For years now, anti-Christian activists have been pushing the hate button and accusing those of us who hold to biblical morality and family values of being intolerant, hate-filled bigots (and worse).

But this strategy, seen most recently in the attack on godly twin brothers, Jason and David Benham, will inevitably defeat itself. After all, when the alleged victims are the bullies and the alleged tolerant ones are full of bigotry, their rhetoric cannot be taken seriously.

Back in 2008, as Californians voted to preserve marriage with the Proposition 8 marriage amendment, the amendment was quickly dubbed Prop Hate, as if the only way anyone could believe that marriage was the union of a man and woman was if they were full of hate.

But that was only the beginning. In Sacramento, demonstrators held signs reading: 

• Prop 8=American Taliban
• Ban Bigots
• Majority Vote Doesn’t Matter
• 52%=Nazi [this referred to the 52-48% vote in favor of Prop 8]
• Don’t Silence the Christians, Feed Them 2 the Lions
• Your Rights Are Next

Taliban? Nazis? Feed them to the lions?

This kind of demonization will only defeat itself in the long run exposing who the real bigots are.

In the last week, as soon as my newest book was released, I was accused of being the incarnation of the late Fred Phelps (infamous for his “God hates fags” protests), as well as branded the leader of my own “religious cult” that “requires human sacrifices.” (I’m not making this up.)

So, by writing a book filled with compassion and speaking of God’s great love for those who identify as LGBT, also urging the Church to recognize the unique struggles faced by those with same-sex attractions, I have become a hate-filled bigot and cult leader.

It’s like calling Shaquille O’Neal small or Bill Gates poor.

At some point reality kicks in – in this case, the moment someone reads the first pages of my book (or the middle pages or the last pages) – and instead of advancing their cause, the anti-Christian activists undermine their own.

In a blog post entitled, “The homophobic rantings of Michael L Brown,” Jay H. wrote, “Fred Phelps is dead. Long live Fred Phelps, apparently. Or rather his new incarnation: Michael L. Brown.”

Unfortunately for Jay H., when people actually read my book, rather than “homophobic rantings,” they find the opposite. As one reader noted, “[Brown] . . . freely uses life testimonies of people who were divinely delivered from homosexuality, and others NOT divinely delivered from homosexuality. This isn’t cherry-picked propaganda here…there are sections in this book that are very sobering for [an] evangelical believer to read.”

And so, readers quickly realize that I am no more the new Fred Phelps than I’m the new Michael Jordan, and the anti-Christian rhetoric exposes itself.

That’s what is happening with my good friends David and Jason Benham, Christian businessmen and committed husbands and fathers.

They were about to be the stars of a new reality show on HGTV that featured them helping hurting families get their dream homes, until a single post on RightWingWatch caused HGTV to pull the plug. (For those unfamiliar with RightWingWatch, the website is a project of Norman Lear’s ultra-liberal People for the American Way. The website references Christian family activist Phyllis Schafly 351 times, conservative political leader Gary Bauer 334 times, President Ronald Reagan 111 times, author Chuck Colson 57 times, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas 37 times, just to give a few examples. You can be sure most all of the references were not flattering.)

Shortly after HGTV announced its decision, a young man on YouTube opined that the Benham brothers were “the textbook definition of a psychopath” and that “they have no feelings, no consideration for other people.”

The problem, of course, is that the moment you get to know David and Jason – or even watch them on a TV interview for a few minutes or see them interacting with their families – you realize that they are not the ones who need help. It’s the young man on YouTube who needs help, and I can guarantee that if they had the opportunity, the Benhams would reach out to him directly to show him the love of God. (When I played part of this YouTube clip for Jason on my radio show, he responded with real compassion and concern.)

But it’s not just some anonymous YouTuber who is spouting such extreme, self-disqualifying anti-Christian rhetoric.

Dan Savage, a leading gay activist (and sex columnist) supported HGTV’s decision, comparing the Benham’s pro-family viewpoints to “white people” who used to “go on TV and say the most racist [expletive] imaginable (argue against legal interracial marriage, argue in favor of segregation) and keep their jobs and be invited back on TV to say that [expletive] a second time.”

