The Attack on Parental Rights and the Question of Muslim Refugees

Wow, there's a wild story about the usurpation of parental rights here in America. That? I want to talk to you about the gay rabbi at my mother's funeral. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 Truth. That's 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Well, I'm getting some very interesting reactions to my article, The Gay Rabbi and My Mother's Funeral. I want to talk to you about that in a moment. And we've got a lot coming your way today. In fact, let me tell you what's coming your way in the next two hours. You may only get a few minutes in your car right now, but you can catch the entire broadcast later today at thelineoffire.org.

If you didn't know it, every show all two hours is archived just a couple hours after the radio program every day.

So you can listen online, or you can subscribe by podcast at thelineoffire.org. But I want to talk to you about some of the appointees of President-elect Donald Trump. I want to talk to you about.

Some of these responses to my article on the gay rabbi and my mother's funeral. I want to talk to you about Uh A massive issue in the state of Minnesota. It's massive to me. We're going to be bringing a guest on to talk about. uh usurpation of parental rights.

Uh a a a mother did not have the right to say no to her fifteen year old child transitioning uh to another gender. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. In the second hour, I want to speak to a guest about the issue of. Muslim refugees in light of the Ohio State Terrorist Act yesterday. In the last half hour, going to speak with an author and columnist about the left's celebration of Fidel Castro.

By the way, I was just looking at A note from campusreform.org. And they were interviewing students on a college campus and asking them who they'd rather have as the leader, Donald Trump or Fidel Castro, and everyone that they interviewed said Fidel Castro. And that points to a couple of things. It points to an extreme hostility towards Donald Trump, which I would say is based partly on who he's been and what he said, but also largely on the media's portrayal of that and the media's fanning that into flame. And then Then, on the flip side, a completely twisted view of who Fidel Castro is or what communism did there in that country, and maybe a whitewashing of the atrocities that he committed.

But is that a surprise on a secular campus? No. I was just doing a radio interview. With a woman conservative host in the state of Florida, and she said she raised her two kids well, raised them to adulthood, sent them off to Ivy League schools, and said it was a terrible mistake. Obviously, the perspectives that they were hit with there were diametrically opposed to the perspectives with which she raised them.

All right, so here's a question for you. Here's a question for you. I would not, if I was invited to a gay quote wedding, I would not attend. My attending would be an approval of, an affirmation of that couple's decision. And I could not in good conscience attend.

God may send someone to a wedding like that to be a witness. Let let him be God and have his purposes. But I could not personally do it and I counsel others the same way. And yet And yet, I believe that it was God ordained. that I met the rabbi that officiated my mother's funeral, so for my sister and her side of the family, the openly gay rabbi that I met that I believe that was divinely ordained.

So here's the question. Here's the question. If you're in my shoes. You're in my shoes, and the cemetery says, Okay, the rabbi we're providing is so-and-so. And then I find out he's openly gay.

Would you have embraced that, or would you have fought it? We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, friends, to the line of fire. 866-34TRUTH is the number they're called. It's 866-348-7884. Yeah.

So Here's my question to you. We are constantly talking about where our faith intersects with the world, meaning with those who don't believe as we believe. When we have an issue within the church, Within our fellowship of believers, within our home congregation, our Messianic Jewish congregation, our denominational church. Meeting, whatever it is, we have an in-house issue. We deal with it in-house, right?

So, ideally, Let's say you had two believers who had a dispute about adjoining properties, and they were upset with each other, and they wanted to go to court. Ideally, Rather than Christians taking each other to court, especially in the early church when this was a more massive issue with the believers being so few and in that sense so easily known, ideally, You'd be able to come together, let's say you're in the same fellowship, come together and sit with some other wise believers and say, okay, let's come up with something that is just and fair and right. And let us Then address it accordingly, and let us call on both believers to submit to what's right. That would be ideal, and that would be a lofty way to deal with disputes. If you're in a traditional Jewish home, that's how you deal with it in your community.

You have your own rabbinic courts. In fact, they do their best to not let things go to the secular courts. And the same would happen, I'm sure, if you're in a Muslim community, you'd have your Muslim judges, and they would make these decisions within the community. But if you are dealing with an issue now of the fact that you have a colleague who doesn't believe in Jesus, doesn't believe in God, and this colleague of yours is a womanizer and gets drunk on the weekends, and this colleague says, hey, you want to come out for lunch with me? Do you say to that colleague, no, I'm not going to go out for lunch with you because you're a sinner.

I wouldn't do that. No, of course you go out to lunch with the person, you build a relationship with them, and you share the message of the gospel with them. Jesus was a friend of sinners, was he not? And people the sinners often wanted to be around him and came flocking to him.

Now, let's say within our fellowship, there is a Muslim who is visiting. And the Muslims said, I'd like to come to the platform and offer a prayer to Allah. We'd say sorry, but we don't agree with your faith. And we don't agree that when you are praying to God, that you are praying to our Heavenly Father, but you're welcome to be in the service by all means, right? Uh That's one thing.

If on the other hand, I was going to a Muslim wedding or a Muslim funeral, a friend invited me and I was there to show love and to be a witness, well, they're going to pray the prayers they pray in that context, right? And the question is, how am I going to respond to it? How am I going to interact with it?

So that was my whole question at the funeral from my mom. In other words, the rabbi was there at the request of my sister. And her son.

So that was important to them to do it. And it was a Jewish cemetery. It's normally the service is presided over by a rabbi. I asked my sister, hey, would you like me to do The whole ceremony, and she said, No, I want to have a rabbi there, fine, because she's not a believer in Jesus, perfectly fine.

So we were having someone who was going to believe things differently than I did. who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. That's the biggest issue. And as a Reform rabbi, I would have, in certain ways, less in common with him than an Orthodox rabbi because my views in that sense are more orthodox. In other words, my view of scripture is more conservative and fundamental than a Reform rabbi's would be.

His would be more liberal and, quote, progressive.

So we'd have differences on lots and lots of things. And I'm sure this Reform rabbi would have no issue performing different interfaith types of services that I'd have a real issue with and that an Orthodox rabbi would have a real issue with. And if it was an Orthodox rabbi, there's an excellent chance they would not have presided at the funeral because I was a participant as a Jewish believer in Jesus who has sometimes been branded public enemy number one. Yeah, one rabbi branded me that years ago, and I've been referred to that in different ways over the years because of the effectiveness of our work reaching out to Jewish people with the gospel. Thank God I'm honored by that.

But either way The rabbi presiding at the funeral Would be someone who rejected my Messianic Jewish faith, and I, in turn, would say that that rabbi needs to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

So now the only context is, okay. What is my relationship with that individual, and how do I treat a fellow human being? And see, here's what often happens: it doesn't matter which side we're on.

Okay? You can be a staunch liberal. Listening to this broadcast, and you can demonize me as a human being. Aside from saying, man, Mike Brown, I think your views are bigoted and homophobic and transphobic and whatever phobic you think, and have this whole litany of things. You can even go further than that and not recognize my 40-year devotion to my wife.

Or to my kids, or my grandkids, or my love for my genuine and sincere love for others. You can so demonize me that you don't see my humanity in any way. And then we on the conservative side can do that. I wrote an article a few weeks back, maybe a couple months now: Do we have the love of Christ for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? And I was writing it to Christian conservatives who can so demonize the President, who could so demonize Mrs.

Clinton, that we would forget these are fellow human beings, for whom Jesus died. fellow human beings with many excellent and commendable qualities, but Other qualities that we would say are not commendable, as in every human being, and policies and stances that we would absolutely differ with.

So to me, And to the rabbi, this was an opportunity. To demonstrate respect for other human beings in the midst of profound differences at one of the most personal Intimate settings that you can imagine, namely, a small graveside funeral with about 10 people there by the graveside.

So I've been interested to see responses. And they're they're pretty much falling into the categories that I expected. I just want to spend a couple more minutes on this and I'm going to change subjects. But Here's what I expected. I expected some.

to say to me, you're getting soft.

Someone posted on Facebook, and I haven't read all the comments. You know, you've lost the fear of the Lord, something like this. It's an abomination. You've lost the fear of the Lord. I expected that.

