New Book Shows How Christianity Does not Condone the LGBT Agenda

on August 18, 2014

Messianic Jewish scholar Michael L. Brown successfully seeks “to challenge some sacred cows and rock some politically correct boats” in his recent book, Can You Be Gay and Christian: Responding with Love and Truth about Homosexuality. While recognizing the love that is due to homosexual and transgendered individuals like all fallen sinners, Brown comprehensively dispenses with arguments advanced to justify such behavior on a Biblical basis.

Traditionally respected gender and sexuality standards bring charges today of “false Christians” who “hate thy neighbor.” LGBT activists “who came out of the closet forty-plus years ago want to put us in the closet,” Brown observes of social conservatives like himself.” “Somehow I don’t feel the love,” Brown cracks while giving an ever-growing list of individuals suffering career repercussions for politically incorrect sexual and gender norms.

Christian “guilt tripping” results from false claims that homosexual suicide results from due to social ostracism. A man “claiming to be deeply committed to Jesus,” in one of Brown’s examples, asserted a choice of “either sex-change or suicide” and “effectively rendered his wife a widow” after 37 years of marriage. Yet “deliverance from suicide” often comes precisely from abandoning LGBT lifestyles and their “comorbidity” of various health and emotional problems.

Television, meanwhile, misleads that there are more homosexuals in America than evangelical Christians, according to media critic Michael Medved. Thus the “grossly false perception,” Brown noted, that almost 30% (reality: 2.3%) of the population is homosexual appeared in a 2011 Gallup poll of 18-29 year-olds. “[N]othing less than social insanity” has resulted from such altered societal perceptions of LGBT agendas as, among other things, “some scientists now speak of a pedophile orientation while others speak of GSA (genetic sexual attraction, meaning genetic attraction between siblings).”

Christian revisionism’s “new cross,” meanwhile, “empowers” sinners with a Jesus who “came to help you fulfill your dreams,” manifesting the “contemporary American value system” of “right and wrong…largely determined by how I feel.” Thus the “gay Christian” outlook “sees the Scriptures through the lens of homosexuality,” an “[i]dolatry…creating a God in our own image.” The resulting “sexual-theological trash” contains “profane readings of the Word and blasphemous depictions of the Lord.” “[G]ay scholars ‘cruise’ the Scriptures looking for alleged examples of same-sex activity” and write “pure (or, more accurately, impure) fiction.” Such hermeneutics leave “lifelong New Testament scholars…astounded.”

Brown has researched “material that was so offensive and grievous that I literally broke down in tears.” Elijah, for example, was a “gay leather man.” Despite having been “very much into women,” with eight wives, many concubines, and an adulterous relationship, David also supposedly had a homosexual relationship with Jonathan. The Gospels’ Roman Centurion, the “paradigmatic ‘God-fearer’” or “righteous Gentile,” likewise has not a paralyzed servant, but a “(bought and owned) boy sex toy.” A “queer…in the most negative sense of the word” Jesus says to the servant, “Be healed and keep up the (pederastic?) love-fest!”

A “pro-homosex reading of the Bible…virtually unprecedented until after the sexual revolution of the 1960s,” though, cannot undo homosexuality being “clearly prohibited in the Scriptures.” The Bible has “not a single positive statement about homosexuality,” contrasting with statements about women’s value and emancipation that supported past rights struggles. Only six to eight “clobber passages” against homosexuality occur in the Bible, LGBT revisionists contend, yet the “Bible is a heterosexual book” presenting God’s sexual “design and purpose.” Scripture such as the Ten Commandments and Ephesians speak of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives for a humanity made male and female in God’s image according to Genesis 1:27.

Assuming heterosexuality, the Bible no more needs to discuss homosexuality than a sugar-free cookbook assuming sugar’s unhealthiness in the introduction needs subsequent sugar discussion, Brown explains. Whether “Ronald Reagan thought Martians were friendly” is just as “ludicrous” a non-issue as Jesus specifically addressing homosexuality, something unmentioned by Jesus along with bestiality. Yet Jesus’ deepening of the prohibitions against murder and adultery to feelings of hate and lust would, by analogy, also deepen the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality.

“This is about real people,” Brown acknowledges, “often kindly and devoted and caring and prayerful people.” Brown himself came from a “very open, liberally minded home” with an openly homosexual organ teacher, once visited by the Browns for dinner in his apartment with his partner. Leviticus 19:17’s call for rebuking a neighbor’s sin, though, precedes the subsequent verse’s famous demands to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus similarly instructs his followers in John 7:24 to “judge with proper judgment.” To “reach out and resist” is thus Brown’s approach to LGBT advocates. The “Father has a special tenderness in His heart” for those struggling with homosexuality and transgenderism, Brown consoles.