Savage facetiously remarked that “hating the [expletive] out of gay people is something all Christians have in common,” titling his blog, “HGTV Cancels Reality Show After Twin Stars Anti-Gay Activism and Rabid Homophobia Exposed.”

What is rabid, however, is not the position of the Benhams. It is Dan Savage’s militant and vicious anti-Christian rhetoric that is rabid, and so, when reasonable, thinking people listen to Savage and to the Benham brothers, it’s easy to see who is filled with hate and who is filled with love.

Eventually, as those who claim to be champions of tolerance and diversity continue their crusade to silence and defame those who differ with them, they will ultimately defeat themselves.

Watch and see.

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com blog.

Fred Phelps is dead. The fire-and-brimstone preacher, who for many years was pastor of the institution known as Westboro Baptist Church, died late Wednesday in a hospice in Topeka, Kansas. The announcement was made on his church’s website. The wording was simple: “Fred W. Phelps Sr. has gone the way of all flesh.” Thus brings to an end one of most bitter lives in modern history — and one of the most harmful to the Gospel.

Fred Phelps became infamous due to one central fact — he was a world-class hater. He brought great discredit to the Gospel of Christ because his message was undiluted hatred packaged as the beliefs of a church. Even Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to Westboro Baptist Church as “this so-called church.” The damage was due to the fact that his platform for hatred was called a church. That provided the watching and listening world with a ready target and case study for the accusation that Christian conviction on questions of sexual morality is nothing more than disguised hatred for homosexuals. And, like radioactivity, Fred Phelps’ hatred will survive in lasting half-lives of animus.

The media made Fred Phelps into a public image, but they could hardly ignore a prophet of antipathy who showed up with his followers in public demonstrations and took his case for public protest all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. Phelps and the media needed each other and fed each other. The New York Times described Phelps as “a loathed figure at the fringe of the American religious scene,” but he was not a fringe figure in terms of media attention. I have done my best not to add to his publicity, but as calls from the media in recent days made clear, the time has come for a necessary word.

Fred Phelps claimed to preach against homosexuality, calling out sin as sin. “The way to prove you love your neighbor is to warn them that they’re committing sin,” he said in 2004. That is the full lie of a half truth. The way you prove you love your neighbor is to be honest about sin — including our own sin — in order to tell the good news of the forgiveness of sin and salvation in Christ.

Phelps knew exactly what he was doing.  As The Washington Post reported: “He found comfort in being a pariah. ‘If I had nobody mad at me, what right would I have to claim that I was preaching the gospel?’”

But that raises the most emphatic point — it was not the gospel that Fred Phelps was preaching. The gospel is the declaration of the good news that God saves sinners. It is the declaration of the fact that there is forgiveness of sins and life everlasting to be found in Christ and in belief in Him, and that is not the message for which Fred Phelps was known and hated.

He not only preached against homosexuality using the most vile and offensive graphic language possible, but he also took the next step and organized public protests at events such as the funerals for returning American soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was taking advantage of a moment of national focus and personal grief in order to transform a moment of sorrow and honor into a moment of controversy at the expense of compassion. He was a publicity hound in service to the powers of hell — corrupting the gospel of Christ.

Fred Phelps was so engaged in denouncing sin that the good news, the grace and mercy of God in Christ, was never made clear in his message. The gospel was never the point of his message. He did not represent the scandal of the gospel, but rather the scandal of preaching a false gospel. The gospel does not consist of denouncing sin. As the Puritans used to state so well, the preacher must do the “sin work” before declaring the “gospel work.” But the honest and necessary indictment of sin is but the threshold for the declaration of salvation in Christ’s name.

In Luke 15, Jesus told three parables about lostness and foundness, and in every one of them the point is clear — it is the salvation of even one sinner that causes rejoicing in heaven. Heaven is not pleased with the self-righteous preaching of a self-declared prophet. There is no rejoicing in heaven over the self-righteous preacher who does nothing but condemn sin and to do so in the most hateful and angry ways possible.

Fred Phelps made it easy for people to point to him and assert that theological opposition to homosexual behavior is rooted in nothing more than animus and hatred. He made the very point gospel-minded Christians have been trying to refute. He will be held accountable for a massive misrepresentation of the Christian faith, the Christian church, and the gospel of Christ. He single-handedly committed incalculable damage by presenting an enormous obstacle to the faithful teaching of the gospel. He made the job of every Christian more difficult in telling the truth about homosexuality as a sin and in declaring the good news of the gospel that Christ saves sinners.

