The Latest Effort to Redefine Marriage

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How in the world did we get where we are today? 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. How many times have I said, hey, I'm not exaggerating. These are urgent times. These are urgent warnings. Well, today is another one of those days.

I am not exaggerating. There is a reason we are sounding the alarm. The good news is there's something we can do about it. The bad news is the hour is late. Welcome, friends, to The Line of Fire broadcast. This is Michael Brown.

The number is always to call 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87884. Had a very interesting few days leading up to the broadcast today. I'll tell you about that a little later in the show. But first, I want to take you to a scene from Canada and let me set it up for you. Ezra Levant, journalist in Canada, conservative, leader of rebel media, has been banned on various platforms because of his media outlet being contrary to the PC spirit, challenging the standard narratives, and things are very oppressive in Canada. They're bad in America in many ways, certainly worse in America, but in other ways, in other settings, worse in Canada.

And there is a smaller church that is less vocal, so there's even less pushback. Ezra Levant posted this. Now, if you're only listening, if you can't be watching on Ask Dr. Brown or YouTube, or if you're not watching on Dish TV or Pluto, if you're just listening, you'll hear this. The sounds are disturbing.

If you're watching, you will see 200 policemen with gas masks on gathering around some building. What is going on? What is so dangerous? What is happening?

Let's play the clip. Now the shock troops are coming. They have gas masks, so they're getting ready for pepper spray. We need protection from churches. The Nazis need to be protected from churches.

They're on the wrong side. So we're at close to 200 cops now. Gas masks, visors and stuff.

Gas masks for gas. 200 cops and a helicopter. 40 vehicles for one church. One church decided to open their doors, decided to hold services, violating Canadian law right now because of COVID. They said, we are going to open our church for services.

That was the response. If you thought you would never see something like that happen, it's not like they were committing some crime in the building. It's not like they were manufacturing and sending out kiddie porn videos, some horrific, ugly, despicable thing. It's not like they were putting out racist literature calling for a violent overthrow of the government.

They were gathering to worship God and preach about Jesus. You say, yeah, but COVID concerns. There's constant debate about what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, what's safe, what's not safe.

And you could make a constant argument for the religious liberty to gather together. But that's the response. Hey, the policemen were doing what they were ordered to do. I'm simply saying this is utterly outrageous and shocking and we must call attention to it. We must draw attention to it. We must talk about it.

We must say these things are happening. We honor authority, respect authority. But when the authorities tell us to disobey God, with all respect to the authority, we say sorry. But we must obey God rather than man.

You find virtue of those very words in Acts four and Acts five, when the apostles did those very things. My policy with COVID is love my neighbors myself. My policy with COVID is to be of honoring wherever I can in any situation.

So I go into the store. You put the mask on on the plane. But you're obviously not going to fly without the mask, whatever the protocol is. If I go and speak, whatever the protocol is, I follow it.

And I want to send a message to those around me that if you feel it's important for me to wear the mask, I still don't know the science and what works and what doesn't work and where we are and herd immunity and all that. I don't know any of that with DFINITY. With DFINITY. With a new word there. Joining together, infinity and definite. I don't know for sure what works, what doesn't work. You know, the science is constant debate. But if I'm asked to do it, then I'm going to do it for the sake of others, unless it's a direct infringement on my own personal rights or personal liberties in a way that is intolerable. That's where a line is drawn. OK, so Supreme Court decision in the states.

It was positive in that yet again, the courts have ruled against draconian laws in California because California, in limited settings, you go to your store, right? Go to hardware store, grocery store. Go there. Do that.

Right. You can gather together, you know, restaurants, limited seating, different things like that. But if you want to have a home religious gathering, you couldn't.

You couldn't do that. So this meant it's one of the Supreme Court overruling once again the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and said, yes, you can gather in your homes. How is it that you can gather in a hardware store?

A bunch of people can be in a hardware store. A bunch of people can be in a restaurant, but you can't gather in your homes. How can that possibly be? This is discrimination against religion. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the churches that said, hey, we want to have house meetings and California is trying to stop us. But here's the problem.

Here's the negative side. The ruling was five four. The ruling was not nine zero. The ruling was five four. And Chief Justice Roberts sided with the three liberal justices and and and the justice who wrote the the opinion, Justice Sotomayor said, hey, look, you know, you don't treat apples the same you treat watermelons.