I fully expected that. It doesn't disturb me that someone has that perspective. I think they're missing the point. But I understand where they're coming from. Then on the exact opposite side, And I saw a comment, I think, on charisma news.

in response to the article. And if you haven't read it, just go to the lineofire.org and you'll see it. There's the lead article. Uh I saw another response from someone saying, Oh, you think this one act of kindness or this one act of civility undoes your career preoccupation with homosexual issues? In 45 years serving the Lord, this was not even on my radar the first 30 plus years.

And in my first 19 books, if you will look at everything I wrote having to do with homosexuality, probably my first 19 books, it would fill one whole page. This is just not on my radar. It's only in 2004 that God began to burden me, reach out and resist, reach out to the people with compassion, resist the agenda, with courage, recognizing that this issue would become the principal threat to freedom of religion, speech, and conscience in America, as it has become. Yeah, but I fully expected that too. Oh, now you're you're loving everybody.

No, no, no. My point was to say. Yes, I have this deep opposition, but it's biblical, not personal. It's never been personal. And this was another illustration.

And can I tell you? When I told my wife and my family, And a couple of colleagues, you're not going to believe this. The rabbi officiating at the ceremony is a regular listener to my broadcast and openly gay. No one responded with what? It was actually with smiles of amazement.

Are you serious? And they knew an opportunity to build a relationship and to reach out. And I fully expected to be received the way I was by the rabbi. Fully expected that. In that sense, I didn't disappoint him.

He didn't disappoint me. And then the other responses are people reading the article with tears. People reading the article and saying thank you for that demonstration. Again, this is not a demonstration. This is who I am and how I've always lived.

And I imagine who the rabbi is and how he's lived. And it's saying, yeah, we have profound, we have deep, deep, deep, profound differences, religious, moral, cultural, deep, deep differences. and recognize our calling to love our neighbor as ourselves. at the same time. at the same time.

It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Thanks so much for joining us on the line of fire. This is Michael Brown. My delight to be with you. How do you think President-elect Trump is doing with his cabinet appointees so far? Uh some more announcements today.

One of them being Tom Price, who has been a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, a medical doctor and a congressman. And basically from what I can see Donald Trump Is appointing cabinet members, the ones he's appointed thus far, in keeping with his promises. Fox News, Adam Shaw, Trump's pick for HHS, so health and human services, could be the key to dismantling Obamacare.

So he's a former orthopedic surgeon, one of a number of physicians who has worked to form a Republican Party alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and made claims by Democrats that the GOP has no realistic plan to replace the law.

So the goal is not to take insurance away from those that have now received it under so-called Obamacare. The goal is to provide something better. Because physicians have told me of all kinds of problems that they've had. Companies have had to cut hours of employees because they couldn't afford things that they were required to afford, providing them with healthcare.

So it ended up hurting the employees. I know folks who, because they didn't have insurance, got fined.

So they chose not to have medical insurance. They got fined for it. Others have had premiums go way up. I'm absolutely no expert on this. But the goal is not to remove it And leave it removed.

The goal is to repeal it and replace it with something better. In that regard, Tom Price seems to be the ideal candidate. Interview I was doing earlier today, the host said that she was watching secular news, I think she was watching CNN, and she said that people were reacting against Price, and he's going to be, you know, you were not going to have abortions. And well, let me just say. That in keeping with the strong pro-life platform of the Republican Party and the anti-Affordable Care Act, platform of the Republican Party.

What Donald Trump's doing thus far is in harmony with that. I feel very good about his cabinet appointees. For uh for what the Department of Education the uh Uh The woman appointed there a strong advocate of Of charter schools and then school vouchers.

Now, the question is: what happens to public schools who lose funding? The public schools need an overhaul. There are so many sacrificing and working-hard teachers, administrators doing their best with limited funds to think. And if you have school vouchers, and now, and the way that would work, let's say I have to pay a certain amount of tax every year that goes to the public schools, but I'm sending my kids to private school, then That money doesn't go, then I've got to pay twice. I've got to pay for the private school and for the public school.

All right.

So, in this case, you get a voucher, and instead, you'd get credit to pay for your kid to go to a private school or charter school or something like that. And in light of that, it's going to help these parents and families dramatically. But what's going to happen to the public schools and their funding? That's the big question. But there needs to be an overhaul.

Again, there are so many working sacrificially for the education of our children in the public school system. We've got to look holistically at whatever we look at. But that's another point. And what's interesting is there are several women already. And from my From my take, Uh Donald Trump is not untypical.

For a worldly businessman, and that's what he's been up to this point of his life, namely. He can look at women as sex objects.

Some women. and he can look at other women as peers worthy of respect. And that's why all the women working with him said he's never ever made an off-color comment to them or spoken to them in any demeaning way as women or anything like that. There's been nothing misogynistic. And yet, what?

He was the the guy that owned the Miss America pageant for years, right? His name on it, you know, and and we know his comments from the past that he didn't Yeah, it seems he's ashamed of them now, and hopefully, he's growing out of those. He can still change, even at around seven years old, you can still change. But all that being said, it's interesting. that he's appointing a number of women.

And that he has, and some of the people, either cabinet or staff. are are not white. either Hispanic or black. That's of interest. That's of interest.

So let's see. If he can hold true to his commitment. To lead based on the Republican Party platform. While at the same time, proving that he is a president of all The people. All right, let me grab a phone call.

Let's go to Larry in Frederick, Maryland. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. First first I wanted to say thanks.

Last time I called in you I had my seven-year-old grandson with me, and you answered a question about being. Yeah, I remember somehow you snuck past our call screener because normally it's a couple weeks before someone can come back out. I recognize your voice, but yeah, I remember your boy there. Go ahead, sir. I'll get off.

Anyway, I just want to say I appreciate what you're saying today, and I always believe what you're saying. I know you're not. You know, you're not playing games. because that's not who you are. I can tell from just listening to your radio broadcast for so long.

Yeah.

of your books. But no, I appreciate what you said. And it just reminds me Um not to get mean spirited. at times over cert certain over certain subjects like abortion and all. you know, it's it's not the right way to go about it.

You're not going to make any friends being mean mean spirited. Yeah, hey, listen, I appreciate it. Here's the key thing, Larry. Uh If we cannot put on an act of love. That's the bottom line.

It's not going to fool anybody. It's not going to bring long-term fruit. It has to be who we are.

So, what I often say is, if you cut me, I'm going to bleed love. And that's the way it should be for any of us. All right? If someone. Uh if if someone genuinely Burdened from my well-being.

Okay, look, they're counter-missionary rabbis that I know. that absolutely stand against what I do. They write against it. They put on videos against me. I know they love me as a Jew.

I I know it. I know they love me as a fellow Jew and they do what they do out of love for me as a Jew. And I believe they know that's what motivates me as well. I certainly hope so.

So I have no problem. was someone being staunchly opposed to what I believe and value. And yet that person can genuinely love me and care about me. We do it all the time with family members, and that's God's love for this world. That is God's love for this world, that He doesn't affirm us.

In our sin. He transforms us out of our sin. As I say, Jesus practiced transformational inclusion, not Affirmational inclusion. All right, friends.

Now is a great time to stand with us. In fact, later this week, I'm going to share something with you of tremendous excitement. A tremendous open door, God has set before us. I can't wait to share more with you. But I leave for India on Friday.

If you could help us with that trip, we have thousands of dollars of needs associated with it. If you could help us with it, go to the line of fire right now, thelineoffire.org, click on donate, and your year-end gift is tax-deductible. Jesus is Lord. We go forward in His name without flinching. It's the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian Dr.

Michael Brown.

Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, friends, to the line of fire, 866-348-7884. When we talk about issues happening in our society, moral cultural issues. Many times people respond as if they're just abstract or why should I care? Or how does this affect me? But but then Situations arise where these things touch our families directly.