What was missing is the attitude found in the New Testament. For instance, in First Corinthians chapter 5 and chapter 6, where the Apostle Paul indicts the Corinthian church for its complicity in sexual sin and lists those sexual sins, including homosexuality, and then says, “But such were some of you .. but you were washed.” The Christian gospel is not proclaimed from a position of moral superiority and smugness, but rather from the experience of one who has come to know God’s grace and cannot wait to share that message of grace with others.

We must be very clear about the fact that Fred Phelps’ sin was not that he said that sin is sin. That’s an essential task of every biblical Christian. It was that he seemed to celebrate the sinfulness of sin rather than be brokenhearted over it, and he never saw it as the opportunity — without skipping a breath — to get right to the declaration of the promise of salvation and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. The problem is that Fred Phelps gloried in sin and in his denunciation of sin to the expense of the gospel. The good news of the gospel simply never came through. The grace and mercy of God in Christ were never made clear in his message, and he became an enemy of the gospel rather than a representative of the gospel.

An article published at Slate.com just after the death of Fred Phelps raised a very interesting point and a troubling one as well. Tyler Lopez wrote: “But Westboro’s bombastic vitriol makes room for more casual or calculated anti-gay individuals to claim tolerance, love, and mercy. A quick comparison with Phelps can make even the most vicious anti-gay activists look like saints. By twisting the meaning of love and acceptance through carefully worded statements, homophobes are able to do a lot more damage to the LGBTQ community than a group like Westboro will ever do.”

That’s a very important statement and it’s one Christians need to read very carefully. Gay activist Tyler Lopez is saying that it is impossible to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. Hauntingly, it’s the mirror image of what Fred Phelps was declaring in his message. Fred Phelps represented a hatred of sin that became a hatred of sinners, and now Tyler Lopez, coming from the other direction, says the very same thing in the opposite form. He said it is impossible to say that you love me, if you say that you do not love my homosexuality. This points to the fact that Christians remain in a very difficult position, particularly in this age when Gospel truth-telling is becoming acutely more difficult every single day.

Fred Phelps made our challenge much worse. In this case, Tyler Lopez argues that Phelps made it easier for other people [and here he means evangelical Christians] to sound sane and rational. But the most tragic aspect of his accusation is that Tyler Lopez doesn’t consider our message — that is, a gospel-grounded biblical message on homosexuality — to be any better than Fred Phelps’ message. That’s a sobering realization for all of us. We also face the fact that any statement that same-sex sexuality is sin is going to be heard and condemned by many people as hateful and homophobic. This puts those who are the ambassadors and heralds of the gospel in this generation in an extremely awkward situation.

But, these are our times and that is our challenge. Our commission is to make very clear that we do love people, but we hate sin. And yet that doesn’t start with homosexuals — it starts in the mirror and in the church. And the knowledge of our sin drives us to seek refuge in Christ, in whom we find forgiveness and everlasting life.

This article was originally posted at the AlbertMohler.com blog.

Yesterday’s article on the Grammy’s generated a lot of impassioned responses, including a shocking email that can be read here. **Caution: This is the most depraved, blasphemous, and hateful email IFI has ever received (which is saying a lot), so you’ve been forewarned.

The reason for publishing it is to remind Christians of what evil lurks behind the façade and rhetoric of decency, compassion, love, equality, and tolerance created by politically savvy “progressives.” I’m not suggesting that all “progressives” think as the lost soul who emailed me thinks. I am suggesting that the hate that animates him is not dissimilar from the hate that animates Fred Phelps—a truth that the mainstream press rarely discusses.

IFI is not seeking to sensationalize the evil expressed in this email but rather to illuminate how truly evil the homosexuality-affirming movement is. Those who don’t visit homosexual websites and blogs don’t fully realize that the movement to normalize homosexuality is at its core anti-Christian and unloving.  

