Premiere: The Stonewall Inn

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00:38

So, Dr. Brown, your book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, was such an amazing book.

00:45

It was really well written. It was so helpful, and I think it was accessible to a lot of different areas and levels.

00:55

What I mean by that is, when the book came out, I gave a copy of the book to what was then my 11 -year -old son.

01:02

And he actually read that book, and he remembers it to this day. The name of the book was

01:08

A Queer Thing Happened to America, and you did something that actually I found surprising in the book, because I just didn't know.

01:14

I didn't understand that that's where so much transformation in the culture had really began, at least from their perspective.

01:22

You talked about the Stonewall Inn, and again, it was new to me.

01:29

I was unaware of this. And I think many people are. Dr. Brown, tell us about the book,

01:34

A Queer Thing Happened to America, and then of course lead us into this discussion about the Stonewall Inn. What is it?

01:40

Why is it significant? Sure. So the larger picture is that in 2004, quite to my surprise,

01:46

I became tremendously burdened about gay activism in our culture. I was aware of various issues over the years, but at that time

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I had written 19 books. If you took out the content of all of them that dealt with homosexuality,

02:01

I don't think it would have filled a page. So this was just not a major thing on my radar. As a heterosexual leader for years,

02:07

I preached about sexual purity and things like that, but always in a heterosexual context. In 2004,

02:13

I began to get tremendously burdened about the activism and what was happening in our society. And I quickly saw that those who came out of the closet wanted to put us in the closet, and that gay activism was quickly becoming the principal threat to freedom of religion, speech, and conscience in America.

02:32

But I said to myself, why me? Why do I need to get involved with this? Because when it came to, say,

02:38

Jewish apologetics, there was really no one else doing what needed to be done. So when God called me to write on this and address the rabbis,

02:44

I was clearly filling a void. But I was thinking to myself, you already have James Dobson focus on the family, and you have the political

02:52

Anthony Perkins with Family Research Council, and contemporary prophetic voices like Chuck Colson speaking to the culture.

02:59

I'm thinking, my PhD is in Semitic languages, I don't come out of homosexuality, why me? And that's when I realized this is going to be the principal moral and spiritual battle of the generation.

03:10

You're already clearly divided on abortion lines, but this was going to be the one that was going to be the great challenge.

03:16

So I began to get burdened about the culture, but then I began to get burdened for the people.

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And the way God really laid it on my heart as I prayed about these things was, reach out and resist, reach out to the people with compassion, resist the activism, resist the gay agenda with courage.

03:37

And out of that, over a period of years, I engaged in activism in my community,

03:44

I engaged in outreach, I took advantage of any opportunity I had to sit with someone who identified as gay or lesbian, tell me your story, let me share my perspective and things.

03:55

And over a period of six years, I did research and writing, my own heart became more compassionate, my own convictions became clearer.

04:03

And I wrote the book, A Queer Thing Happened to America. Now by God's grace, I've published for major publishers, but no one was willing to touch it.

04:11

And since I had three publishers apologize to me, but people said, no way, we can't touch this, a publicity firm wouldn't touch it, no one would go near it.

04:19

So we formed our own company called Equal Time Books. We self -published the book.

04:25

And instead of putting endorsements on the back cover, I put all the rejections, I didn't mention names because they don't want to embarrass anyone, but I put all the rejections on the back cover.

04:32

Okay, so we start the book at Stonewall. It was 1 .20 in the morning,

04:38

June 28th of 1969. If you wonder why June is Gay Pride Month, we're now

04:45

LGBTQ Pride Month, it's because of the Stonewall riots. You have to remember at that time, for a younger audience, this is inconceivable, at that time it was illegal to publicly cross -dress.

04:58

It was illegal for a same -sex couple to dance together. Now of course people did these things, but they were technically illegal.

05:05

And the Stonewall Inn was a bar in Greenwich Village, so East New York. It was mafia -owned and would often be raided by police.

05:13

You would have transvestite prostitutes there and they would be arrested for the night and then let back out.

05:19

And then because it was mafia -owned, sometimes the police would raid it for other reasons. This particular night, from what

05:26

I've read, even from gay historians, the bar was being raided by police for mafia -related reasons, whether something's being trafficked or whatever.