For example, The administration's active push. to uh inflict penalties on schools. That would not welcome a 15-year-old boy who identifies as a girl, welcome him into the girls' locker room, shower room, bathroom, welcome him onto the girls' sports team if he identifies as a girl, that schools would be penalized for this. This has created a pushback. And I've had callers call in the show and say, Dr.

Brown, what do I do? My ninth grade.

Son came home from high school today, and without notification of the parents. There was a situation where they had a school assembly and they had all these different speakers talking about why gay was okay, and you could be a Mormon, you could be a Christian, you could be a Jew, it doesn't matter, and homosexuality is fine, and all these different faiths. And she said, My son's always learned to be loving towards everyone, but we teach what the Bible says. And he comes home, and here's an assembly where all this is being presented without even parental notification. How do I respond?

Well, what if it goes further than that? What if the intrusion of parental rights goes even further? I want to welcome to the broadcast. Eric Cardell, who is a lawyer and who is going to explain to us something happening in the state of Minnesota right now that should cause every parent in America to stop and listen. Eric, welcome to the Line of Fire.

Thanks so much for joining us. Good afternoon, Dr. Brown. Thank you for having me. Could you just briefly sketch?

What's happened with this family, with this mother specifically in the state of Minnesota? Sure. Without getting into sort of the legal issues, I can just quickly describe what happened to her. her uh the son uh moved in with her f uh her her uh ex husband and it was uh congenial. And then the son moved out of the uh father's house and got benefits from the county office for an apartment, for food, for a Medical insurance and so forth.

And then he got into a situation where he was getting transgendered medical services. And the mother who had custody, she couldn't get any information about these medical services being provided. She couldn't get any information from the school district. She couldn't get any information from the county office providing the benefits. She was completely cut out without parental notification opportunity to be heard.

And so basically, these governmental agencies and medical service providers. treat her as emancipated without a court process and without a court order.

Now, how old is the son? This all started when he was 16, and then now he's 17. Oh, okay.

So he's still a minor. It's still minor, and the point is that even after these agencies have treated the child as emancipated. In other words, no information to the parent no decision making involvement from the parent. She still doesn't have a court process in Minnesota to get any of her rights back. Extraordinary.

due process clause claim basically under the U. S. Constitution, Parental rights are fundamental rights that can't be taken without due process of law.

So in the three areas of of marital dissolution. Of paternity and child protection, we have paragraphs upon paragraphs in Minnesota statutes protecting. the parent for that notice an opportunity to be heard before the rights are terminated. But in Minnesota and emancipation, there's nothing. And then the asymmetry is But if the child had actually, before these government agencies deemed him emancipated, had petitioned the court for a court order of emancipation, the parent would have noticed an opportunity to be heard.

All right, Taywick, stop right there. I want to make sure you understand what's happened. We're going to sift through this. We come back. God of light, here are It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome back, friends, to the line of fire, 866-348-7884. I'm speaking with Eric Cardell, an attorney who's involved with this case in Minnesota.

So, Eric, Okay. When when you talk about what the state has provided for this young man, 16, now 17, how far has it gone from him tr seeking to transition into a woman? What's actually been provided for him?

Well, the parent has received no information other than the child did file one page letter in the the court process to change his name. And the irony of ironies, The the court wouldn't allow him to change his name because he hadn't didn't get a court order of emancipation.

So you imagine the government agencies are getting all the benefits. But the court says, well, you can't change your name until you have a court order of emancipation.

Well anyway, so the the um we that one page letter says that he's receiving the hormonal therapies for transgendering. Extraordinary. All right, so What would it mean for someone to be emancipated then? How does that happen?

Well, to cut to the quick, the analysis would be sort of why it would matter to your audience. Is it safe to have minimum The ages for emancipation.

So in Minnesota, for example, it's 18. Elsewhere, it's different ages. But there are sometimes statutes like in Minnesota. Where they make sort of exceptions to the rule. Like here in Minnesota, we have an exception for medical services, even non-emergency medical services.

So the medical service provider can determine whether the kid's emancipated. and then their consent is effective for medical treatment.

Now with that and the county providing the insurance benefit, all the medical service provider cares about is whether they're going to get paid. And so there you are. The eighteen years old is the minimum age for emancipation. But without a court order. anyone can be a mass bailie for medical services.

Now the school districts are treating the kids emancipated when they feel they're emancipated, and the county is treating them for benefits as if they're emancipated.

So you basically eviscerated The minimum age for emancipation. You see how they accomplish it without changing the law? Yeah.

Yeah, oh yeah.

So so you you go from you go from an eighteen years, you're emancipated to whenever the government agencies determine you're emancipated, you're emancipated.

So let's just shift this for a moment. You have in schools where a kid Can a young lady, maybe she's 14 years old, she gets pregnant. That with the help of a school, she can get to a local abortion clinic, have her baby terminated in the womb, have the pregnancy terminated, and the parents not even be informed of this. This actually happens. Whereas if the child needed aspirin, say something like that, the child couldn't get that without parental approval.

Here you have a child slipping through the legal requirements here to the point that they are getting state-funded hormonal treatment to become a woman. This is a minor. This is a kid that's got a whole life in front of him that could change views a thousand times ahead. And the mother is actually being blocked. from from having input.

What is she doing and what's her response to all of this? She talked to three attorneys before me And I was sort of shocked when the attorneys told my client that they couldn't do anything for her. And then I did my research, and I concluded the attorneys were right. That there's no state court process prior to this administrative emancipation or after the administrative emancipation. She can do nothing in state court because the state statute that they're relying on provides no Yeah.

process for the parrot to even fight back. And so what she's done is file a federal lawsuit saying this is a violation of the federal due process clause because that clause protects parental rights. And does does the father have any input on this at all? He's just not a plaintiff because he doesn't want to be that involved. Got it.

So he's not neither parent has been behind the son doing this and saying, hey, let us help you, let us accommodate you, so that he's doing it entirely on his own. Right, and and uh we were s uh uh they were they're absolutely you know uh opposed to him making the decision alone. Uh and and you know, they they don't want him to do it. And then he can decide when he's uh eighteen. But the thing that's surprised us most is the number of teenagers who called us.

saying that they've gone down this road and they they've changed their mind. And that's been very sort of indicative of the kind of comments we're getting back. the teenagers go down this road of sex change and then they no, no, that's not the right thing for me. And so it's it's sort of a thing a d a big nonemergency elective procedure that you want parents involved in. And we shouldn't be afraid to have courts involved because after all, in the marital dissolution, the paternity context, the child protection context, judges are accustomed to looking out for the best interests of the children.

And I don't think you'd be surprised, doctor, that In a petit a minor petition for emancipation, the judge can make the emancipation conditional, partial, or temporary.

So it's not like carte blanche. Right.

So we can trust the judge to make the right call. All right, so let's just back up to something that you said a moment ago. That since this case has gone public, that's obviously how we found out about it, news on the internet. that you're you're getting calls from teenagers who who said, hey, hey, s This is important. People need to hear this.

We started to go through sex change treatment or however far they went and realized we made a mistake. There was a famous case in England of a young man that became a woman as much as you can and was celebrated. And now it's like, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done this. It was the wrong thing.

And especially with younger children, what's been demonstrated scientifically, from everything I understand, is if you just. Don't play into their transgender notions, their gender identity confusion, about 80% of them, once they go through puberty, will no longer identify as the opposite sex. They may be gay or something like that, but they will no longer identify as the opposite sex. And there's a whole website, sexchangeregret.com, that Walt Heyer put up, where he has thousands of people contacting him or points to studies with thousands in other countries where people say, We went through sex change, full-blown sex change surgery, and it was a terrible mistake.

So when you say you're hearing from teenagers, is it one or two? Is it five or ten? Can you quantify that? Yeah, it's more than a few. It's just different kind of contacts, email, calls, and so forth.

And they're basically offering to help. And we appreciate it. They won't have a direct role in litigation because it's a due process claim. But those sort of resources are out there, and I'm glad to know about them. And I think that it just shows that When you have major Uh you know, elective surgery, that's not an emergency, that having parents involved and the courts involved are a good thing because this is really important.

