We’ve met Dr Michael L Brown before. In The Fighting Words of Michael Brown, I analyzed the revolution- and battle-based rhetoric he uses to call evangelical Christians to rise up against gays and lesbians, and their rights. In Pedophilia, Hedonism & Impending Confusion, I revisited Brown’s anti-gay rhetoric and demonstrated how he misrepresented LGBT people with a classic “slippery slope” argument.
Now Brown is in the spotlight again with a book that claims to chronicle the rise of gay rights and, with the support of “massive research and extensive interaction with the GLBT community,” debunk the so-called homosexual agenda. A Queer Thing Happened to America: And What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been is, according to its author, a 700-page representation and demolition of the gay agenda, of which 100 pages are supporting footnotes.
Brown couldn’t find anyone to publish his book, a fact he puts down to fear. Read it and “find out why the publishing world was afraid to touch it,” he says. “Family values” apologist Bill Muehlenberg props up Brown’s theory in his enthusiastic review:
The fact that this book almost did not get published may be the most telling aspect of this volume. One publisher after another refused to have anything to do with this book. This simply shows the enormous power the militant homosexual lobby now exercises.
The simple truth is, they have effectively imposed an iron curtain of censorship, intimidating and bullying anyone who dares to question their radical agenda. Thus those voices that are willing to stand up and speak truth are few and far between.
Or perhaps Christian publishers just don’t fall for this extreme stuff anymore?
White supremacists undoubtedly make the same claim about publishers being afraid to touch their books, but Brown and Muehlenberg, your theories of bullying might fit your story, but it’s just one version of events based on your own homophobic preconceptions. Another theory, and one supported by a story I and millions of others think better fits the facts, is that the kind of claims you make are both incorrect and fundamentally hateful. (Meanwhile, spare a thought for the kids who are really getting bullied in America today.)
Brown eventually self-published the book under the name EqualTime. If this strikes anyone as familiar, remember that anti-gay reparative therapy organization NARTH effectively had to do the same thing to get their pro-gay-cure report published — they created a new journal and touted a feeble literature review produced by members of their own society as a pioneering, peer-reviewed study.
Brown and his supporters will probably protest that I haven’t yet read the book. I know enough of Brown, the movement he represents, and what I’ve read about the book so far to confidently predict what kind of thing it contains and how accurate it is. I’ve based my comments only on what I know so far, and I’m not building up my hopes of finding anything different in the book itself. But I will read it — when I have the time and the stomach — and I’ll report back.
I haven’t read it either, and I certainly don’t intend to buy it – I have better things to spend my money on – but the very title of the book and the illustration on the front cover must surely be a pointer to the mentality of its author. What I do know, from reading a review of it, are two things. The first is that he includes 40 pages – yes, FORTY PAGES – about paedophilia and NAMBLA, his justification being that social acceptance and equality for gays is the beginning of the slippery slope to acceptance of paedophilia. The second is that he pushes the ex-gay hocus-pocus, citing Joseph Nicolosi, NARTH and Robert Gagnon in his support. Those two things are, I submit, sufficient condemnation.
Kathy Baldock’s very helpful review of it can be found here:
https://canyonwalkerconnections.com/2011/04/a-queer-thing-happened-to-america-by-dr-michael-brown-review/
@William Thanks for that link, William. I really don’t expect to find much different from what you’ve said. But I’d be willing to hold my nose and read the book sometime if necessary!
Dave,
So we meet again! To the delight of your readers, I won’t be posting responses here other than this one, but I wanted to let you know that you are quoted in the book, and we’ll be happy to send you a copy so you don’t have to pay for it. (Autographed, of course.) 🙂
As for Kathy’s review, unfortunately much of it is her projection on what I wrote — especially the “pedophilia chapter” — so for the sake of truth and accuracy, you’d best not rely on it. I did write out a full response to all the places where she grossly misrepresented the content of the book, but there’s been no real need to post it thus far.
When you have the time (and stomach) to dive into the book, let us know, and your copy will be on the way. 2 Cor 13:8
@Dr Michael L Brown
Your PR guy has been in touch, and I gladly accepted his offer of a book, so I assume a copy is in the mail. Thanks.
I really don’t understand the pedophilia “connection” people imagine. You can’t have a sustaining relationship with a child – even one technically of pubescent age, like 14 or 15 – because they eventually grow up. As for adults falling in love with other adults; well, if it is truly love, it will come with the glad acceptance of eventual wrinkles and grey hair.
@Emily K Well, this is the line I went down with Brown when he raised the “Why is being gay okay and being a pedophile isn’t?” canard, and the associated “If you’re gay, you obviously have no clear moral standards” claim. Mutual consent between adults is a very clear moral principle that distinguishes gay relationships from the other practices the Christian Right just loves to bring up, eg, bestiality, pedophilia.
A friend forwarded a copy of Brown’s “researched” analysis of transsexuals.
I haven’t seen such sloppy, ill-considered work on the subject since I read McHugh’s opinion piece in “First Things”. In fact, McHugh seems to be the only writer that Brown cites – so he conveniently has ignored the entire body of literature on the subject for the last 50 years or so.
If that was Brown’s idea of research, I’m amazed he ever got his PhD from anywhere – no credible professor would accept that kind of sloppiness from a student.