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But the transvestite prostitutes and other patrons there basically said, we've had it.

05:43

And they physically fought back. And as the night wore on, there were thousands of people in the streets.

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There were violent acts, acts of arson and vandalism and things like that. Some of the police actually could have been badly injured, if not killed.

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And the way some homosexual activists have described it, it was kind of like the bursting of a wound, that something had been so kept down and they felt, we don't have equality, we don't have rights, our relations aren't recognized, we're crushed down by this patriarchal religious society, the psychiatric profession says we're crazy, the religious world says we're sinners, that something burst.

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And one last little thing, as bizarre as this sounds, Judy Garland had just committed suicide shortly before that.

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And she was an icon in the male homosexual world. She was greatly loved.

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And some speculate that the emotions were running so high with people upset about her suicide, that when this raid took place that night, people said enough is enough.

06:49

And that was the beginning, when President Obama, in his second inaugural speech, hailed as a wonderful movement.

06:56

Stonewall was actually a violent rebellion against the police who were raiding a gay and transgender bar.

07:03

Right. It's interesting because, Michael, have you have you been there? Have you been to the location?

07:10

No, I went to grad school very close to there. So I know the neighborhood. I remember when

07:15

I was in grad school in the late 70s and early 80s that there was a play, a live play called

07:21

Lesbian Vampires of Sodom. And all of the people in it were men dressed as women.

07:27

So I was very familiar with the neighborhood, but not that specific location. Yeah, it was interesting. We were walking through New York City getting content for a lot of different projects for End Abortion Now and other things.

07:39

And we ended up in a neighborhood that we didn't expect. We didn't expect.

07:45

For a long period of time, we were in an area that was very interesting and we felt very out of place.

07:52

But we ended up being able to get to Stonewall. And the thing that was surprising to me, Michael, was that you're in the middle of a city.

08:00

There is homosexual activity everywhere all around this location and for, I guess, about a mile around it.

08:06

Yeah, it was quite a stretch. One of the shops is called the Big Gay Ice Cream. Big Gay Ice Cream.

08:11

So it's a very, very different, obviously, culture and environment. But it's weird, Michael, because there's just a little patch in the middle of the city, right in front of Stonewall, where it's

08:21

National Park Services, you know, signs over this little patch of area commemorating this area.

08:29

And I remember that, Michael, we walked inside there and I remember I felt so burdened. And my heart was broken as I walked through here to see people sort of like hanging out in this little patch with National Park Services, with these statues of two gay men and two lesbians.

08:47

And they're sitting there sort of like heralding the goodness of this place. There's gay pride flags everywhere, pride festival stuff all over the place.

08:55

And you also saw so many, what do you call them, gay tourists?

09:03

Tourists that were obviously there to be on site at this amazing place with this amazing moment in history for the gay community.

09:12

But it was really interesting, Michael, because we were there for just a little period of time filming to get content for actually this conversation we're having with you.

09:21

And we witnessed so much brokenness and so much unhappiness.

09:27

We saw people coming out of the bar, fighting with one another. We just saw a side to the

09:34

Stonewall Inn that isn't going to be propped up during the inaugural speech in terms of what is really happening there and the lifestyle and just the heartbeat in that location.

09:48

So it was really something else. When I read your book, Dr. Brown, I never expected to actually get to see the

09:53

Stonewall Inn. But it was interesting to be there and sort of feel that moment. Yeah. No, I was going to say, you know, having a heart for the people obviously reflects

10:01

God's heart. Sin is sin. Rebellion is rebellion. We're held responsible for our actions.

10:08

But there are a lot of people broken in sin. There are a lot of people in deep pain.

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And I don't want to make a caricature of those who identify as LGBT as if you don't have people in happy relations and things like that.

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But bottom line, God did not make men to be with men or women to be with women. That's the bottom line.

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And there are reasons. Look, even if you just look at sexually transmitted diseases, God did not make men to be with men.

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You're going to have a much higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases when that happens. God did not make mistakes about who he put in what bodies.