In fact, the funding you were talking about, these are very expensive treatments. And even to avoid the government funding of an unnecessary treatment would justify the whole. Yeah, and again, when you think of decisions that are being made to put a kid that's eight, nine years old on hormone blockers. to stop the onset of puberty. And then to give them sex change surgery as soon as they're ready, I don't know, maybe 17, 18 years old, or something like that in some cases.

What else would we do? for a child that young. that was that irreversible. and let them make the primary decision in it. I mean, it's extraordinary when you think of the kids not old enough to drink.

If kids not old enough to vote. and in certain cases kids not old enough to get behind the wheel of a car And yet, the kid is going to make these life decisions. And you have situations like in Canada, a 12-year-old had their passport changed simply based on their own identification. They had their passport changed. This is purely saying, this is how I feel.

So it is remarkable. And do you know how long the state has been funding things like this? It's been oh, I'd say over ten years. And then the statute was enacted that we're talking about, the one that allows for the medical service providers to determine whether the child's emancipated was enacted in nineteen seventy one. And then there's an effort to repeal it in two thousand I think it's four, and the House passed the repeal, the Senate defeated it.

And the reasons given for the Senate defeating it, I don't think we're completed the story. I mean, I think they were arguing basically the people opposed to repeal That this was somehow a public health issue, and I think they missed that it's a parental issue. and that the parents never stand in the way of the child's health, right? And a court review is a good thing, not a bad thing, when it comes to contested matters. One of the things I want to tell you, doctor, is that when I saw this, I was so surprised how this law might be operating in Minnesota, that we hired an expert witness before we filed the case, a medical doctor in his seventies, very experienced, top of his field, probably doesn't agree with me on a lot of issues.

And we couldn't even talk until he told me, No, Eric, this is the way it works. The medical community is complete agreement, Minnesota. That if a child presents himself as emancipated and can afford to pay for the treatment, the decisions made at the front desk. And we provide the treatment. Yeah.

Yeah, so basically if the kids the kid's on the government insurance. They k they get the treatment regardless of age. Wow. And no one says where's your mother or your father? Right, exactly.

Incredible. All right.

Got a couple more questions for your friends. What if this is your kid? What if this is your kid? We'll be right back. Ain't the world O God of burning, cleansing flame.

It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome back, friends, to the line of fire. This interview is a reminder as to why we've taken the stands we've taken over the years and why we've addressed the issues that we've addressed. Over the years, these are real family issues, not just abstract cultural debates. My guest, Eric Cardell, an attorney in Minnesota. Eric, if you could just repeat.

To my listeners, what you said right before the break, something that really shocked you. And friends, if you're just tuning in, we're talking about a case of a boy 16, initially now 17. He was not living with either parent. And although he was not legally emancipated as a child in the state of Minnesota, he has gotten state funding without parental permission, input, or even knowledge to be on hormone treatments to transition from male to female. Eric, you said something very startling about a kid going into a doctor's office, say they want treatment for their gender identity confusion.

They want hormonal treatment or they want to start to move towards sex change surgery. Maybe the kid's 16 years old. They go into the doctor's office and they're simply listed, that they have a recognized insurance provider. Do they need to have a parent approving or saying, okay, we give our blessing on this, we're signing off as a... Mm-hmm.

uh as as the parent on this treatment. That's right. When I read the statutes, they suggested that the medical service provider made the decision on whether the child was emancipated. you know, I think the clinic. and then that the services we provided, they decided the child was emancipated.

And I couldn't believe it, so I hired an expert in the field, a doctor over seventy, full career, very honorable doctor, very well respected. And he said, no, Eric, that's it. That's how it works. The medical service community in Minnesota is united. That the way we interpret the statute is if the child can show a way to pay for it, basically independent of the parents, through the government-funded insurance.

then they're treated as emancipated without any information of the parents, without any a requirement for consent. Extraordinary. So, where does the case stand right now, and what can listeners do other than pray for justice?

Well, I think that it's really important to follow cases like this. This is really an important case. It's filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. And I think the other thing is to look for or if you hear about similar people in similar situations, you have them contact me and we'll help them too.

We know this is happening all over the place in Minnesota, and we believe it's happening elsewhere. And so the Child Protection League, the group that brought this case to my attention, could also be contacted. But uh our our firm phone number is six one two three four one one zero seven four.

Okay, uh l let's just give that out once more. six one two three four one one zero seven four. And if anyone's in the situation where they have a minor child is not emancipated but is getting this kind of nonemergency medical treatment, we got to stop that. And the way to do that is to file a federal lawsuit because these statutes aren't written a way to protect parental rights. And from what you're hearing in other parts of the country, how widespread is this similar situations, similar laws in other states?

Yeah, I've been contacted by large nonprofit law firms across the nation, and we're going to be looking at this in a 50-state nationwide way. We we really need to make sure that, you know, our our family values or parental values. Are honored, they're already honored in the law.

So when they're honored in the state statutes, Or the state constitutions, we need to make sure they're honored in practice. And if those statutes need to be fixed, of course, we need to do that too. But we're going to look at it all across the state because we can't afford to have this indirect r way of reducing the emancipation age in an almost in an arbitrary ad hoc way. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, God's blessings on your efforts and on the family. How's the mom doing through all this?

Well, she's very strong, and she knew that she would take a lot of criticism when she decided to do this, but she she relies on her faith. She's an evangelical Christian, and I've been very impressed. In fact, I've myself have been inspired by her uh commitment to this uh case. And I think all of us can r recommit to the same thing that she's committed to, and that's the good of our children. And if we did that, she'd be happy.

And the type of criticism that she's getting, obviously, There is a point where the child's on their own, you know, they get to a certain age. And obviously a loving parent, you do your best to do what's best for your child and give input accordingly and make decisions accordingly. But is she being criticized for overreach or how dare you do this or simply that anyone who's confused like this, it's always the right thing to do to get the hormone treatments, et cetera? Yeah, I think mostly it's just a rebellion against parental authority. I mean, there's a reason the statutes are written the way they are.

Yeah.

You know, to allow the medical service provider. define the child's emancipated. And those people who want to get rid of the emancipation age, and so all children are, you know, emancipated at thirteen or fourteen or younger. Uh they're opposed to us, and there are a lot of people who don't feel that parents should have influence and make decisions for the children. beyond twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

I really think it's that it's that raw. Yeah.

Yeah, and and I I do think that's extraordinary. If you believe in parental rights, I mean, that this is the time to look at these emancipation statutes because you may be operating thinking your child can't go to the doctor and get treatment without your approval. And and they do, and you get sent the bill sometimes. Yeah, people told me that too. In point of fact, most of us have never even heard about the emancipation issue or statute or clause.

And so it's news even to hear it. You know, just on a lighter note, but it's serious: when our daughters were teenagers, they're now. 39 and almost 38. When they were teenagers, they objected to all the rules in a household. They didn't like the way we did this, the way we did that.

So I said, tell you what, girls. I want you to write out what you would do. As parents, what the rules would be, how you'd run the house, et cetera. And I want you to hold on to them until you have kids of your own.

So we've had many a laugh. Their kids range from 10 to almost 16, two kids each. And yeah, they said, oh, yeah, no rules, no restrictions, no curfew, no this to that.

So we laugh about it. But that's the reason that parents are parents and are given the responsibilities. Imperfect, yes, but a whole lot more wisdom and experience than a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 16-year-old. Hey, keep up the great work, Eric. I know it can be taxing and wearing to do this, but you're on the right side.

Thank you so much. May God bless you. Thank you. God bless. All right, friends, important story.

I'm so glad we got to bring Eric Cardell on to discuss that with us. Remember, all this week, I keep forgetting to announce it, My 10 best-selling books, 30% off, and we're paying the shipping too. All right, so to order, just go to thelineoffire.org. You'll see it right on the homepage. You'll see the banner there.

Order. Like crazy, if you well, not like crazy, but you know what I'm saying. Order as much as you want. It'll be our joy to get these out to you. And of course, you'll get them before Christmas.

And any day, the pre-order of Breaking the Stronghold of Food should be in. You can still pre-order that in time for Christmas, but this is the last few days in order to do that, get it signed and delivered before Christmas.

