Sid: I have my good friend Dr. Michael Brown on the telephone and he is a linguistic scholar, he speaks, reads or writes over a dozen Semitic languages, graduated from graduate school in New York University. And I was talking to him the other day and he told me something that got me upset. His newest book, no major publisher, even Christian would touch it and I said, well I think that it’s important. Mike tell me how this book came into being.
Mike: Sid God jolted me about six years ago with the word reach out and resist and he was specifically talking to me about the homosexual community. This hadn’t been on my radar as a heterosexual when I was dealing with sin issues in the body and sexual sins. I was mainly focused on heterosexual issues through the years. We moved to Charlotte in 2003 and in 2004 some of our folks were invited to do some outreach at a gay pride event in our city. I’m thinking Charlotte, nice conservative city, well to our shock there are all kinds of vulgarities and things happening in the park. Out people that were in there just to share the gospel were escorted out of the park by police and God began to speak to me. You’ve got to do something to turn back the tide of homosexual activism in America. It was completely out of the blue and He spoke to me reach out and resist meaning reach out to the people; those who identifies homosexual, bisexual, transgender reach out to the people with compassion…
Sid: Now, I have to interject something and I can say this because I have seen this first hand. Part of me gets even a little upset Mike when I’ve seen you in a different arena, when you debate Rabbis you’re so loving and so kind that and I want you to loving and kind, but I want you to win the argument and so I’m sure that when you start talking about the homosexual issue you’re especially loving and kind.
Mike: Yea, the fact is people have suffered a whole lot of rejection, misunderstanding, many people that have come out of homosexuality did it to spite the church, in other words they felt put out, they felt like the church as saying you’re the worst of all sinners. They say oo if I sit next to them I’m going to get aids, what is the matter with you? And there is a lot of sensitivity there so the moment you address these issues it becomes highly inflammatory. It is like somebody’s that’s got a burn on their skin and you just touch them and they scream. That’s how it is with these issues. And the word that I got was reach out to the people with compassion; resist the agenda with courage, Sid I’m telling you all hell breaks loose when you do that. Here I’m a Jew; I have been called Adolph Hitler; I have been called the Jihadist; I have been called psychopath; you name it I’ve been called it simply by saying God has a better way than homosexuality.
Sid: You know I’m reminded of you did a public forum; I believe it was in the Charlotte, North Carolina area on the subject of “Can You be Gay Christian.” There was one gay person that came and their comment was very telling.
Mike: Yeah well, let me first say that when we announced that we were doing a forum we did one year; “Homosexuality the Church and Society” and next year “Can You be Gay and Christian?” We began to get letters to the Charlotte Observer calling me Ku Klux Klan, associating me with Nazis. We got branded every way you can be branded to the point that the Charlotte Observer wrote and Editorial defending me and this is a newspaper that’s known more with liberal stands and when I did this Forum, when I reached out and when we taught on can you be Gay and Christian? I’ve actually had people come sit with me; some they claim to be Gay Christians, so okay I have misjudged you now that I have really heard your heart, now that I have really gotten to know you I realized that I have misjudged who they really are because they thought that I was just some conservative political activist; they still rail against me and write against me and attack me and Sid the church is drawing back from this. People are afraid to discuss it. I talked to a board member of mine who is a mega pastor in one of our big cities in America; he has a congregation of over 5,000 people he said that every mega pastor that he meets with in his city has pulled away from this issue; their afraid to talk about it. And God laid on my heart right a book; not just for the church but for the world that will awaken the conscience of the nation. It has to be supernatural for this to happen we’re depending on God in prayer and fasting every step of the way here. And He spoke to me, write a book that will awaken the conscience of the nation and drop the title in my heart “A Queer Thing Happened to America.” You have to remember the word queer for years now has been hipster it has been cool; queer eye for the straight guy. Queer studies in college; you’ve got children in elementary school learning terms like gender queer; you’ve got queer theology programs; I own the Queer Bible Commentary you name it. So I use this with an obvious double meaning “A Queer Think Happened to America.” Even though I have written twenty books Sid, even though I have written for major publishers, no major publisher would touch this. I’ve never worked with an agent, but I was hooked up with one of the top Christian agents in America who works for some of the biggest Christian authors in America and they began to farm this out to different potential publishers, secular and Christian; everyone of them came back with response the title has to change and most all of them said the contents are too controversial. Sid, we got the point that controversial things can happen in our society from preschool up through college, up through our churches, up through our government; all these things can happen and if we dare talk about them even with love and grace we are branded. The hate mongers, bigoted, intolerant, the church is losing its voice here and everyone needs to understand this and this is based Sid, on careful research now those who came out of the closet forty years ago fighting for what they felt was their rights, fighting for equality and tolerance. They came out of the closet forty years ago and they began to say we demand our rights they began to look at conservative Christians, in particular believers and said we demand that you recognize our rights. Then they began to take away our rights and next thing Sid, they want to put you and me in the closet. There are countries where if we did this interview on the radio it would be band and we would even be threatened with a jail sentence.