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There's going to be a reason that you're going to have much higher rates of depression and suicide among transgenders, even after sex change surgery.

10:51

And what happened to me is, is I knew that that I was right in terms of the cultural activism.

10:58

And it was clear to me where things were going and where society would go. If folks are shocked to see where things are today, read the last chapter of A Queer Thing Happened to America, written in 2011, where we say, here's where it's going.

11:12

It's self -evident it was going in this direction. So I knew I was right in those terms.

11:18

But I wanted to have a heart of compassion, the same heart that would cause me to lay down my life for people as Jesus laid down his life for us.

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And that's why it was so important to me to hear people's stories. Because from their perspective,

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God hated them or the church hated them. You know, single them out specially.

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And when they would talk about, look, I tried to change or I went for prayer or someone tried to drive demons out of me or I went,

11:47

I got counseling and it didn't help. And I was suicidal. And I realized God made me gay and I was misreading the

11:53

Bible. It was so liberating for me. I mean, it's absolutely heartbreaking to hear that. So the brokenness is real and it's not going to be celebrated publicly.

12:03

You're not going to hear about that. In fact, one of the strategies from from from Hunter Madsen, the famous authors of After the

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Ball, these sociologists from trained at Harvard University, they wrote this book, came out in the late 80s,

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How America Were Conquered, Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s. One of the things they said is we're going to portray things in the media in a way that's not really true.

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But the negative caricatures about us aren't true either. So we'll go the other way. And we will make things so as a couple, it's special to have you as a wonderful family, et cetera.

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And this way it will change American hearts and minds. And it's done that because Americans want to be fair minded.

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We know our history of segregation and slavery. We don't want to be bigoted. We want to be accepting.

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And by by appealing to those attitudes, Americans have just bought into the whole agenda and it has been destructive to our culture.

12:58

Yeah, I was just going to say the the things I think that stood out to me the most was first, you know, when you typically think of like companies and stores that have like a rainbow flag, like we're we you know, we're we support gay people or whatever.

13:12

It wasn't just that it was, you know, like you said, it was a long stretch of street, but it was vile, right?

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It was I mean, your 11 year old son was with us and there was times we had to say, cover your eyes like it was it was disgusting and and they were flaunted it and they were proud of it.

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You know, you see you hear the gay pride thing. They were very proud of the things that they were flaunting.

13:34

So that was the first thing that stood out. But then when we got actually got to Stonewall again, it was an accident. We literally were across the street from it, didn't even realize.

13:41

Yeah, it's just the small little bar. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the one thing that I think stood out to me was like you were saying,

13:48

Dr. Brown, like there was no happiness. It wasn't a happy place. You could and you said you could sense you could feel like the heaviness and the lack of joy that was there.

14:00

People literally fighting outside. People literally all over the place. Gay couples fighting. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it was crazy.

14:07

And then even where the the monument's at now, it used to be a monument for a

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Civil War hero. Right. He's there. It's still there. It's still there, but now it's surrounded by rainbow flags.

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So this is taken over that, which was another thing that was crazy to me. But then the other observation and this kind of ties into a bigger conversation, you know, being less than a mile from Margaret Singer's original location.

14:34

Yeah. There were zero children and no children, no children anywhere. Your son was the only child there.

14:41

We were walking around for a long while. There wasn't a child in sight. Yeah. And it just speaks,

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I think, to the to that that culture, the Planned Parenthood, the abortion, the gay agenda.

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They don't like kids. They don't like children. And that was very clear and evident.

14:59

Well, can I talk to you about the answer? I'll just I'll just say in terms of what we experienced in that moment.

15:04

So we were walking through Greenwich Village for a long time, Stonewall Inn. And so the only child in sight was my son.

15:11

Right. And and yeah, it's it's a good thing. He was raised in a Christian home with a Christian worldview. And so he's sort of prepared for this stuff.

15:18

And he's been out with you and I in some hard places for a long time. But it wasn't like that everywhere in New York. No, we if you get out of that little area, you're just a mile outside of it.

15:28

And there are just children everywhere. Right. And that was consistent all throughout New York. But it was in that one little area, that patch.