So take advantage of that. It's all with thelineofire.org and stand with us as we're on the front lines standing for you. My bottom line today: parents, moms, dads, wake up. There is a real assault on your kids. From the Ohio State Act of Terror to the question of Muslim refugees to the death of a dictator, we've got it all today on the line of fire.

Yeah.

It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Well, thank you for joining us on the broadcast today. In a few minutes, I'm going to bring on a journalist, author who has a new book, Stealth Islamic Invasion Sweeping U.S. It's called Stealth Invasion, and it claims that there is a Muslim conquest through immigration and resettlement jihad. We'll talk about that in a moment, but Yesterday, the attack at Ohio State University, a massive university. The campus there is massive and tens of thousands of students.

What do they have? Maybe 50,000 students there, a massive campus. And a Muslim student comes on the campus, drives his car into people, gets out, starts stabbing people with a butcher's knife, and is quickly shot and killed by a policeman who was on the spot. Otherwise, many more people could have been injured or even killed. And what's All the more tragic about this is that this young man, 18 years old, somehow a third-year student, so he must have gotten in very young, Somali.

was interviewed in a local uh paper. Just a few months ago, and he explained coming on campus and the prayer rooms because he was a Muslim, had to pray five times a day, and where were the prayer rooms? He wasn't really sure, and did he just pray? Pray where he was, and he decided to just do that. But he was concerned about Islamophobia.

He was concerned about the way the American public viewed Muslims as terrorists, and he didn't want them to have that reputation. Just three months ago, And now he engages in an act of terror. And according to some reports, he was influenced by or a disciple of a radical Islamic cleric from America but living in Yemen when America killed him by drone attack, the same cleric who had greatly influenced the Fort Hood jihadist. And here you have someone saying he was concerned about the way Muslims looked in America. He was concerned about the Islamophobia, you know, all Muslims are terrorists and things like that.

And then he goes out and commits this terrorist act.

So the question is: how should we view other Muslim refugees? There's no question. That there are Muslim refugees here in America for whom America has been a godsend, for whom America has meant a new life. And they are glad to be American, and they want to be American citizens, and they absolutely repudiate terrorism and radical Islam. And I would say that the great bulk of these people are not those who are praying five times a day and religious as this Somali refugee was.

And there are those fleeing terror in different parts of the world, be it Somalia or be it Syria, and they are looking for refuge, and they do not have. A desire to take over. or to engage in, quote, resettlement jihad. But here's the question, and here's the difficult question. If I said to you, there's a fabulous buffet in our city.

It is the greatest selection of food you've ever seen at an unbelievable price. But out of the 100 or so items there, every day one or two of them are infected with deadly poison. You just don't know which. And there's no way of knowing which. Would you go to that dofe?

Obviously not. You're not going to risk your life for a nice meal.

So that's the question. Even if it's one or 2% of refugees coming in who have murderous intent, how do we handle it? How do we deal with it? Or what is the percent? This is obviously a question now for candidate or president-elect Donald Trump.

We'll be right back with Leo Homan to talk about his book, Stealth Invasion. Ain't the world It's fire we want, oh fire we Please stand the fire. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Our shortly before. the Ohio State University attack yesterday by Abdul Razak Ali Artan from Somalia. He posted On Facebook, comments saying, We will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. And then he went on his attack, attempted murderous attack. Thankfully, no one killed, although one critically injured, and of course he paid with his own life.

He said, I can't take it anymore, America. Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim ummah, the ummah being the world community. We are not weak, we are not weak. Remember that. He mentioned the recent trend of lone wolf attacks.

Carried out by Seoul Islamic terrorists said, If you want us Muslims to stop carrying out lone wolf attacks, then make peace. Again, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. The post also mentions Amwar al-Awlaki, American-born al-Qaeda cleric who was killed in 2011 in Yemen. He mentions him as a hero. My guest joining me now on the line of fire, Leo Holman, longtime journalist who has written the book, Stealth Invasion.

And it speaks of Muslim conquest through immigration and resettlement. Jihad, Leo, welcome to the line of fire. Thanks for having me, Doctor Brown. Before we get into the contents of this book, folks would always want to know: well, What prompted you to write this book and what are your qualifications in writing it?

So, how long have you been focused on this particular subject? That's a good question. I started as a reporter and editor with WND. I've been a reporter and editor for had been for about twenty eight years. And I had covered my share of immigration stories.

But I I had never really focused. on the angle of Islamic immigration. until I started with WND about two and a half years ago. Dr. Brown.

And since that time, I've really zeroed in with sort of. Edge on this particular angle of: okay, how many are we bringing in? How long have we been doing this? Where are they coming from? and under and how are they doing as far as assimilating into our culture once they get here?

And and what What were your basic findings? You speak of they, obviously Muslim refugees coming from many, many different countries.

So you'll have to separate some of this unless all the data is the same. But what's the reality? The refugees that are coming here, how are they doing, becoming assimilated? What's their attitude as far as being Americans? And is there any strategy going on among them?

Yeah, uh a lot of them come here From you know dirt. poor destitute situation. situations in places like Somalia, Afghanistan. More recently, Syria. which has been in the news a lot.

uh Sudan, uh you know, just really third world conditions. Uh and so they come here and uh you know from these and not only uh very poor conditions, but Sharia compliant. nation, where the they don't know anything about freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Yeah.

that are ingrained in our U.S. Congress. Yeah.

And our U.S. government doesn't require of them any sort of allegiance to these sort of. bedrock American values. They're not uh about you know what are your Views with regard to Sharia law. They're just uh so-called wealthy.

here as as you know refugees and the whole word refugee you know It it conjures up images of, you know, people fleeing wars. and famines and and and horrible conditions like that. But, you know, take Somalia for instance. We've been taking in refugees from there. my gosh, the late 80s, early 90s.

And it's up to 150. thirty two thousand that we brought in from that country alone. over the years absolutely no requirement that they assimilate into our culture. And a lot of them come here as decent people, but quite frankly they get quote-unquote radicalized once they get here in our American mosques. All right, so let's think this through.

Someone comes over, they want to come into the States, they want to get citizenship. We had a gentleman that was a graduate of our ministry school. He was a businessman in his home country in Scandinavia. He came over here And uh Went through our school. He and his wife were brilliant.

They were, in fact, basically co-value Victorians when they graduated with near perfect scores. And then he came on staff at our school, got a master's degree at another seminary, and was pretty much the business manager overseeing the school. And he was unable, with all of our best efforts and us hiring an immigration attorney, he was unable to get citizenship here. I mean, we watched this over a period of years, and finally, we all threw up our hands and said, all right, it's not going to work. What can we say?

But you're telling me that someone could come over from Somalia or Syria, theoretically, or some other Islamic country, and they basically just get a free pass? I mean, what process do we go through? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And within One year that They're giving a green card, which gives them Permanent resident Yeah. And that puts them on a fast track.

towards full citizenship. within five years. And that's pretty much the process that they go through. but it's all laid out before them as soon as they get here. That as long as they don't violate any laws.

they're going to get the green card quite quickly. And so if they're on their best behavior for that first Year, they're given a green card, which I said, which, as we know, gives. That's a very coveted document because it gives you permanent resident status. That you can't vote, you don't have full citizenship, but it's the very next step before that.

So that is the track. That they're put on. Yes, and I don't know. you know, at the point that they are giving si giving them citizenship, which I said is available in five years. Uh I can't prove That they are.

being put to any last of a requirement than your Scandinavian friend. All I can say is, because I don't know individual circumstances. But all I can say is that these People are becoming citizens en masse because we Pad. Uh I said 130. 2000.

From Somalia. We've had well over a million. from the Islamic world Come in through this program.

So, you know, and now they're, and most of them are. citizens. We have three point three million Muslims in America now. Yeah.

They're not only coming as refugees, but asylum. Yeah.

Yeah.