And there's a difference between a hardware store and a restaurant and a religious gathering in a home. Wow. That's concerning. Yeah, it's good news that it was a victory.

It's bad news that it was five four. And it's even worse news to see some of the logic involved. Now, this is not where we're going to focus our attention today.

There are a bunch of other things I want to talk to you about. Interesting attack from CNN and the ADL against Tucker Carlson and Fox News. I think you'll find that interesting regardless of your political perspective. I'm going to talk about how, shockingly enough, incest, consensual adult incest is back in the news and further questions about the redefining of marriage.

That's the question I asked at the outset of the broadcast. How do we get where we are today? But before we get into any of that, let's focus on this. There is a new Marvel comic book and it has a villain character, an arch villain who is an extreme Nazi. And it seems that this villain is now patterned after Professor Jordan Peterson, one of the best known conservative intellectuals on the planet today.

And what makes it even more striking is the man who wrote the comics. So check out this interview. It's a podcast in Jordan Peterson.

Dr. Peterson is being asked about this. What's the story with you and Red Skull? Well, I don't know. I mean, I came across this last week and someone tweeted me this cartoon, this comic, Captain America comic. And I saw this screenshot of Red Skull looking at a computer screen and it said 10 rules for life. That was one text box. It said order and chaos.

And there was a couple of other boxes. And I thought, well, that seems to be making a reference to my work. I mean, 10 rules for life is pretty close to 12 rules for life. And of course, the main themes I discuss are order and chaos. I mean, one book is about order and the others about chaos.

And my first book is about both. So it's a joke, you know, associating my ideas with this arch villain magic super Nazi Red Skull. And then as I looked into it more deeply and as people sent me more information, it became clear that at least some of the inspiration for this Red Skull character in this Captain America variant was appeared to be targeting, let's say, or satirizing or warning about my ideas. And so I've been playing with that ever since, I suppose, on Twitter. People are producing memes now of Red Skull superimposed upon the picture of him, things I've actually said instead of the hypothetical things that the people who don't like me wish I said and then purposefully misinterpret. And so that's that.

And it's I'm trying to make it into something playful. So that's Jordan Peterson. He came to international prominence as a professor, clinical psychologist, University of Toronto in Canada when Canada was passing laws that would basically enforce speech and say you must address someone who identifies as trans using these pronouns, etc. And he protested against it and said, hey, I'm not going to submit to this. He'd studied communism for years. He knew about it for speech. And he said, no, not on my watch. And if you tell me I have to, I won't if you put me in jail, go on a hunger strike. I mean, he was just adamant about it.

Next thing he becomes internationally known, his book 12 rules for life becomes an international bestseller. He's not one to back down. This is evil. This is vile. This is ridiculous. You've got a brilliant man who can brilliantly defend his ideas and he's going to be made into some white supremacist evil Nazi.

A little bit more back to Jordan Peterson. It's so absurd. It shocked me to begin with. I couldn't believe it to begin with, especially when I found out who the author of the comic book was.

So, you know, he's an intellectual figure among the leftist community, relatively well known and politically correct. And I didn't expect it. It really threw me for a loop to begin with. I mean, it's really something to see yourself portrayed, let's say parodied, satirized as being called a Nazi before. It's not pleasant, but this is one step beyond that. I mean, Nazi apparently isn't enough.

I have to be a magical super Nazi by implication. Well, really, it's so surreal and absurd that I couldn't believe it to begin with. Yeah. What makes it more absurd or absurd, as Dr. Peterson would say, and again, he's not one to sit back, so he's going to he's going to utilize this and turn this around to expose things and get a message out. But the author of the comic book was Ta-Nehisi Coates, influential African-American journalist and author, one often addressing issues of white supremacy and things like that. So he's he's a known journalist, a thinker.

And for him to put this out, I mean, what in the world does this not expose how radical and extreme the politicized spirit of the left really is to try to turn Dr. Jordan Peterson into an evil Nazi? All right, just getting started. 866-342. We'll be right back. We want fire, we. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. There is a reason we have been sounding the alarm for many years about the direction of the culture. Look, I've said before, you could put me in any generation and I'm sure my message would be repent. In other words, it's part of my calling. It's part of who I am. It's part of the burden that I carry to help wake up the sleeping church and help warn about the moral deterioration in society while pointing us to the Lord as the solution, as the one who can bring about positive change. So I'm always sending a message of hope and optimism in the midst of the warning.

