the rest of 2021 to get back to what he does best: hating LGBTQ people.

In a February 2021 column, Brown complained about a poll showing that one in six Generation Z adults identified as LGBT, trying to put most of the blame on people "being influenced by the society around them, and so they perceive themselves to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender at a much higher rate. This would suggest that LGBT identity is not simply inborn and innate. It can simply be a matter of perception." Brown went on to blame the existence of non-hateful portrayals of LGBT people in the media:

Instead, this spike should be seen as the result of the constant, pro-LGBT bombardment of children, beginning with the school system literally brainwashing children from their earliest days regarding LGBT identity. Put another way, do you really think that kids who were exposed to drag queens when they were toddlers might not be more inclined to wonder if they themselves might want to be drag queens too?

[...]

Among those 18-29, the estimate was put at 29.9%, meaning that this age group thought that almost 1 in 3 Americans were gay or lesbian. And where, pray tell, did they get such an idea?

Perhaps the disproportionate representation of (and celebration of) LGBT characters on TV and Hollywood and comic books, not to mention the talking points in children's schools, contributed to this misperception?

[...]

When we also recognize the "cool" factor, meaning, that it's often considered trendy and cool today to identify as something beyond (or different than) heterosexual, Gallup's latest poll is not surprising in the least.

All the more, then, do we need to hold fast to solid, biblically based, sexual and family values, also showing greater compassion to those whom the culture has so strongly (and wrongly) influenced.

The following month, Brown attacked a Christian adoption agency for working with LGBT parents: "Please reconsider your decision to provide services for gay and lesbian couples wanting to adopt. Please ask yourselves again: Is this decision truly honoring to the Lord in whose name you work? Is it truly in the best interest of the children whose lives you seek to better?" He then huffed: "We all know that there are many, deeply devoted, caring same-sex couples. But that does not mean for a second that placing a child under their care is the best choice for that child, let alone what God would desire."

Brown ranted in a column a couple weeks later:

This week, a Canadian father, Robert Hoogland, was jailed for the crime of referring to his 14-year-old daughter as his daughter. That's right. Because this concerned father referred to his daughter as female, thereby violating a court order, he has been arrested and put behind bars.

You say, "Obviously, there's something missing from this story. Did he abduct her? Is she not really his daughter? What else happened?"

In reality, the story is worse than you can imagine.

Actually, it's not. Hoogland was under court order not to discuss anything about his child's case in public -- not just talking about the child's gender -- and he violated that order. Nevertheless, Brown went on to rant about "infamous, truly detestable drag queen events," going on to declare: "I will always grieve over the pain that has been experienced by those who identify as transgender. But I will not collaborate with child abuse. This is madness. This must stop."

For another March 2021 column -- with the reality-defying headline "No, trans-identifying kids are not 'under attack'" -- Brown attacked actress Sophia Bush for defending transgender youths, declaring that children are too stupid to know what they feel: "But do kids really know who they are? Is that the reality of human life?"

First, this is now how life works. The children do not inform the parents about what is real and what is not. (And again, I'm not talking about a child experiencing physical pain or sickness.)

[...]

The reality is that the kids do not, in fact, get to tell us who they are so we can support them. If that were the case, they would be the parents and we would be under their supervision. They would be the ones driving the cars and we would be in car seats in the back. They would be the ones teaching and we would be doing the homework. They would be the doctors and we would be their patients.

Sadly, when children are allowed to tell their parents who they are, as in, "I'm really a boy, not a girl," and when the parents support these sentiments, this only reinforces the child's gender confusion. As a leading psychologist explained at a lecture I attended, if you start dressing a boy in girl's clothes at a young age, affirming him as female, it will be much harder to free him from those misconceptions when he is older.

So, by trying to help, the parents only make things worse. And shall we ignore the high suicide rates among those who have had sex-change surgery? Do their problems suddenly disappear?

Brown went on to cite "Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins fame" calling helping transgender teens transition "child abuse," while not mentioning that McHugh's anti-trans work has been widely discredited.

Brown reminded us that he still hates LGBT people in an October 2021 column:

In their landmark 1990 book "After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's," gay strategists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out a brilliant plan for changing American attitudes toward homosexuality. They stated that "to desensitize straights to gays and gayness, inundate them in a continuous flood of gay-related advertising, presented in the least offensive fashion possible. If straights can't shut off the shower, they may at least eventually get used to being wet."

Looking back from the vantage point of 2021, we can now say that this was not a matter of shutting off a shower and thereby getting wet. It was a matter of not shutting off a continual downpour, thereby getting soaked. And the soaking continues by the hour, with transgender taking the place of gay in the bombardment.

That's why it is imperative that we refuse to get used to this new normal.

It is not normal. It will never be normal. And we must not accept it as normal.

It violates natural law, and it violates God's design for humanity. Surely, He has a better way.

Brown then followed other ConWeb outlets in attacking transgender health official Rachel Levine:

What about the latest news concerning Richard "Rachel" Levine? He has now been promoted to four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, earning praise from outlets like the Washington Post, which celebrated the "organization's first-ever female four-star admiral."

Except that Levine is a biological male who identifies as female. Yet this is somehow a breakthrough for women? Isn't it really a slap in the face of other women, since the first "female" to reach this rank is not a female at all?

Sorry, but I refuse to accept this as the new normal, let alone celebrate this as some kind of big moment for women. Not a chance.