The visa. All right, so obviously, we want to be compassionate and we want to, within reason and within our ability to help, open our doors to those who are genuinely needy and who want to take refuge in our shores and become part of our nation. But again, when you have this wide open door that we currently have, when we have this minimal vetting, and then when we have Almost no current vetting of some of these radical mosques. In fact, the Department of Justice stepped back from this so radically that words having to do with Islam were just removed from the books. I mean, it just really paralyzes law enforcement officials or people trying to surveil and do intel and things like that.

So, before we get to the heart of your book, the word stealth evasion. Let me play the advocate of the Muslim refugees for a moment and say, okay, 132,000 Somalian refugees, this is the first instance we had. You got crackpots everywhere. How in the world can we even think that this is an indictment about other Muslims in America?

Well, first of all, I would tell your friend that this is not the first incident that we've had. Yeah.

months ago. We had a Somali refugee. uh go off at the Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and stabbed ten people. several of them critically.

On that same day, we had september seventeenth, this year, two months ago. Same day, we had a refugee from, I believe it was Afghanistan, Set pipe bombs in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. 29 people. We have had the Chattanooga shooter Who came here as a six-year-old? is dialogue.

Yeah.

He killed five U.S. service. men unarmed in cold blood. We had another case at the At the Boston Marathon, as you recall in twenty thirteen, We're two brothers, the Sarneo. Brothers came here as asylum seekers.

speakers from Dagestan. killed three people wounded. 300 or more. Do you want me to continue? Yeah, point well made, Leo.

And that's, again, what we need to be looking at. When you have a problem that's pervasive, you have to address it holistically. You can't simply address it on an individual level.

So here are the questions we come back. Again, the book by Leo Holman, H-O-H-M-A-N-N, Stealth. Invasion. I I want him to lay out what he believes is happening intentionally. And what we can do about it.

So we will be right back, and we're going to continue with Leo on the other side of the break. Around my new shine, shaking it down, change the world O God of burning, cleansing. Yeah.

Send the fire. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Thanks for joining us on the line of fire. I'm speaking with Leo Holman, his new book, Stealth and Invasion. Leo, what. Are you saying is actually happening. Stealth invasion is talking about something systematic, something planned, something orchestrated, as you call it, a resettlement jihad.

What do you believe is actually happening? I believe that that's a great question. And I believe what is happening, Dr. Brown, is laid out in the documents of the Muslim Brotherhood. in the late nineteen eighties It's called the explanatory memo.

Memorandum for The brothers For a strategic plan. in North America. And in that document, Mr. Mohammed, I cry. wrote in 1987 and was published a few years later.

later. It lays out a strategic plan that, if you look at what he writes and then And look at what has been happening over the last thirty-five years since that. document was written. It almost is is scary how closely they line up. Because he talks about establishing establishing Islam and giving it a foothold in the United States.

both spiritually and civically and politically and in our educational systems and planting Islam in settlements and into the psyche of the American Fabric. And we've what have we seen over the last years with? Common core and Islam be in giving favorable treatment in our public schools as opposed to while they're edging out everything Christian, they have been bringing in. more and more deeper studies about Islam and Mohammed And not even giving truthful discourse on that whole topic of Muhammad and the history of Islam. And we've seen the growth of the mosques.

or talk you know, the mosque is the foothold of Islam in any community. And when we see the migrants come in, you know. five to ten thousand a year just from so from Somalia. Yeah.

20,000 now coming from Syria. Uh you know Afghanistan 5,000 in a year. up to the million mark now and growing. And every time You see them brought into a certain community, then you see a mosque built. You see the mosque started In a storefront, and then build bigger and become more influential in that community.

And then, whenever there is any sort of controversy at a public school or whatever, then you'll see the turnout. And these people, you know. to their credit, take their faith very seriously. And I wish more Christians would be. But we see this document.

From the Muslim Brotherhood. That was five. the way captured by the FBI in the two thousand four raid. and presented as evidence In a trial down in Texas in 2007, the Holy Land Foundation trial. Yeah.

This foundation, we found out, was funneling money and aid to Hamas. Uh in uh to kill Israelis and conduct the mischief that they do there. And we've just seen the the document uh prophetic announcements sort of come true. over the years. And that is the bottom line You asked, and I'm going to tell you.

It's the Islamization. of America. And so that is what's happening. And uh if you're fine with that. as an American than I Sk an argument with you.

If you feel like we have values Judeo-Christian values. that are worth defending and worth upholding, then you know we could debate that. But uh I do want to be upfront about about it, this is what the book is about. It's a culture clash. and it's a spiritual clash.

And look who Yeah, yeah, Leo. We, as followers of Jesus, want to share the good news of the Messiah with the whole world. And there are missions organizations that strategize and individual missionaries that strategize, right? How can we get into this country? How can we bring the message there?

And then they'll think: okay, we care about the people. If we can feed the hungry, if we can set up schools to help educate, then we can show them our love and then through that preach the gospel with words and with deeds.

So our intentions are good. It's not about taking over. It's not about the top-down. It's not about using violence, but we have our strategy.

Well, Islam has its strategy, and there are different Islamic groups, but they have their strategies. It's not a coincidence that you now have a Muslim mayor of London. You know, these things don't just happen out of the blue or mosques in so many strategic places in different parts of the world. And Muslims want to spread their faith, but there is a certain element of Islam that... In spreading its faith, it wants to spread it violently, and that they have historical examples for it.

And Islam means taking over. Islam means submission.

So that's the issue. The gospel is going to seek to win people to the Lord and influence them and then infiltrate culture in that way. Islam, when it has enough of a foothold, will now establish laws for its own community and then will go further and establish laws for the rest of the country. That would be the goal because Islam is a legal religion.

So we've just got a couple of minutes. Obviously, folks have to read the book Stealth Invasion for more. But in a nutshell, What would you like the president, incoming president, and the administration to do? I think the President elect nailed it when he said that we need a Excuse me. We need a tempered immigration until we can figure out what the heck Yeah.

And then, you know, when he said that, he came under the Yeah. And The uh Muslim Yeah. And all of them folks. Who said, No, you can't do that. That's horrible, you must be a racist.

He did back. Off. and said, okay, we'll do something.

something called extreme vetting then.

Well, extreme vetting, while an improvement, will not be the answer because we cannot vet people like Ab Mohammed Abdul.

So, this is the same. who was the Chattanooga shooter, who came here at the age of six, and grew up into was educated our American school. who graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with an engineer. It was one of the most Popular kids in his high school was a five. assimilated a Muslim American by all accounts.

until he one day decided that something was lacking in his life And he started reading the Koran more religiously, started going to mosque. His parents noticed. he started growing out his beard. And he started saying a lot of radical things, and then one day he. Pulled up to a recruitment center of the U.S.

Navy and started shooting unarmed people. And This is impossible to vet against. You cannot vet against future devotion to Islam. It's just impossible.

So this is what we're stuck with. President-elect Trump, who seemed to have a good uh feel for the United States. this issue has backed off a little bit. There's two things two ways we need to approach this. One is on the political level.

We need to Call. And Wright, our congressman. Congress has funded all of this all these years. and asked them to give us a temporary halt on Islamic immigration. Until we can figure out Uh Forward.

That's the political strategy. We need more openness. as well the The refugee resettlement program is very secretive, planting these people in our communities without telling us about it. But then there's the spiritual. Level, which you indicated is just as important.

Yeah, and that is a matter of building relationships and reaching out with the best news, far better than anything Muhammad brings. Leo Holman, the book, Stealth Invasion. Thank you, sir, for joining us. It's the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian Dr. Michael Brown.

Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

You know, it's fascinating and distressing to observe the responses. to the death of Cuban dictator, communist dictator, Fidel Castro. with some like Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. Strongly left-leaning, praising Castro and drawing all types of. of sarcastic responses on Twitter, Trudeau eulogies mocking his response.

uh from college students saying they would choose Castro over Trump. To others, like Senator Ted Cruz, whose own family members were victims of Castro's violence, others talking about who he really was and what he really did. In a moment, I want to bring on fellow stream writer and stream editor John Smirak to talk about the left's whitewashing of Fidel Castro. We'll do that in a moment, but first, my latest article on the stream is called My Mother's Funeral and the Gay Rabbi. Or the gay rabbi and my mother's funeral, excuse me, in that order.