Brown has personally experienced Christian discipleship’s cost, an example instructive for homosexuals who object to forswearing intimate relations in Christ’s name. Brown “came to faith in Jesus in 1971 as a heroin-shooting, LSD-using, sixteen-year-old, hippie-rebel.” “For me as a Jew,” Brown additionally observes, “to follow Jesus means that many of my own people hate me and call me an apostate.” Brown has also “literally washed the feet of a martyr’s widow, a woman whose husband was killed by Hindus upset with his ministry” in India. For homosexuals to “live without sex or be single” is therefore not the only cross to be borne by believers. “It’s worth selling all you have,” Brown concludes citing Jesus’ Parable of the Hidden Treasure, “to have an intimate relationship with Him.”

  1. Comment by TxPastor on August 18, 2014 at 2:31 pm

    Andrew, one constructive hint on your writing. Please use paragraphs. Using paragraphs make it easier to follow both content wise and visually.

  2. Comment by DMurphy on August 18, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    I also have a constructive criticism, and i hope you take it in the love of Christ. Cut down on the use of quotes and explain more from your obviously sharp mind. This was very hard to read.

  3. Comment by AEHarrod on August 19, 2014 at 2:48 pm

    Sorry for the trouble, although reader response to my considerable use of quotations varies at times. I guess I have a bias for letting people and facts speak for themselves through specifically tailored quotations, only introducing my voice where I have a specific added value.

  4. Comment by AEHarrod on August 18, 2014 at 8:37 pm

    I did have paragraphs. I do not know how it got edited this way. Maybe some mistake in the posting

  5. Comment by Ken M on August 19, 2014 at 8:13 pm

    Brown is a treasure. His “debate” with that “gay Christian” Matt Vines was a bit of a joke, since that little boy couldn’t reason his way out of a paper bag. Intellectually and morally, the pro-sodomy side has nothing going for them, but they have been masters at using the simple power of repetition – repeat a lie often enough and loud enough, and people will get sucked in. Call orthodox Christians “ignorant” “haters” and “bigots,” and in time the lie will sink in.

  6. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 12:26 am

    THIS COUPLE DIDN’T “CONDONE THE LGBT AGENDA” AND KILLED THEIR OWN SON

    “Fernandez and Aguirre deliberately tortured the boy to death,
    hiding their tracks with forged doctor’s notes and lies to authorities,
    Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told the grand jury, according to The Times. “For eight straight months, he was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war.”

    The abuse worsened in the months leading up to Gabriel’s death, according to testimony from two of his siblings, both minors, the newspaper reported. They said Gabriel was forced to eat cat feces, rotten spinach and his own vomit. He slept in a locked cabinet and wasn’t let out to go to the bathroom.

    Fernandez and Aguirre reportedly called Gabriel gay, punished him when he played with dolls and forced him to wear girls’ clothes to school, the siblings said.””

    http://www.latimes.com/local/countygovernment/la-me-gabriel-fernandez-20140819-story.html#page=1

  7. Comment by Supertx on August 20, 2014 at 12:39 am

    I feel confident that no one here would ever condone the behavior of these parents.

  8. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 12:42 am

    DO YOU, NOW? WHAT ABOUT THESE PARENTS?

    Jessica Dutro murder trial: Motive for Tigard killing was 4-year-old’s perceived homosexuality, prosecutors say

    Jessica Dutro, a 25-year-old Oregon woman who savagely beat her toddler to death because she thought he was gay, was found guilty last evening on seven charges related to the 2012 death of four-year-old Zachary Dutro-Boggess: one count of murder, five counts of murder by abuse, and one count of second-degree assault.

    Little Zachary (right) was murdered by his mother Jessica and her boyfriend Brian Canady, who pleaded guilty last month to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault for his role in the killing. The attack took place at a homeless shelter in the Portland suburb of Tigard, Oregon, in full view of his now eight-year-old sister.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/tigard/index.ssf/2014/03/jessica_dutro_murder_trial_mot.html

  9. Comment by Supertx on August 20, 2014 at 11:47 am

    Again, I stated that I don’t believe readers here would ever condone hateful treatment of gays or anyone else, whether they agree with the lifestyle or not. The examples above are not things I would ever condone, nor would most people. I am sorry if you truly believe mainstream Christians would feel that way.

  10. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 6:56 pm

    Most mainstream Christians, no, not at all.

    As for supporters of IRD, the jury is still out.

    But by advocating for criminalization of same-sex relationships in Uganda and Nigeria and opposing routine anti-discrimination ordinances in Western countries suggests they would gladly encourage mistreatment by both government authorities and by individuals in the broader culture.