But there's a reason for the warnings and things are dire and things are getting worse and they could get really, really bad. Now, look, I'm not just cherry picking. I'm not finding some extreme.

I am. I'm talking about things that little by little by little there is an attempt to normalize. Look, how many shows TV shows in recent years celebrated polygamy from what Big Love to My Five Wives and other shows. And I noticed that while these shows were airing on TV, there are various cable networks and things like that. But some of them I think were very popular or popular enough to have multiple seasons that if you look at a Gallup poll that acceptance of polygamy in America went from 7 percent to 14 percent over a period of a few years. How that happened.

Well, take an educated guess. The media bombardment, the redefining of marriage, the reality of the slippery slope. People mock it as they're careening down the slope. There is no slippery slope or they justify it.

Hey, what's wrong with this? Either way, it's for the proof of the slippery slope. So check out this headline from the New York Post. This is just April 10th. All right. New York parent seeks OK to marry their own adult child.

Yep. Your parents seeks OK to marry their own adult child. Now, according to the lawsuit, they will be diminished as human beings if they can't marry. You say everybody understands that even consensual adult incest is unsafe because you can have children and there's a high percentage of possibility that there'll be a genetic defect.

Oh, no, no. They want to make clear that they can't procreate. So and they even have an acronym about parents and children, you know, who are non-procreative, wanted to marry and whatever. So here's the point. It's either a father and son or a mother and daughter.

Right. A same sex couple or the mother or father are too old to have children or unable to biologically for some reason. Or the child in question is unable biologically. Either way, they say they can't procreate. So there goes that objection. You say, well, it's just wrong. Well, that's what we said about same sex marriage. That's just wrong.

So it's got to be more than that. So anyway, but I want you to understand why I've been sounding the alarm about this. Let's go back to 2007. 2007 Time magazine. All right. And look at this. April 5th, 2007. Should incest be legal?

Shall I repeat this? Time magazine. This is when Time had a lot of influence.

Should incest be legal? April 5th, 2007. Let me read the opening two paragraphs to you. When the Supreme Court struck down Texas's law against sodomy in the summer of 2003 and the landmark gay rights case of Lawrence v. Texas, where they found sodomy to be a civil right somehow, a constitutional right. Critics warned that its sweeping support of a powerful doctrine of privacy could lead to challenges of state laws that forbade such things as gay marriage and bigamy.

2007. This is a quote from Justice Antonin Scalia. State laws against bigamy, same sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity are called into question by today's decision. Time magazine references it as a withering dissent. And he he read it aloud page by page from the bench.

Obviously, masturbation would be in a different set of lists here from incest, prostitution, all of these things involving someone else, but a withering warning nonetheless. So Time magazine continues. It turns out the critics were right.

Did you get that? It turns out the critics were right. Plantists have made the decision. The centerpiece of attempts to defeat state bans on the sale of sex toys in Alabama, polygamy in Utah and adoption by gay couples in Florida. So far, the challenges have been unsuccessful. The plaintiffs are still trying, even using Lawrence to challenge laws against incest. OK, done with that.

That was 2007. Should incest be legal? The question was being asked. It continues to be asked. So in 2010, let's look at this article from the Village Voice, ultra liberal New York publication, December 16th, 2010.

It starts by telling us this. David Epstein, the Columbia University political science professor accused of having a consensual three year long affair with his 24 year old daughter, is back in the news with the recent statement from his lawyer, Matthew Galuso, that incest is not all that different from homosexuality. Quote, academically, we are obviously all morally opposed to incest and rightfully so. At the same time, there is an arrangement to be made in the Swiss case to let go what goes on privately in bedrooms.

And he said this. It's OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home. How is this so different? We have to figure out why some behavior is tolerated and some is not.

Friends, when that event came down and students at Columbia University found out what had been going on with their professor and his adult daughter, many of them just posting on Internet forums, civil consenting adults, what's wrong with it? Hey, love is love. Why not? Love wins.

You have the right to marry the one you love. Why not? This is the illogic behind this. This is what happens when you can say, hey, marriage does not need a man or a woman. It could be two men. It could be two women.

