Michael Brown, hatemonger and busybody extraordinaire, who recently invaded Charlotte Pride with his red-shirted horde of bigots [slogan: “Free water! God hates fags!”] in order to “dialogue” with all the gays about how they’re going to burn in hell, is very upset with Wayne right now. You see, Wayne and I both understand that Brown’s calling card is to pretend to love gay people, to seek “dialogue” and common ground, while preaching Peter LaBarbera levels of hatred against the LGBT community. So he has an entire post up today, attacking Wayne for trying to “redefine Christianity”:
WHEN A GAY JEWISH LIBERAL TRIES TO REDEFINE CHRISTIANITY
Uhhhhh. Yeah, that’s the headline, and that’s why my headline says what it says.
Wayne Besen is a passionate gay activist and non-religious, liberal Jew who has dedicated himself to opposing the idea that homosexuals can become heterosexual.
Wayne Besen is guilty of spreading facts, and facts have a well-known liberal bias. Also, Jew.
he is never at a loss for words, especially when it comes to the “religious right.” In that spirit, he has graced me with several articles, including the not so subtly-titled, “Michael Brown Is an Anti-Gay Monster”
And….. (?)
In that article, Wayne claims that my “game is to try inciting followers to possible violence against LGBT people, while innocently maintaining that he loves homosexuals and simply wants them to meet his militant and perverted version of God.” He calls me “a slick dude,” a “sick and cynical” person, someone with “a messiah complex [who] is a diabolical individual who aims to manipulate impressionable followers to launch some sort of holy war,” noting however, that, I’m “too much of a coward to start the war” myself.
Well, Brown does seem to want a confrontation, and he does have a messiah complex. I think his victim complex is funnier though.
God bless dear Wayne! He certainly has a way with words. After all, it’s not every day that you get called a pathological monster, a slick, sick, cynical, diabolical madman with a messiah complex, as well as get accused of trying to incite a bunch of unstable thugs “to engage in a violent physical clash with LGBT people.” (For what I actually advocate, namely, a totally non-violent, moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution, click here.)
Really? Days go by when people don’t call Michael Brown those things? He must not be listening very hard to the other side of the “dialogue” he wants. For the record, a “spiritual revolution” which includes eradicating gayness [in the real world, to eradicate gayness, you have to eradicate gay people…when the fundamentalist wellspring of denial on that issue dries up, watch out] is by its very nature violent.
Wayne even weighs in again in his own comments section, calling me an “ego-maniac”…
Omigod, it’s surprising Brown didn’t show up in the comments of that piece, such an attention-starved loon he is. As anyone who’s ever encountered him will tell you, Michael looooooves to yammer on and see his name in print.
while other commenters follow in his footsteps with sophisticated posts like these: “I would not be surprised if ‘Mein Kampf’ were to be found on his nightstand.” (This was followed by other comments too vulgar to print.) What a delightful, thoughtful bunch!
This is me, slapping you all on the wrists for hurting Michael’s fee fees. Don’t do it again, unless, y’know, you want to.
But I am only one of Wayne’s targets. In his most recent attack, “Mainstream Christians Must Stand Up to the Religious Right” (September 19, 2011), he reviles the hundreds of Christians with whom I attended the recent gay pride event in Charlotte, claiming that we “confronted and harassed festival attendees with [our] arrogant slogan ‘God Has A Better Way.’” He refers to us as “despicable bullies” and speaks of our “fanatical behavior,” although, for the record, our group of roughly 400 consisted of grandparents, moms, dads, kids, and college-age singles who handed out about 2,500 free bottles of water (labeled “Jesus Loves You”) and engaged in civil and respectful conversation with any who cared to talk with us. Oh, the horror!
To tell them they are going to hell and need to abandon a core part of who they are in order to find favor with Michael Brown’s sick deity of choice. Also, Kathy Baldock was there and counted just over 200 people on the Red Shirt team. Why must wingnuts always inflate their numbers? Is it to bolster their fledgling self worth? Kathy also points out in the comments of Michael’s whiny piece that his decision to bring children to the event is questionable, by his own [nonexistent] standards:
I think it is interesting that a decision was made to bring so many children (maybe 1/10 were under 12 ish.) when the words used to describe Pride Charlotte in your own pre-event media warned “expect this to be a challenging day as sexual immorality, wickedness, and rejection will abound.” I would have used a bit more judgment as a parent. Of course, that was NOT the case, none of that was bounding or a bounding. BUT, had I been on the GHABW team, I would have found a sitter for my kids.
Anyway, back to Michael crying “look at me!”
All this, however, is the backdrop for Wayne’s heartfelt appeal. He is desperately concerned that religious “extremists” like me, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachman will “defile America – and permanently define Christianity.” Instead, Wayne wants the “Religious Left” to rise up and show America what Christianity really is. He writes, “It is time to stand up, speak out, and give voice to our values. If not now, when? Are we going to wait until it is too late and we have lost our country?”
The problem, of course, is that the “Religious Left” has rejected most of the fundamental tenets of the historic Christian faith, denying the authority of Scripture, espousing religious pluralism, defending abortion, and championing homosexuality.
Whereas Michael Brown longs for the good old days of the Crusades and the Inquisition, back when people knew their place. Oh, nostalgia.
Could this be why these so-called “mainstream” churches are in such numerical decline while conservative churches are growing exponentially in many parts of the world?
Well, for one thing, religious belief is on the decline in the US, in general. Yes, many conservative churches are growing in other parts of the world, because fundamentalists go where they can be effective predators. Since the educated, developed first world has less and less patience for the medieval bigotry of people like Michael Brown, they see hungry people in the Third World and exchange food for people’s souls. It’s rather simple…
Wayne himself is not optimistic about the prospects, writing, “This reluctance to stand up and speak out has created a hazardous vacuum where only the shrill and unreasonable voices of fundamentalism are heard. Instead of the dialogue that many progressives of faith claim to desire, this perceived weakness creates a lopsided right wing monologue, which is having a deleterious effect on our nation and the world.”
The reality, of course, is that the “Christianity” Wayne calls for bears little resemblance to the faith of the Scriptures or the faith of history, but that should not surprise us.
Wayne is not “calling for” any new kind of Christianity, you dingbat. It already exists. He and I are simply calling upon the millions upon millions of non-wingnut Christians to speak up a little louder and stop letting their faith be hi-jacked in the public square by self-congratulatory bigots like Michael Brown.
After all, what else should we expect when a non-religious, gay Jewish liberal tries to redefine Christianity?
Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew, said Michael Brown.
And again, Wayne is not “redefining Christianity,” and neither is the Christian left, which is simply trying to live out a faith wherein having the name “Christ” in its title is a feature rather than a bug, as it seems to be for modern day fundamentalists. Focusing on the teachings of the guy the religion is named after, rather than on one’s pitifully uneducated understanding of five or six minor Bible verses, which are then used as a convenient bludgeoning device to be deployed against LGBT people, is really not all that radical of an idea.