And I talk about the fact that the rabbi that officiated my mother's funeral service last week, this was at the request of my sister, who wanted the rabbi present, fully understood. And for her and for her son, who'd be there, and we notify the cemetery, actually, the funeral parlor notifies the cemetery. The cemetery said, Okay, here's the rabbi. There's someone that they work with. It's not a matter of here, 30 people to pick from.

And turns out, to my delightful surprise, that the rabbi is a regular listener to the broadcast. And that also, to my great surprise, is openly gay. And I thought, This seems like a divine appointment. This seems like yet another illustration of the fact that we live in this world. We live side by side with neighbors, with friends, with co-workers, with family members who have different beliefs.

Who hold to different moral standards, who have radically different views on God and politics and culture and life and family. And the question is: how do we live side by side as Neighbors. In the midst of this, I thought, what a perfect opportunity. And my great desire for the rabbi is that he comes to know Jesus as the Messiah. And I imagine one of his great desires for me would be that I would change my views on homosexuality and gay relations and things like that.

So I wrote an article about it. And it's getting lots of responses. It's on a number of different websites. And when we post it on social media, people respond there.

So on my Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page, we have dozens and dozens of comments there. I haven't looked at all of them, but some saying, wonderful expression of love, and this is what we should do as followers of Jesus. Others saying you're a compromiser and you sent a mixed message. Others saying, oh, so this one act of civility and kindness and mutual respect undoes your homophobic history.

So I would say the responses are as expected. But for those who are surprised By my actions. I would say you haven't been listening to me. Because this has never been personal. And anyone who's ever accused me of being, quote, homophobic, they're wrong.

It's their interpretation of their projection. It's nothing to do with a fear or some irrational hatred, or it has to do with believing that God ordains things in certain ways in the Word. That his plan for human beings is male and female coming together in a lifelong committed relationship called marriage and having children and raising children. And that's his plan. And that to deviate from that plan, to change the definition of marriage, to make the no-fault divorce that we have now is destructive, to redefine it, to say that you can have multiple partners or to say you can switch the gender of the partner, those are issues that I fundamentally oppose.

But I do it with great love for those I differ with. And here was a great opportunity to live that out.

So read the article. It's over on thestream.org. Check out the article and then weigh in accordingly. But take it to heart, think it through, and weigh in with your comments. We'll be right back with John Zmirak.

God changed the world. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUT. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Well, as many of you know, I write articles. Three, four, five different articles a week. They're all posted on our website, thelineofire.org. But the place where you'll find the greatest majority of these articles on all different websites and where I often write exclusive articles is the stream. Stream.org, founded by James Robinson.

It's a great place to go to keep up with the news, but then above all, to get Christian perspective on the news. You'll find it tremendously, tremendously helpful. And John Zmirak is one of the editors and main writers at the stream. And he has a new article, Why Intellectuals Adore. Tyrants like Castro.

We're trying to get him on the air right now, but while we are looking for him, Uh Let me just share some of what John has written. And again, it's striking to see how someone who executed people by firing squads and who Uh who imprisoned dissenters and who Drove his country down in so many destructive ways, can be hailed and praised as this noble freedom fighter.

So John writes, My best friend in high school was Will, a Cuban exile, who later went on to become a Catholic priest. When I complained that one of our teachers was a tyrant, Will laughed at me ruefully. You have no idea what that word means. He lived in a tyranny and knew what it was like. His father and grandfather had both supported Castro against the corrupt usurper Batista.

then turned against the regime when it betrayed all its liberal promises and turned a once prosperous island into a rusting, starving outpost of the dismal Soviet bloc. Both those men were sent to prison camps where they were tortured periodically during their multi-year sentences. My father never wanted to take off his shirt in front of me so I wouldn't see all the scars Will told me. Will recounted the heavy pressure his grade school teachers put on him not to go to church. You should come to our parade instead.

The Cuban Communist Party sponsored a festive march with bright red flags every Sunday morning to draw the children from God and toward the party. Will remember the heavy emphasis that Cuban schools put on literacy. They wanted everyone to be able to read their propaganda and the orders sent by the party, so there was no excuse. For disobedience. Finally, John writes, after Howering escaped from that prison island, Will and his parents made their way to New York City to pursue the ordinary middle-class lives that the poor worldwide still dream of.

And that too, and that too many self-styled intellectuals hold in bemused contempt. That was one thing that Will always found puzzling. Do these people have any idea what people in Cuba would give to live an American middle-class life or even a working-class life? He'd asked me, flabbergasted. In fact, many thousands gave their lives sailing rickety boats through the shark-infested waters, sometimes with the Cuban military shooting at them, as Castro had.

ordered Alright, so. Here's the question then. And this is what John Zamirek's friend Will was asking. he he would see people standing up for communism. he would see people supporting the former Soviet Union.

He would see people celebrating Castro's revolution, and he's talking about. Here in America. That various intellectuals and leading thinkers. would would say Yeah, this is great. Their system is great.

And and he's saying Do they even know what life is like in Cuba, what we grew up with, what my family grew up with? Will would wonder aloud why so many intellectuals and wannabes, like Hollywood actors, trooped off to Cuba over the decades. Why did they rally to the support of a vicious dictator? Who drove one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America into poverty and stagnation, oppressed and destroyed its middle class, nationalizing virtually all private property, filled its dales with priests, nuns, businessmen, and ordinary citizens. And torture dissonant authors and ordinary people is only crime.

was that they'd been denounced as homosexual.

So joining me now to answer those questions, John Smirak, hey, John, what's the answer? Why the Hollywood actors, intellectual elites, the prime minister Trudeau's, why are they so infatuated with a violent dictator with an oppressive regime like the dictator Fidel Castro? I think it's a spiritual issue. Interesting. I think that people are attracted to socialism and dictatorship.

Because of a succession of spiritual corruptions. And it starts with. With vanity, pride. It comes with a kind of class snobbery where most, almost all of these people. were born in middle to upper middle class or even wealthy backgrounds.

They're comfortable. They've never had to struggle. to get clean water, good food, good education and a safe place to live. all things, by the way, that people don't have in Cuba. They take these things for granted, these things that come from our system of economic and political and religious freedom.

And they develop a contempt for them, kind of like a spoiled rich kid. You know, oh, another Rolls-Royce. Really, Daddy, do we need another one? And then he trashes the car. I think these people start to have a kind of contempt.

For people below them who are struggling to make ends meet. When you see intellectuals complaining about the people of Walmart making fun of people on Black Friday, really are just mostly working class people, trying to get nice Christmas presents for their family at a discount. And you know, all these materialistic Horrible Americans.

So what you see is at first a kind of synobberry. You you're showing off the fact That you're so prosperous and so privileged that you don't have to be involved in the grubby struggle of supply and demand. The next step. Is the craving for secret knowledge, which is very similar to what Adam and Eve had in the garden?

Someone offers you marks or some knockoff of car marks. Which presents you with an explanation for everything that's gone on through all of human history. This is the secret key. But she is that the bourgeoisie The wealthy actually, the one percenters, are exploiting everyone and draining off the wealth for their own benefit.

So you, unlike everyone around you, understand the whole mechanism of history. You're part of a privileged elite that have this Gnostic secret information. And then the third step is a desire for godlike power over your fellow man. Because you're part of this fact. you can be involved in grabbing control of the levers of history and changing things.

and imposing a man made utopia on your fellow man, whether he likes it or not. That's a very heady, exciting prospect. You're already part of this secret elite that understands the way things really work.

Now you can be part of the tiny elite that imposes change. And becomes an in Stalin's words, an engineer of human souls. Mm. John, to what extent do you see a similar attitude among the media elites that have admitted now they live in somewhat of a DC bubble and were out of touch with the rest of America, but those the educational elites that seem to know better, they may not want to impose communism or socialism on America, but is it the same kind of mentality that they really are in the know? Yes.

And I think the people people in those groups who might not They might not be very coherent. They might not think it through that they want a communist dictatorship in America. But they're perfectly happy to choose. Cheer it on being done to somebody else in Cuba.