You have now fundamentally redefined the institute. Why not three men or three women or two men and why not? These questions are being asked and one of the polygamy reality TV shows had some of their cast members in Utah going to court to say it is it is unconstitutional for you to ban polygamy.

And some of the restrictions were actually removed through the court case and not fully, but partially. This is what's going on in our society. Now, look, when I say I've been sounding the alarm, let me give you some examples. OK. Oh, let's see. OK. Go back to September 14th, 2012. I wrote this article. Here comes incest, just as predicted.

September 14th, 2012. And I referred there to what's called GSA, genetic sexual attraction. Maybe family members separated from birth and now reunited and they have they don't even know their family.

They have this intense attraction one towards another. That's documented along with cases in other countries. Then I posted this one July 23rd, 2014. Next stop on slippery slope incest. And there I added a surprising statement from from a judge in Australia, along with illustrations from latest celebration of incest in pop culture. Then I posted this one October 27th, 2015. Why can't two gay brothers marry?

So this was October 27th, 2015. I was citing a pro incest argument from a gay politician in Ireland. This is why can't first cousins marry?

He was raising that argument, just getting closer and closer. Then January 27th, 2016, legalizing adult incest. Here we go again with further cultural updates in my 2015 book, Outlasting the Gay Revolution. I cited the latest examples of the media celebration of adult consensual incest. So example after example, after example, from MTV to HBO to major hit movies. One example after another, after the Game of Thrones and all this incestuous relationships. You'd have to be willingly blind to not see these things.

You'd have to be willingly sticking your head in the sand to not recognize the dangerous direction of these trends. So back, was it 2014? I think it was 2014.

Yeah, yeah. That's when it was just looking at an article I wrote on this. By the way, you read all this in my article about why can't an adult marry an adult?

Why can't a parent marry an adult child? It said AskDrBrown.org. You can read it over at Stream.org or elsewhere.

But it's 2014. There was a new website called Debate Out. It quickly was gone. It was I don't know how many months it was up, but when I went back to grab some of the info from it, it was it was gone.

The website was gone within a year maybe. Anyway, I was asked to be part of a debate where I would be interviewed, turned out by a lesbian liberal correspondent, whoever she was. She interviewed me and then four others on the question, should consensual adult incest be legal? So I said no very plainly and I cited G.K. Chesterton who said, to paraphrase, you don't take a fence down until you realize why the fence is up. There's a reason that we have prohibitions against this. This must be a societal taboo that no one can even think sexually or romantically about a family member.

It's just a wall that has to be there. Out of the five participants on this debate, I was the only one who said it should be illegal. Two of them said, hey, love is love, consensual adult relations, whatever they want. Two others said, we don't like it, but this is not up to the government to tell us what we can and can't do.

And when I raised the argument about don't take a fence down until you know why it is put up, the interview said, well, that's fascinating. I never thought of that. No one else raised it. I said, no one else raised the issue of you need to have a wall around this. There needs to be a taboo. It needs to just be understood throughout society that this is not a line anyone can even possibly cross. I mean, in ninety nine point nine percent of families, no one's thinking of crossing the line.

But if anyone is thinking, you know, these lines cannot be crossed. We're in the mess we're in today, friends, because marriage has been tampered with. Oh, and by the way, some of the blame falls back on us conservative Christians for no fault divorce in our churches.

We've helped destroy the meaning and integrity of marriage. Let's stay here. 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 want to give you the opportunity to respond to a Twitter poll that I did. Here's the number to call.

This is not to come on live, but this is to give your response. 1-800-618-8480, 1-800-618-8480. You can call in and give a brief response. Oh, this you'll be able to give in 30 seconds or less, certainly under a minute. But I want you to weigh in with your opinion, where you stand and why.

1-800-618-8480. So here's a poll I did on Twitter, just curious about this. I said there's no doubt that the cultural and political divide is as divided and intense as ever.

A little redundant, divide divided. But there's no doubt that the culture and political divide is as divided and intense as ever. But does daily life seem less contentious since Trump has been out of office?

Or is this just my perspective as an op-ed writer and cultural commentator? So out of the 682 votes that we got when we posted this on Twitter, 37.4% said less contentious. 37% said it's just my perspective.