In the ubiquitous cultural efforts (including of even orthodox churches) to emphasize “relationship,” “dialogue,” and “conversation” (all, by the way, good things), it’s easy to forget the magnitude of the evil that inheres this movement. Just as it’s difficult to fully grasp the evil of the pro-abortion movement without at least occasionally seeing photos of aborted babies, one cannot fully grasp the homosexuality-affirming movement’s enormity (i.e., the degree and seriousness of its depravity) without occasionally hearing what they say in their own words. 

Of course, not all homosexuals or their ideological allies would say the things that were said to me in this email just as not all conservatives would say the things Fred Phelps says. But obscenity, profanity, blasphemy, sexual perversion, and hate are common in the homosexual community. 

Conservatives have a troubling willingness to insulate themselves from this reality. Just telling them that many on the Left say ugly, obscene, blasphemous things is insufficient to rouse them from their moral slumber. Unfortunately, often only a close encounter with this kind of corruption can overcome the apathy, lethargy, or fear that paralyzes them. 

But God is good, and IFI received far more positive responses than negative. I will close with this eloquent response from Dr. Daniel Boland who sent me this edifying (and amusing) message about marriage, which refutes those cultural critics who are absurdly arguing that Beyoncé and Jay-Z have made a valuable contribution to the reputation of marriage by making it look “fun”: 

Your article on Beyoncé and that Jay-Z person was excellent and much to the point; I hope they read it.

Not surprisingly, the few commentators I have read on this issue entirely miss the point, as did those who produced and applauded the tawdry, hollow spectacle.

I would also add (in my usually timid and tremulous manner) that the commentators who write of such matters as “marriage” so often define it as some sort of dreadful servitude by which people are enchained to an uphill wheel of drudgery and wretchedness. They see marriage as a condition redeemed only by the prospect of occasional periods of enthusiastic rutting unleashed by such events as Beyoncé and Mr. Beyoncé occasion: namely, those moments when women wear sexually absurd and revealing clothes, and men (most appropriately clad in a tux which, one is led to believe, is somehow suited to the stimulation and resurrection of affection and other related concerns) clutch at their women with exhibitionistic abandon.

Rarely do cultural critics—such as this one—have the common sense, the emotional maturity, the personal experience of, or the intellectual discernment to realize or ponder the fact that a stable and dignified marriage has little to do over the years with such sickly-fantasized sexual performances.

One customarily grants showbiz people a degree of leeway and the benefit of idiosyncratic renderings which imaginative artists must have. In this present instance, however (as in so many cases these days), the messages of modern “art” not only invade and distort social and political reality, they assault our deepest traditions, offend our intelligence and seek to re-define the boundaries of cherished moral and cultural reality. Art has become a socio-political weapon for the dismantling of our culture’s finest ideals. Our society is made worse by this reckless, invasive interweaving.

Anyone with a modicum of honesty realizes that a true and lasting marriage (as does life itself) rests not on sickly superficial, crotch-centered fixations but on the deeply demanding discovery and decades-long exercise of a multiplicity of virtues involving self-restraint and mutual sacrifice. The first and most essential of these costly virtues is personal humility which begins not with one’s wardrobe or the trappings of seduction but by recognizing and admitting one’s own weaknesses.

A marriage which is superficially defined by the deceptive, fleeting allure of sex is a marriage suited to moral midgets who habitually distort and eschew—rather than celebrate and elevate—reality. Thus, those stunted critics who celebrate Beyoncé and Her Mate for somehow ennobling the modern notion of “marriage-as-sexual-side-show” deserve no credit. Indeed, they reinforce the escalating shallowness of our culture and exhibit astonishing ignorance about the nature of marriage and, for that matter, the realities of human nature itself.

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AFA and other pro-family groups have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, urging the Department of Defense to stop using the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a resource.

SPLC materials are specifically anti-Christian and label many faith-based organizations like American Family Association, Illinois Family Institute and Family Research Council as “hate groups” because of our strong stand defending traditional marriage laws and resisting the aggressive, radical homosexual agenda.

The Department of Defense should stop using SPLC’s fabrications immediately. Add your voice to ours!

The American Family Association has been singled out as a “hate group” in briefings at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and Fort Hood, Texas by military trainers relying on false SPLC materials.

In one presentation, the photo of Fred Phelps of “God hates fags” fame was disgustingly displayed on a screen with AFA’s logo. Not only did trainers lie by claiming there was an association between AFA and Phelps, they warned our men and women in training that to have any dealings with AFA, including making donations, would be a breach of conduct.