15:34

There was no no children around. And even in the providence of God, for you to see what you saw at that moment was really like a snapshot of reality.

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And God is the God of life. And God is a God who calls us to reproduce. So the whole abortion movement is a movement of death.

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And and the whole homosexual activism movement is a movement that that can't biologically reproduce.

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Obviously, there are gay couples that go through extraordinary measures to have children or some that are in heterosexual relations temporarily, then divorce and keep their children.

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So we we understand that. But by nature, by design to men or to women cannot reproduce.

16:17

And I remember in the when was it the late 1980s, early 1990s,

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I participated with my home congregation in Maryland in an operation rescue event where you sit in front of an abortion clinic and then you ultimately get arrested by the police, et cetera.

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But it sends a tremendous message to the community. And I remember to my shock as the crowds gathered.

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So we were protesting abortion in a prayerful, worshipful way.

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And the crowds came counter protesters were yelling and screaming at us. And as I began to listen to them, they were identifying as gay and lesbian.

16:57

They were identifying as Satanists and they were identifying as pro abortion. And I thought, why?

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Why in the world are homosexual men and women in front of an abortion clinic? Because this is not their issue.

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Abortion is basically not a major issue for them because they're not having in their relationships if they're just with each other unwanted pregnancies.

17:16

But you realize it was it was this coalition of death. It was a hellish coalition in that regard.

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And when you talk about Stonewall, what people need to understand is that there were gay activists operating before that.

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There were men like Frank Kameny and Harry Hay who were looked at as pioneers and gay activism. But Stonewall was when things exploded on the consciousness of the nation.

17:40

And this is the culmination of the counterculture revolution, the 60s, when I became a heavy drug user before getting saved in the early 70s.

17:48

And a psychologist, David Myers, pointed out that if you fell asleep in the year 1960 and woke up in the year 2000, you'd wake up to the divorce rate, double teen suicide up three times, reported violent crime up four times, prison population up five times, children born out of wedlock up six times, people living together out of wedlock up seven times.

18:07

And most of the shift happened right within the 60s. So this is the era of Woodstock.

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This is the era of sex, drugs, rock and roll. This is the era of Eastern religion. It was a time of real rebellion.

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This is when the radical feminist movement is birthed with the acronyms like W .I .T .C .H. for some of the groups.

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And not surprisingly, this is when the gay activist movement explodes on the scene.

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There was a major cultural shift. And you must see this as part of the larger sexual revolution.

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And included in the larger sexual revolution is the birth control pill of 1960 and now sex for recreation and not for procreation.

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These things are absolutely culturally and spiritually related. That's right. And guess who that came from?

18:52

Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger was. Yeah, that was all her workings. That was part of that was exactly everything that she was she was pushing.

19:00

And quickly, I was going to say we've actually talked about this, Dr. Brown, when we go to the abortion mill, you know, where they're trying to save babies.

19:08

The only men you see there on the Planned Parenthood side are

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Malakoi, right? There are feminists, they're homosexual men. That's the only men you see that are that are trying to promote the murder of these children.

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And we've talked about this because the men you see on our side, we have our kids, we have families, we love we love children.

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And there's just such an evident distinction in the two groups. And you're right.

19:35

It just all kind of goes back into the same culture of death, really. Well, it's funny, Dr. Brown, when you when you mentioned that Operation Rescue and, you know, that big movement and you were a part of that.

19:43

And that's I'm so so glad to hear that. And just who was there in opposition was people who were homosexual, identifying as homosexual, satanists.

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Those that's that's who we have to this day. Brown's the same thing. It's this it's literally the same culture warring against.

20:01

OK, so, Dr. Brown, I remember when your book came out, I read it and it was and we talked about we even had you on,

20:07

I believe, years and years ago. Apology Radio talking about a queer thing happened to America. It's amazing,

20:13

Michael, because my goodness, like that was I think we had I think we had him on like 2010 or 11 maybe.

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And we were talking about the book had just come out and we were talking about the book. It was early on.

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And I remember you were making a lot of claims in the book that I was like,

20:33

I don't know. Like, I don't know if I don't I don't know if it's possible to get off the ground that fast. And, you know, I don't know. But I mean, everything that you were saying in the book was true and and your research was stellar and everything you were concerned about coming toward us was absolutely right.