25.7% said hard to say either way. Now some of the responses said less contentious, but that's because you don't have Trump calling out what's wrong and standing against it all the time. And others would say less contentious because Trump just kind of muddied the waters all the time.

You ever be around somebody that's like, there's always a battle, it's always just a drain, something's gone, it's just a problem. That would be the negative take. And then others hate, it's just my perspective because I'm not interacting with as much of the intensity of it all the time when I'm dealing with political and cultural issues. But curious to get your take. Again, this is not to come on the air, but just to give your viewpoint.

1-800-618-8480. Okay. When I was part of a debate on a defunct website that was called debateout.com as left-wing, liberal, pro-LGBTQ, as you could imagine, I was one of five debating the question, should adult consensual incest be legal?

I remember when the young lady called to interview me, very friendly and 100% honest. There was nothing misleading. We're trying to trap me in my words. They said, here's the way the debate goes. We just ask everyone the same questions and post the answers and everyone just reads. So that's what it was. In other words, I don't get to dispute so much what someone else says. You know, maybe I have a hint of what we're interacting with or what their position was so that we could we could critique one another. But otherwise, it's just everything posted. It's exactly as advertised. That's what they did.

So it was total integrity there. But I remember when I got the call that this young lady said, as you know, this is a hot topic today. Seven years ago, as you know, this is a hot topic today. Now, we also know that logic and then statistics will back this, that when you have mixed families, that you have a higher percentage of sexual abuse.

Why? Well, self-evident. Here, you're a dad and you're raising, say, three daughters and a son. Never cursed you to look at your daughters in a sexual way. They're your daughters. You've raised them from birth. You changed their diapers.

You watch them grow. Now you're amazed that they're young women. It's like, wow, you're going to be married.

This is unbelievable. But that's always your daughter. That's just how you see her. You can't conceive of her in a different way. On the other hand, if you, let's say, marry a woman and she's got three daughters, 17, 15 and 13. All of them very attractive, very mature looking and then a boy, nine, right? And you're a typical heterosexual male. Well, you see them a little differently. Oh, they're still your daughters and the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of stepfathers are not going to look at their daughters, stepdaughters sexually.

But there's a better chance of it. You understand? Because you haven't grown up with them. You haven't seen them from infanthood up, so you're just seeing them as these attractive teenagers. That's why you have one reason why you have more abuse and then there could be more instability in the relationship. So there are all kinds of other factors. But when she said to me, 2014, as you know, this is a hot topic.

It's no surprise that these things keep coming up. There are European countries that have dropped their prohibitions of incest, dropped the laws. There is a much discussed case in Germany with a couple separated from birth. Only to find out many, many years later that they were brother and sister. They met, had this intense love one for another. So much in common and then insisted on getting married, having children, at least one or two, I think they may have had four genetic defects.

The children take them away. The husband went to prison. His attorney said, we're going to fight.

This is for love. It's a very, very sad case. They obviously really love each other.

And it's it's a tragic case and tragic for the children involved. But you can you cannot cross certain lines. They're there for a reason. And when I talk to gay activists who who are professing gay Christians and they said, hey, look, you should have the right to marry whoever we want. And then the Bible does not oppose loving, consensual relationships.

You just have to ask, what about two adult brothers? And if you're going to throw out Leviticus 18, when it when it comes to the prohibition against homosexual practice, you're going to also throw it out when it comes to the prohibition against all these incestuous relationships. And this is unpleasant to talk about. This is the world we live in, friends. These are the direct results of the slippery slope. You can mock me all all you want, but we've been saying that was going this direction for years. You can mock me when we warned that same sex marriage was coming. And now that's the norm.

If you don't agree with it, you're a bigot. That's six years back, that decision. Friends, it remains urgent. Wake up time. Wake up to reality. So one of the one of the things that I raised to this young lady that was interviewing me again, very, very pleasant, was not setting me up for anything.

Everything was as advertised on the Web site and then the Web site disappeared. And I search for things. Everything just scrubbed, gone. But I said, look, G.K. Chesterton said this. You don't take down a fence until you realize why it was put up. There are reasons we have certain prohibitions. There are reasons. Look, children don't see certain things. The parents have said that's the way it is.

Then as the kids get old, it's like, oh, there's a reason. So there is a blog on F.S. If it's self-evident who wrote it, I apologize for not giving credit.