The SPLC has no credibility among people who value truth, and the military should not be using it as a source for training materials for service members.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to join the coalition of conservative organizations in sending your copy of the letter we wrote to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel urging the Department of Defense to stop using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a resource.  

 Read more:  What is Wrong with the Southern Poverty Law Center? by IFI’s Laurie Higgins

WARNING: Not for younger readers

They used to arrest middle-aged perverts who get their jollies from talking dirty to children. Today, they get a television show, a nationally syndicated column, a lecture circuit and multiple visits to the Obama White House.

You know: “Forward.”

The irony is palpable. Dan Savage, sex columnist and founder of the LGBT anti-bullying “It Gets Better” campaign, has been outed. Not as a homosexual. He’s out and proud in that regard. In fact, Savage pushes his “anything goes” brand of sexual anarchy on kids worldwide. MTV has even given the sex-obsessed radical his own show, “Savage U” – a moral-relativist platform from which to corrupt the kiddos.

Creepy stuff.

No, Savage has finally managed to publicly discredit himself as the anti-Christian bigot and bully he’s always been. Never again will this guy be taken seriously as an anti-bullying crusader.

Savage lectures teens in high schools and colleges around the country on the benefits of “non-monogamy,” the occasional “three-way” tryst and any other disease-spreading sexual impulse that might cross their impressionable, hormone-charged young minds (and many they can’t yet imagine).

Well, recently, rather than just shocking his teenaged audience with vulgar, sophomoric psychobabble as usual, Savage apparently thought it’d be fun to bully the kids with whom he disagreed.

While addressing a crowd of hundreds of high schoolers at the National High School Journalism Convention, Savage launched into an unhinged anti-Christian diatribe. He advised the teens to “ignore the bulls*** in the Bible” about sexual morality. “We ignore bulls*** in the Bible about all sorts of things,” he barked.

He then walked through a list of the same tired left-wing talking points about the Bible – long ago discredited – covering shellfish, virginity, etc. “The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document,” he said (anti-Christian trash we’ve come to expect from the secular left).

But when a hundred or more kids got up and began to walk out on Savage’s anti-Christian rant, the 47-year-old tough guy turned his hostility toward them. “It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy***** people react when you push back,” he mocked. Some of the young girls were seen leaving in tears.

“It took a real dark, hostile turn, certainly, as I saw it,” teacher Rick Tuttle told CNN. “It became very hostile toward Christianity, to the point that many students did walk out, including some of my students.

“They felt that they were attacked … a very pointed, direct attack on one particular group of students. It’s amazing that we go to an anti-bullying speech and one group of students is picked on in particular, with harsh, profane language.”

But the only thing surprising is that anyone is surprised. Dan Savage is known in Christian circles at “the gay Fred Phelps.” Phelps, of course, is the similarly cartoonish Westboro Baptist “preacher” who gained notoriety by protesting military funerals with his incestuous brood of pseudo-Christian haters. Savage is Phelps’ photo negative. Whereas Phelps’ hateful mantra is “God hates fags,” Savage’s central message is “I hate God and anyone who loves Him.”

Savage’s primary claim to fame is that he formed the website “Santorum.com,” to create a “Google bomb” that would smear the good name of former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum. On the site he redefined the senator’s last name, Santorum, using language so vile and repulsive that I won’t repeat it. When Christian advocate and Americans for Truth founder Peter LaBarbera asked Savage to take down the website, Savage responded, “I’m asking Peter LaBarbera to go f*** himself.”

Savage also once bragged that he licked the doorknobs at former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer’s campaign office in hopes of giving Mr. Bauer the flu.

Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian in 2006 that Carl Romanelli, a U.S. senate candidate he didn’t like, “should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope.” In the same interview, he opined: “Mr. Romanelli should go f*** himself.” He also once said on HBO that he “wished all Republicans were f***ing dead.”

Yep, this deviant troglodyte is the face of the left’s anti-bullying efforts. I’ve often said that those wonderfully “tolerant” liberals – the self-styled opponents of “hate” and “bigotry” – are the most intolerant, hateful bigots among us.

Thanks for proving my point, Dan.