    Can you cite or link to any statement in which IRD has deplored any instance of anti-gay violence? Just one?

  11. Comment by AEHarrod on August 20, 2014 at 10:17 pm

    No one at IRD would support attacks on anyone. Nor would Michael Brown, as the article indicates.

  12. Comment by Dusty Herring on August 21, 2014 at 9:13 am

    I am an ardent supporter of the IRD and would never condone or support violence against those who identify themselves as LGBT.

    Orthodox, traditional, and conservative Christianity when properly ministered to the World is a mission of love and understanding. But, love and understanding isn’t a mandate to promote, condone, or support sinful behavior. For example, the people who committed these horrifying crimes are also worthy of our love and prayers.

  13. Comment by Karmasue on August 21, 2014 at 12:03 pm

    “the people who committed these horrifying crimes are also worthy of our love and prayers.”

    Would that be right before they are executed for murder? Because pro-life doesn’t extend to the convicted murderer.

  14. Comment by Dusty Herring on August 25, 2014 at 1:10 pm

    That could be the case. I do support capital punishment for the most egregious crimes. We can only pray that God’s will be done within our judicial system.

  15. Comment by Karmasue on August 25, 2014 at 5:29 pm

    Well apparently God’s will is execution because even after incredible torture execution attempts are eventually successful.
    But then again,abortion attempts are eventually successful too, so who’s to say that’s not also God’s will?

  16. Comment by Dusty H on August 25, 2014 at 7:12 pm

    No, I can’t reconcile that the murder of an innocent unborn baby is ever the will of God.

  17. Comment by Karmasue on August 25, 2014 at 8:14 pm

    Innocent babies and children die of starvation every day; die of disease every day. Is it that easy to determine what is and is not the will of God?

  18. Comment by Dusty H on August 26, 2014 at 8:32 am

    Yes, it is concerning abortion. Abortion is most times an act of selfishness, a result of personal irresponsibility of both the man and the woman. Even in the cases of rape and incest; I don’t see how killing a baby alleviates the trauma of those crimes.

    The God given purpose of sex is to produce children. There is no 100% effective contraception method, so if you’re going engage in that voluntary behavior, you should be held responsible for your actions. The consistent moral teaching of the Church, for two thousand years, has been: Celibacy in singleness and fidelity in heterosexual marriage.

    Yes, “innocent babies and children die of starvation every day”. If we were to follow the pro-abortionist logic we would institute a policy of ‘post-birth abortion’, because it would be better to kill them while they’re young to end their suffering. Whether the child is six months old or six months before birth it is still a child.

  19. Comment by Karmasue on August 26, 2014 at 9:48 am

    Then you believe you know the will of God…and seek to have what you think you know made law by a secular
    government. Within your religious organization, your members can believe or do what ever turns them on – because they are fortunate enough to live in a free
    country. But when you start to dictate the terms of your belief system in order to change secular laws to fit your religious agenda, the country becomes a
    theocracy. Is that what you want?

  20. Comment by Dusty H on August 26, 2014 at 10:58 am

    The United States was founded on the Judeo-Christian ethos, that is abundantly clear in the personal writings of the Founding Fathers and in the Founding Documents.

    “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable.” -George Washington

    “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

    “The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and
    teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue
    therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.” -John Jay

    “The rights of the colonists as Christians…may be best understood by
    reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver and
    Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and
    promulgated in the New Testament.” -Samuel Adams

    I could give you a hundred more quotes, but they’re easy to research for yourself.

    If “secular law” doesn’t align with Godly principles, then it shouldn’t be a law. The real problem is that the USA has become an “Atheocracy” best described by Bishop Conley of the Roman Catholic Church:

    “a society that is actively hostile to religious faith and religious believers. And I might add — the faith that our society is most hostile toward is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular.”

    The mission of the United Methodist Church is: “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the World.” Clearly that will effect who we vote for and how our laws are made.

  21. Comment by Karmasue on August 26, 2014 at 12:18 pm

    The founding fathers believed in freedom of religion, but
    were adamantly opposed to the injection of any religion into the secular
    government. They believed it would corrupt both the gov’t and the religion.

    You can vote for whom you like. That is the beauty of this country. But to say that the founding fathers set up a Christian government – that is patently false.

    “If I could conceive that the general government might ever
    be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” ~Founding
    Father George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May
    1789

    “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining
    a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail
    themselves for their own purposes.” ~Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: in
    letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

    “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” ~Founding
    Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814,

    “The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation
    of the Church from the State.” ~Founding Father James Madison, 1819, Writings,
    8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real
    Religion”

    “No religious doctrine shall be established by law.” ~Founding Father Elbridge
    Gerry, Annals of Congress 1:729-731

    And in fact, most of our founding fathers were Diests, not
    Christians. They were free thinkers. They understood the issues of a theocracy because they had already experienced it.