It was just a blog on F.S. And it was called Chesterton's Fence, a lesson in second order thinking. So I want to skip down a paragraph that says this. Second order thinking is the practice of not just considering the consequences of our decisions, but also the consequences of those consequences. If you play chess, you know how that works. Everyone can manage first order thinking, which is just considering the immediate anticipated result of an action.

It's simple and quick, usually requiring little effort. By comparison, second order thinking is more complex and time consuming. The fact that it is difficult and unusual is what makes the ability to do it such a powerful advantage.

Second order thinking will get you extraordinary results, and so will learning to recognize when other people are using second order thinking. To understand exactly why this is the case, let's consider Chesterton's Fence, described by G.K. Chesterton himself as follows. So this is the fuller version of his saying. Chesterton said there exists in such a case a certain institution or law. Let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, I don't see the use of this. Let us clear it away. To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do all the answer. If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. And then that became popularized in the saying, don't take down a fence to realize why it was put up.

OK. Some years back, I was getting ready to preach at my home congregation, Fire Church in Concord, North Carolina. I was getting ready to preach there on a Sunday morning, and I was praying.

I guess it was the Saturday before, praying and reflecting on which way I should go in the message, what message I should preach. And I hear in my ears, my inner ears, the thought clearly comes up to a passage about go back to the ancient paths. And I thought, OK, where is that verse? And then I heard a voice say to me in my head, you should know where that verse is. That was my own brain speaking to me or the Holy Spirit speaking to me. But immediately I got the message.

Got it. Jeremiah. I wrote a commentary on the Book of Jeremiah. I should know where the verse is.

So I went and preached from that text. But it was basically saying not old fashioned ways, not not just our traditions, but God's ways, the things he established. You know, foundation stones in Israel were not to be moved.

They were there, the markers, boundaries, they were there for a reason. So if we go back to God's ways, I don't mean just our church traditions or our religious traditions or our family traditions. But if we go back to God's ways, God's ways are best. God's ways work. God's ways last. Many of you know that last week I recorded eight shows, eight debate shows for the new awakening TV network.

A W K and G TV com recorded new shows is going to be called. That's debatable with Dr. Brown. Eight debates were recorded in two days. And they're lively. I mean, it's let's see, you got three minute opening statement, three minute response, two minute rebuttal, two minutes. Each have five minutes.

Then you go one, one, one, once you get eight total and then 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30. So another minute. So you get like nine, 10 minutes in closing statements. So it's good. I mean, you get a good time to go back and forth and challenge one another.

And you can cover a lot of ground in the time. It's not a full formal intellectual debate. But some of the folks I debated are transgender pastor, gay pastor, progressive Christian who says she's anti-abortion, anti-abortion, but votes pro-choice because it's going to save more babies lives. There are a lot of things that were challenged. A lot of things that were challenged is purity culture was challenged. This idea of sex only being for within marriage and then the shame of sex outside of wedlock and so on and so forth. And what's better for kids being raised and should they be taught, you know, comprehensive sexual education?

Or should they be taught avoidance of sexual activity outside of marriage? All these things were debated and obviously God's people can get a lot of things wrong, but God's ways are best. If we adhere to God's ways, if we live by God's ways, if we honor God's ways, he made us to thrive. He made us. He made our bodies. He made our minds. He made us to thrive.

If we'll follow his ways, his ways brings his ways, bring blessing and life. We come back. CNN ADL attacking Fox and Tucker Carlson. Talk about. 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 eight six six three four.

True. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I had a very interesting weekend. I was scheduled to be in Fort Myers, Florida, yesterday. So this past Sunday I had finished the taping shooting for Awakening TV.

Thursday, got home late Thursday night and came into the office Friday to do a radio show and some extra recording. I was feeling really groggy and then something was wrong. I got a throw up like, what is that out of the blue? And then started to have some unusual pain and it turned out to be a kidney stone.

Yes. So Nancy drove me over to the emergency room. I chatted with my doctor.

He said, yeah, you got to get in and get this checked out. So that was like twelve thirty at night Friday night. Probably got home about five in the morning and then successfully said goodbye to that stone late on Saturday night at a normal Sunday. Everything back to normal. And of course, normal today.