20:49

And I'm glad that the Lord put the burden on your heart to engage this issue. But here we are now.

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And my goodness, Michael, we could not even I mean, have even predicted, imagine just how fast how fast we would be in the place that we are right now.

21:05

OK, so I know it's it's a it's a big question to ask, but OK, now we're in the midst of it where we are seen as the enemies and the bigots and the hateful ones.

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And we're not allowed to say that a man should not dress like a woman and a woman should not dress like a man.

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We're not allowed to tell a woman that there's a woman in Canada that says that she does not want to wax the genitals of a man dressed like a woman and everyone vilifies her.

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We're not allowed to say to her, I understand, sweetie, why you wouldn't want to do that.

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What we're saying now is, no, she she ought to do it. She has to do it. And how dare she suggest otherwise.

21:49

So, Dr. Brown, what do we do from your perspective here? Is it time to full throat bring the gospels, lay our lives down and give everything we've got?

22:02

Or how do we do this from your perspective? Yes. So let me just underscore how crazy things are today.

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I mean, in 2011, when the book came out, if I said and Bruce Jenner will be named Women of the

22:16

Year from Glamour magazine, you know, you think, come on, I would not have believed you know, the

22:22

American Library Association will support drag queens reading to toddlers or a father in Canada can be instantly arrested if he refers to his 14 year old daughter as she because the girl identifies as a boy.

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People say that's not that's not possible or feasible. But of course, all these things are just normal in the news.

22:45

So a few things. First, we need to repent of sin in our own camp. I've often said that no fault heterosexual divorce in the church did more to undermine marriage than all gay activists combined.

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So let's get our own houses in order. There's so much porn in the church today, so much compromise in our leadership.

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Let's let's search our own hearts before God and repent of our own sin. We start there. Number one.

23:10

Number two, we recognize that Satan overplays his hand.

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And in the same way, the activists keep going too far because nothing is ever enough.

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And little by little, American opinion is starting to shift. Things are starting to change.

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There are now lawsuits being taken out just by secular people because of transgender athletes.

23:35

You know, a guy identifies as a girl beating someone's daughter. And now she doesn't get a scholarship at school or this this guy in New Zealand is that was a body.

23:44

It was a weightlifter as a man now identifies as a woman. He's breaking all the world's records. He's going to compete in the

23:50

Tokyo Olympics. Now there is there's a fight about that. So let's recognize that that there is a pushback already happening, that finally

23:59

Christians and parts of the society are beginning to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

24:05

So that leads us to the point now, which is really simple. If we all or here, let's be realistic, if twenty five percent of evangelical born again believers in America determine we're going to stand up and speak up, the tide would turn overnight.

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If we just said on social media, I'm not going to be ugly or nasty, but I'm going to speak the truth in my job, from behind the pulpit, in my school, enough of us speaking up, we would begin to turn the tide.

24:34

The only reason these things have happened is this. We become we've been so quiet. We basically made a deal with the devil.

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I won't bother you if you don't bother me. We've forgotten Jesus words that to save your life is to lose it, to lose your life is to find it.

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So, yeah, if it comes to we're going to stand for Jesus, even if you behead us. Fine. My friends around the world face that and we face that overseas.

24:56

But but the fact of the matter is that's not the situation right now. No one's beheading us.

25:01

No one has a gun to our head. We're we're we're silent because we don't want to be unfriended on Facebook or demonetized on YouTube or something like that.

25:11

So we just need a little compassion and a little boldness. And if we just begin to stand up, speak up.

25:18

Yes. If you're faced with a situation, you do what's right or you lose your job, you do what's right and you get

25:24

Christian legal society bringing that to court. You're treated with bias and prejudice because of the society we're in.

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We have the privilege and opportunity. We speak out. We address that. Let us overcome evil with good.

25:36

Let us overcome hatred with love. Let us overcome lies with truth. If we'll stand up, it's not too late.

25:42

We're in a terrible, terrible situation, but if we'll stand up, there can still be redemption. Agreed.