Sid: As a matter a fact we are on the air in some of those countries and we’ll have to not play this particular show. Now you make a statement “Our children are at stake, not through sexual predators but reeducation.”
Mike: Some Christians think that every homosexual is a sexual predator and that every homosexual is into sex with children and therefore, oh no their trying to teach in our schools because their sexual predators. That of course is a terrible misconception and we ought not to think like that that every homosexual is out for my kids. That being said, they certainly, those that are in the educational field, which is a high percentage actually, they certainly want to influence and change the thinking of our children. Sid, I was on the Tiara Banks Show just a year ago and the show was on transgender children; these are kids that feel their trapped in the wrong bodies. I was the only one on a one hour program saying there’s something wrong with the boy going to school (seven years old) dressed like a girl. I was the only one saying that there’s something wrong with giving hormone blockers to this kid as they get older and then setting him up for sex surgery as a teenager. What’s being taught in the schools is such now there is something called the riddle homophobia scale that’s being used in some schools; especially in high schools and they have four categories of homophobic attitudes. And four categories of positive attitudes. Do you know that tolerance and acceptance are now considered homophobic? Instead our schools, they want our kids to celebrate and nurture homosexuality? You’re talking about reprogramming of kids, we’re talking about kids in nursery school having readers the standard “Heather has two Mommies and One dad,” “Two Dads Stuff.” The very…
Sid: And, I think about when I was in school and it was a shame for someone to be homosexual, now the shame is on the person that says the Bible says this is not what God wants.
Mike: You are 100% right, it is now shameful to stand against something that was considered shameful. Sid there are pastors listening to us and right now their convicted by the Spirit because their ashamed to say that homosexual practices is sin. We recognize…
Sid: There are homosexuals in churches throughout America, the pastors know they’re homosexuals, their good tithers and they don’t state publically that its sin.
Mike: We have gotten so compromised, look this is the fruit we’ve talked about this for years little over twenty years ago Sid you were one of the first to get behind my book “End of the American Gospel Enterprise” when we talked about the need to awakening in the church and to preach the gospel again and to speak the truth and to sound an alarm; and to call for revival. This is just another symptom of a man pleasing mentality, a mentality that would rather offend God then offend people. Look we don’t want to be branded as hateful, intolerant, bigoted and this has become such a hot button issue and so many pastors, so many leaders are afraid of offending and driving people away or losing the tithe or whatever it is, that they would rather have a compromise position. I want to bring a prophetic warning Sid, those that are afraid to stand for righteousness, to stand against same sex marriage, stand against the recent decision “Don’t ask don’t tell in the military” because they say I don’t want to get political. I’m telling you the next thing they will no longer be able to preach that God can change homosexual men and women and the next thing they will not be allowed to preach that homosexuality is sin. The stuff that is in my book…
Sid: I’ll tell you what concerns me, that concerns me what you’re saying but what concerns me are my children, my grand children, my great grand children. They’re going to grow up thinking homosexuality is normal.