His screed concluded:

The world has gone mad, which is why I continue to use scare quotes when referring to gay "marriage," not to insult gay couples, but to refuse to accept this as "marriage."

And that's why, as much as there were other things I would rather write about, yet again, I needed to raise my voice.

I urge you, my friend. Do not accept this as normal.

In short: Brown wants fear and hatred of LGBT people to continue.

In a column later that month, Brown raged against a candy bar commercial because it featured a boy wearing a dress on Halloween:

There is nothing covert about the message, nothing sublime, nothing cryptic. Quite the contrary, the message is clear and in your face. If you have a problem with a little boy wearing a princess dress and believe that people who dress like witches with spiked collars look weird, you will be blown away – meaning, literally blown away. As in swept away by a gust of wind produced by a dark, angry witch. And this is a Twix commercial for Halloween?

The ad itself is slow moving and hardly compelling, not the kind of commercial that would make you want to eat a candy bar.

It features a boy in a princess dress with his new nanny, dressed all in witch-like black, as they go to a park for the boy to play.

But the pace picks up when another boy says to the boy in the dress, "You look like a girl" (which he does). The boy then asks, "Why are you wearing that?"

The boy in the dress replies, "Dressing like this makes me feel good," which apparently is supposed to be a powerful line in defense of trans identity.

Yes, as any parent knows, if your child feels good doing something, then by all means, you should encourage them to do it, regardless of what lines are crossed and what boundaries are transgressed. After all, isn't that the key to effective parenting, namely, determining if your values and rules and guidelines make your children feel good? If not, well, we know the old adage: children know best! (Apologies for the sarcasm.)

What makes the Twix scenario all the more tragic is that there is a rapidly growing body of evidence against children acting out their trans identities, especially with the help of puberty blockers and then sex-change surgery.

Brown's response to the commercial's depiction of bullying was to say that he would teach his children not to bully quite so overtly, and besides, transgender people are the real bullies:

To be sure, if I were raising a child today I would teach that child not to insult other kids, let alone adults. That means I would not be encouraging my son or daughter to tell others that they were "weird."

At the same time, I would teach my child that a boy who wears a princess dress is confused, in need of love and prayer rather than affirmation and praise.

And while I would not want my child to tell a witch that she was weird, I would certainly tell my child that the devil was real, that demons were real, and that witches were playing with unholy fire, needing to be saved and redeemed.

For Twix, however, the synopsis of the ad was, "With a little magic, the new nanny helps a non-binary child deal with bullies and find self-acceptance."

So, the way to deal with a child bully is to be a bigger bully, in this case, an adult bully, more specifically an adult witch bully with destructive powers. That's how you help a trans child find self-acceptance: by destroying, or at the least endangering and terrifying, another child who makes fun of him.

Don't you just love the voice of tolerance?

For a November 2021 column, Brown finally got around to complaining there was a gay character in a Disney movie released months earlier:

Forgive me for being late to the party, but it was only this week that I saw most of Disney's new movie "Jungle Cruise." The movie is rated PG-13 and is based on the Disney theme park ride of the same name. It features mega-star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and tells the story of a courageous single woman in search of a healing cure located on the Amazon. Johnson is the boat captain, and the woman (Emily Blunt) is accompanied by her utterly wimpy, fear-filled brother (Jack Whitehall), who, it turns out, is gay.

But why, oh why, must the brother be gay? What is gained by it? How is the plot enhanced? If anything, Whitehall's character plays right into negative gay stereotypes. And of what value are the vulgar, double entendre sexual jokes? Disney studios, why, oh why?

[...]

The reality, of course, is that LGBTQ characters abound on TV and in the movies. And if you identify as LGBTQ and want to see someone like yourself on the screen, you can readily do it, right up to being a gay or bi or trans superhero.

Disney would do best to give up throwing "gay bread crumbs" to their LGBTQ viewers and simply make family-friendly movies that will not offend the historic moral sensibilities of their viewers – unless they have pushed most of them away already.

Nothing so offends the "moral sensibilities" of people like Brown than to be shown that gay people exist.

In a December 2021 column, Brown complained about a proposed Canadian ban on anti-LGBT conversion therapy, which he tried to refame as going beyond "just talking about trying to force gays to try to become straight" to claiming it was referring to "kidnapping children and subjecting them to torture in a secret reprogramming camp:

There is not a genuine Christian I know on the planet who would agree to such practices, nor is there a counselor I know who would engage in them.

If that is what was meant by "conversion therapy," then of course, we should all oppose it.

He then insisted that the bill "actually prohibits Christians from practicing their faith when it comes to homosexuality and bisexuality and transgenderism," hyperbolically portraying it as "yet another step toward banning the Bible":

You might say, "You're getting this all wrong. The issue is dangerous conversion therapy. There's no problem with a counselor or a pastor helping someone deal with unwanted same-sex attractions or the like. That's where you're mistaken."

Quite the contrary.

Instead, all positive attempts to help the countless LGBTQ individuals who want to change for personal or religious reasons are branded "conversion therapy." And any belief that homosexual practice is wrong or that God created only two sexes, male and female, is now labeled as bigoted.

[...]

The only solution is for Christian leaders to refuse to comply, preaching the Word openly and saying that change is possible, and for counselors and therapists to do the same, continuing to serve those who willingly come for help.

As for America, wake up! Otherwise, what happened in Canada won't stay in Canada.

Brown didn't explain why LGBT people must be prohibited from being who they are.