What? He couldn’t get WorldNutDaily to publish it?
There seems to be a concerted effort to give the book good reviews over on Amazon.com.
I strongly suspect that the principal reason why no publisher would take it is a commercial one. Publishing, even religious publishing, is a business like any other. Publishers aim to make a profit, and to that end they tend to publish books that they expect to sell well. People who hate us and who are seeking rationalization for their hatred may be prepared to read a nasty little fundamentalist tract to find it, or even a vile little paperback like Tim LaHaye’s What Eveyone Should Know About Homosexuality (now thankfully out of print), but how many will be bothered to wade through 691 bloody pages for it?
Some years ago a certain right-wing Catholic priest wrote what he regarded as a very clever tome presenting his understanding of the Catholic faith. When he died, the cellar of his presbytery was crammed from floor to ceiling with copies of it. His successor as parish priest said to a relative of mine who paid him a visit, “Take as many copies as you want. I don’t know what to do to get rid of the f—ing things.” I predict that a similar fate will befall Mr Brown’s book.
Looking at the short list of people Dr Michael L Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) follows on Twitter, including the frankly rather scary James L Hartline whose profile reads ‘I am the Harbinger of a Prophetic Blueprint for Saving Our Nation’, I am not surprised people don’t take him seriously enough to publish his horrid looking book. I presume the image on the front is an author photo?
Oh, this is funny: https://askdrbrown.org/
There is a big difference between “afraid to touch” and “not interested in this kind of trash.”
I wonder how many are real? It is unlikely that many not already fully invested in Brown’s sad ideology will actually purchase that book. I would imagine it’s more of a PR instrument than a genuine literary project. Brown doesn’t do anything without a plan.
Note: Check out how many of those reviews are from people who have never reviewed a book before on Amazon. That’s very telling.
Of, this is funny, too: https://askdrbrown.org/about-dr-brown/academic-c-v
After reviewing Brown’s impressive academic credentials, I can certainly understand why he would be considered an expert on homosexuality. What a pompous sanctimonious nutjob.
Sloppy is right. This kind of reporting or writing, with sources and information that share his prejudices is a disgrace.
We can point to evidence and facts that what he foments is very dangerous. As said, there is real bullying among children and adults with only the suspicion of being gay enough to motivate torment, or loss of significant of what’s necessary to a healthy life. Such as one’s family, job, educational track or very life from casual street violence.
Law enforcement and criminal psychology experts will attest to the mindset of pedophiles and any other issue of rape and other non consentual sexual assault. Whether on humans or animals. It’s never about ATTRACTION, let alone mutual attraction, but about POWER, control, humiliation and mental and physical abuse.
This is not a sexual orientation, and it’s exclusive or more present in any given sexual orientation, but it’s a symptom of sociopathy and psychopathology.
It is impossible for a gay adult, mutually attracted to another gay adult, to be a matter of abuse of oneself or another individual, any more than the same occurring in heterosexuals.
That Brown would violate this basic and essential aspect of the difference in attraction as opposed to abuse, and how it presents is a disgrace.
It exacerbates as dangerous a prejudice as that of black males being too predatory, immature and immoral to be around white females.
Making even the most casual of social contact a risk of a death sentence for men in both groups especially.
This was the main impetus of Jim Crow, to the extent that whites were preoccupied with the sexual proclivities of blacks, rather than seeing blacks as having greater social and economic concerns or potential for society.
Gays and blacks are painted with having less mental and moral capacity regarding sexuality than animals.
And gays, like blacks, have paid the unfair price for the indulgence called supremacy. And like gays, like blacks, don’t deserve such injustice and prejudice for the simple neutral difference in their biological make up than the majority that controls their lives.
Dr. Brown, you are VERY sloppy in your research. I, however, am not in MINE when it comes to crime stats and analysis and it’s context here, in socio/politically systemic bigotry and it’s affect on minorities in America.
Yours, resembles that of the most committed segregationists our nation has known. Who also made claims and reports as if expert and intimately more knowledgeable about blacks and their intents and purposes, yet wouldn’t be caught dead, nor would they involve or engage on equal social terms this very minority. That is to say, you talk AT and ABOUT gay people, but do not care to listen to or respect what gay people know and intend.
And in that, you are breaking the most ethics bound commandment of Christ himself, to treat another person the way you’d want to be treated.
Which in itself shows you have absolutely no credibility on this subject and why a smart publisher WOULD reject this book you wrote.
There ARE people a lot more moral, intelligent, compassionate and better than YOU, you know. That’s why they rejected your book.
They aren’t afraid of you, they are much more courageous than you are in fact. It doesn’t take ANY courage to vilify gay people the way you do, Dr. Brown.
Indeed, defending those who are treated unjustly, isolated, and who haven’t had anyone listen to their pain does. You know, like what Jesus did.
It takes more courage to be an out, compassionate and inspired and inspiring gay person in this world, than it does to be a heterosexual, white Christian male who will never have to suffer from the system of prejudice of his own making. It’s easy to see you couldn’t and never would take your own medicine for two seconds.
You can’t even own the reason why your book was rejected from legit publishers.
We know you better than you know us, Dr. Brown.
Brown was a regular speaker for the Love Won Out circuit and has also been a keynote speaker at Exodus’ annual conference.