Well, if they really thought that through, they'd have to question themselves, right? Like, well, we in America can live in prosperity and freedom, but gosh, I'm glad somebody's sticking it to those poor Cubans. Really? Uh but I think what's going on is they have a kind of envy. they don't identify with the ordinary Cuban citizen.

they fantasize about being in the position of a Cuban party leader. They would love to make some radical changes in America. They're intellectuals. They would like to tinker with society as if it were an ant farm. And they don't think of themselves as being just ordinary people like everybody else with limited information, fallen like everybody else.

No, they're part of. an intellectual elite that has to tell other people how to think as if Ideas were sharp objects and ordinary citizens were children and you had to protect them from injuring themselves on. You know, John, as always, you give eloquent descriptions to what you're saying and vivid metaphors. But I'm reminded of a conversation I alluded to earlier in the broadcast when North Carolina voted overwhelmingly against redefining marriage, 61% to 39%, before the courts overthrew that. A young lady called me.

She was ashamed to be a North Carolinian, but she was so proud of her county, which was one of the few counties that voted for redefining marriage. And she was a university student, and it was a university county. And she was bemoaning the fact that To use my words, the backwood bigots got to vote on this. The people who really don't know anything, they got to vote. And ultimately, me with a PhD from MIU, I was one of those backwood bigots.

I mean, that's what it came down to.

So here she's a college student. They're the ones that should get to vote and determine which way America is. Not these common idiots. And obviously, it's the common idiots who got Donald Trump elected. Hey, John, we've got a break.

I've got a few more questions, and I'd love to just get your input quickly about the Pope and abortion, since you've got a whole lot more expertise on this than I do. But we'll come back more on Castro and the Left with my guest, John Zmirak, one of the lead editors and writers at stream.org. Angel World. Give us strict to always do what's right. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

I'm speaking with John Zmirak ZM I R A K. You can read his writings along with mine and many others at the stream. That is stream.org.

So, John, the. The reaction of The same group referring to as liberal elite, their reaction to the Trump election or during the Trump campaign, labeling the Trump supporters a certain way or looking at them a certain way. Is this in keeping with this infatuation with these other ideologies that would be so supportive of a Castro? And again, this kind of elite mentality that looks down its nose on all these other ignorant peasants that are voting the wrong way? Yes, I think they go together.

I think the people who feel felt the utmost contempt for their fellow citizens for voting differently, like that college student you mentioned, who by the way should know that it's those backwoods roofs whose taxes keep her university open. Maybe they should vote maybe they should vote to defund it except for like math and science. I've always thought that'd be a good idea. That's the first step in that progression of evil that I laid out for you. The first step of snobbery, of seeing your fellow citizens as less than you, as thinking that your formal education in one field or another makes you a Mandarin who is Qualified and part of some special aristocratic group that really ought to be leading the lesser people and telling them how to live and what to think.

and who to vote for and what religions to follow and what religions are not going to be permitted by the government for them to follow. I think freedom makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And freedom mixed uh Elitist aristocratic people especially uncomfortable because they don't want to see people they think are below them climbing up the ladder. Think about back in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages in the Renaissance, the aristocrats would pass laws that only they could wear certain clothes. And even if merchants made a lot of money and could afford better clothes than the aristocrats, the law would prevent them from wearing it because it was important to mark off the aristocrats.

from all the lesser people.

Well, academia And to some degree, financial success, Have become the new aristocracy. And those people are just as exclusive and just as contemptuous. as any British aristocrat ever was. Yeah, extraordinary. And on a previous broadcast, we talked about your professors, was it at Yale?

And and uh and their their world view And how wrong they were in their perceptions, how history dramatically proved them wrong, the very thing they were sure would not happen. Maybe it's different. Maybe it's related. You've got some great articles about Steve Bannon. and a campaign strategist for Donald Trump and one of the The leaders of Breitbart.com.

I don't know him personally. I'm not his defender. But you saw a certain method of vilifying an opponent. And I don't know if this goes always or if this is, again, something done by kind of the liberal elite. But what happened to him in terms of the way he was demonized and painted a certain way?

And again, that's typical of anyone that voted for Donald Trump. Yeah, I think two groups sought to to vilify Steve Bannon. who is I've only dealt with him a few times. I wrote a few times at Breitbart, but I've just read everything he's said in the media and seen what he's done. And he seems to be like a good man, a smart man, a tough man who is not afraid to fight.

And that is what the left cannot forgive in a conservative: is one who's willing to fight. One who's willing to go up there and say some pious things and then lose graciously, you know, a kind of a. Jeb the way Jeb Bush came across during the campaign, like, well, everyone, I'm going to lose to Hillary Clinton, but I'm going to do it like a gentleman, just like Mitt Romney and Senator McCain did. They can forgive that. What they can't forgive is someone like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump who comes out bare-knuckled, ready to fight.

We're not supposed to fight to win. We're supposed to l be good losers and gradually maybe just cl voluntarily climb onto the dustbin of into the dustbin of history where we belong. Steve Bannon is a populist and a nationalist in the sense that. The Andrew Jackson ones. He sees the American people as kind of a big extended family that should be looking out for each other, including the people who are not so well off.

such as auto workers. such as Hispanic and black people who were born here, who are citizens, who can't get jobs because the borders are being flooded with people who work illegally and undercut their wages. um u ordinary European citizens who are now Victims of jihadi rape gangs, and they're being inundated with these Muslim colonists by their elitist government that won't even let them vote on the issue. Europe is far less democratic than America. There are whole c there are countries like France where the people want to get out of the EU and the government won't give them a referendum.

And they're censoring the press. In Britain, the European Union just ordered the British press to stop identifying Muslims as such when they commit jihad attacks because it upsets the peasants. Yeah.

So I think the Democratic left, but also. elements in the Republican Party who have felt eclipsed By Donald Trump. People at National Review and the Weekly Standard who've seen their numbers go way down while Breifarts went way up. They don't like seeing Steve Bannon rise to the top either. It it threatens to throw them into irrelevance.

Interesting. Interesting. Again, you can read more of what John's written at the stream. All right, we literally have two minutes, but you're Catholic. You were involved in editing or the English translation of a book with some of the Pope's teachings.

What has he actually said or not said regarding abortion? If you could summarize in two minutes or less. The Pope has not changed the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion at all. He changed one internal thing in the way that we process people who are repentant for having had an abortion. He made it a little bit easier to get back in the good graces of the church once you've repented for an abortion.

On on the abortion issue, Pope Francis Is not visibly different from anyone who came before him. Yeah, why all the controversy then? The controversy is about what he's doing with divorce. He is trying to create a de facto acceptance For divorce and remarriage in the Catholic Church, which the Catholic Church has never allowed. And in fact, we have infallible councils like the Council of Trent taught that there can be absolutely no divorce and remarriage for Catholics.

And Pope Francis is trying to change that. There are four cardinals who've come out against him, asking him to correct his teaching, and now they're being threatened with losing their status as cardinals.

So there's a really big doctrinal battle within the Catholic Church, but it's about divorce. Not abortion, and I've written about that at the stream as well. There's an article called An FAQ for All Christians on Divorce, Pope Francis and the Bishop's Equestrian. All right, there you have it. John Zimirak, easy to find the name.

It's a lot less common than Michael Brown. Z-M-I-R-A-K. By the way, where does the name come from? Austria-Hungary, the province of Croatia. My grandfather left in nineteen sixteen while Kaiser Franz Josef was still on the throne.

All right.

Well, we've learned a bit of history as well. Hey, John, God bless. Great talking to you. Thank you, you too. Bye.

All right.

Friends, remember, remember that all this week, On our website, exclusively on our website, you can order any of my 10 best-selling books at 30% off, plus. Free shipping. I mean, that's virtually our cost on these.

So go to thelineoffire.org. We will ship in time for Christmas.

So go to thelineoffire.org. Take advantage of these. My bottom line today. We can know God. must get on our knees and pray, but also act to influence the culture with what we believe and why we believe it.