  22. Comment by Dusty H on August 26, 2014 at 2:03 pm

    I never claimed they were ardent Christians. I’ll leave that judgment where it belongs, with God. History does show that most of them did attend Church. And, I didn’t say they set up a Christian government. The Founders set the tone of our government with the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    They didn’t pull “these truths” out of thin air. These rights are granted by God and can be Biblically affirmed.

    The quotes you’ve given are valid and I’ve read them all before. Each of these quotes also has an aspect of protecting religious freedom. You are right that the Founders purposely put a system in place to guard against a Theocracy, and rightfully so. Also, they formulated the government so that religion couldn’t be used as a weapon of oppression. Many people settled in America because of religious oppression. The Founders wanted to insure it didn’t happen here. But, that doesn’t negate that the concepts of justice and freedom were inspired by the Judeo-Christian ethos. Congress even promoted the use of the Bible in schools:

    “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.” – United States Congress 1782

    There is a revisionist history movement trying to rewrite early American history to portray the Founding Fathers as purely secularist if not outright anti-Christian, which is being very intellectually dishonest.

    Thomas Jefferson is probably the most complicated founder to try and deduce where he stands religiously. Rev Dr James Kennedy has an interesting article on Jefferson here:
    http://www.wnd.com/2002/06/14285/

  23. Comment by Karmasue on August 26, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    I never said they were secularists – in fact I said they were mostly Deists.
    The Declaration of Independence itself was a document solely meant to declare the colonies free of British rule, list grievances against the Crown, and set the tone for the post revolutionary colonies.

    The Constitution, however, was and remains the founding document for the government of the United States.

    It was our secular government that was set up specifically with an effective “wall of separation between church and state”.

  24. Comment by Rockon on August 24, 2014 at 8:13 am

    By providing examples of people who didn’t know how to deal with this issue, this poster is implying that victimization that occurs justifies homosexual practice. The poster here is implying that there is no way to disagree with homosexual practice of a loved one without driving that person to some level of victimization. It’s an implication that is basically saying that 2 wrongs make it right.

  25. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 12:46 am

    WHAT ABOUT THE SEXUAL MINORITY COMMUNITIES OF UGANDA?

    A survey from Sexual Minorities Uganda, meanwhile, recorded 162 incidents of persecution against the country’s gays and lesbians since parliament passed its anti-homosexuality law on Dec. 20. In comparison, Sexual Minorities Uganda found eight incidents for the rest of 2013 and 19 for all of 2012.

    http://www.sexualminoritiesuganda.com/Torment%20to%20Tyranny%2009-05-2014%20FINAL.pdf

  26. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 12:48 am

    LAWRENCE KING’S KILLER DID NOT “CONDONE THE LGBT AGENDA”

    OXNARD, Calif. — Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

    In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html?_r=0

  27. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 12:58 am

    ERIC RUDOLPH KILLED A LESBIAN IN HIS FIGHT AGAINST THE “HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA.”

    IRD MUST BE SO PROUD.

    Rudolph has made it clear in his written statement and elsewhere that the purpose of the bombings was to fight against abortion and the “homosexual agenda”. He considered abortion to be murder, the product of a “rotten feast of materialism and self-indulgence”; accordingly, he believed that its perpetrators deserved death, and that the United States government had lost its legitimacy by sanctioning it. He also considered it essential to resist by force “the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality” in order to protect “the integrity of American society” and “the very existence of our culture”, whose foundation is the “family hearth”.[6]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph

  28. Comment by mitchw7959 on August 20, 2014 at 1:11 am

    JUST A DC FIRE DEPT. EMS EXERCISING HIS “RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION” TO ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ORDINANCES?

    Tyra Hunter, a young woman in Washington DC, was struck in a vicious hit-and-run auto accident on August, 7. EMS technicians were called and began ministering to her. Her injuries were already extremely severe and it was doubtful she would survive.

    In the course of treatment, a EMS technician cut open her pants and
    discovered that Tyra had a penis. According to witnesses, unbelievably he began laughing, referred to the prostrate, bleeding woman as a “bitch,” and refused to render further medical assistance. Unmoved by bystanders calls that “It don’t make any difference, he’s [sic] a person, he’s a human being,” the EMS technician allowed Tyra to lay on the pavement for the next 3-5 minutes while others continued treatment. Finally an EMS supervisor came over and began treaing Tyra. She died at a local hospital shortly thereafter.

    http://www.qrd.org/qrd/trans/1995/tyra.hunter.case.reopened-12.04.95

    http://www.metroweekly.com/2007/05/judge-hits-dc-fire-emergency/


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