But we had to reschedule, move the Fort Myers trip back by one week. So anyway, just that was that. Thought I'd tell you, because I do reference it in a recent article I wrote after that. It's a crazy thing. But the article is about Nancy and me and how we process life together. Her being an absolute realist and me being an extreme optimist and how we've learned in our relationship with God and one another to process life together.

But you know how close we are? A little old. That's seven years ago.

She got a kidney stone. First time ever. Yikes. Within a couple of months, I had my first ever. Yikes again. Well, fast forward to a few months back. She had her second kidney stone.

Few months after I had mine. So that's that's how close we are. Yeah. I know with my diet, because I basically a perfectly healthy diet, an extraordinarily healthy diet, by God's grace.

It's just drinking more water. So, yeah, I'm on that. I'm on that.

Made that adjustment. OK. All right. Brian Stelter has been very upset with Tucker Carlson. Fox News, of course, ratings wise, crushes CNN and Tucker Carlson crushes the opposition or the other broadcasts that are on the same time that he's on. But Brian Stelter and the head of the ADL Anti-Defamation League. Very upset. Let's listen to what they had to say. Some people are speaking out, including my first guest here today with me for an exclusive interview is Jonathan Greenblatt. He's the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me, Brian. You penned a letter to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott on Friday saying Carlson has been race baiting for years and it's time for him to go. Have you heard back from Fox yet? What has Fox said back to you since Friday? Well, look, it's Sunday morning. We were closed yesterday for Shabbat and we sent this out Friday afternoon. So we haven't heard anything yet.

But I'll tell you why. If we step back, this is so problematic. And as you pointed out, Tucker Carlson has a history of sanitizing stereotypes and of spreading this kind of poison.

But what he did on Thursday night really was indeed, as you put it, a new low. The great replacement theory, as it's known, is this toxic idea that there are a cabal of Jews plotting to overrun the country with immigrants, Muslims, black people, etc., and commit what they call white genocide. It is literally, Brian, a staple of white supremacist and extremist ideology.

All right. So this is quite an accusation as Tucker Carlson and Fox by Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL Anti-Defamation League. Let's go a little further and find out exactly what their concerns are, exactly what Tucker Carlson allegedly did and said wrong.

Let's see. And so when Tucker Carlson literally introduces it to his four and a half million viewers, he's serving as a gateway to one of the most damaging and dangerous conspiracy theories out there. And when I say that again, let me be clear. This has real consequences from 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where this phrase was invoked. Remember, Jews will not replace us. And then Heather Heyer was mowed down and murdered to the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, where 11 worshipers were killed to the shooting the following year in Christchurch, where 51 people were killed.

Muslim worshipers to the murders in El Paso, where 20 some odd Latino people were killed again and again and again. It is the replacement theory that's been invoked by these extremist murderers. So when Tucker Carlson invokes it on his show, when he dismisses it. Right. It is so dangerous. And I think as you pointed out, the question is really from Fox management to the Fox board, to Fox shareholders.

How can they countenance their network being used to mainstream the most violent and toxic ideas? I find that really dishonest. I find that very, very troubling. Now, tomorrow's broadcast, I'm clearing time and space so that we can talk together on the line of fire, get your live calls about the trial in Minnesota of former officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd. We haven't talked about it yet.

I've been wanting the dust to settle more, the trial to progress more. We're going to talk about it. And then another shooting, a fatal shooting of a young black man in roughly the same area yesterday. So all kinds of upheaval and strife and concern.

And then another incident with a white officer who's now been fired for tasing or pepper spraying a black army officer. I get those details exactly right. We're going to talk about these. You know, you know, on this broadcast, we never shy away from honest discussions about race issues in America. And you know that I'm very happy to take an unpopular opinion if I believe that opinion is right. And I don't mind alienating someone if it's for the truth. Oh, I care about people, but I'll stand for the truth.

I'm not here to be popular and liked. I'm here to speak the truth and love wisdom balance. And that is something we do together because we listen to one another and we learn from one another. But what I just heard Jonathan Greenblatt do to me is is vile to bring all of those acts together, all those murders. And then to tie that in with what Tucker Carlson said to me, that's immoral.

That's unethical and is utterly misleading. I'm not going to play the whole clip now from Tucker Carlson. And it's not that I just assume he's right. OK, I don't watch the show. I'll read transcripts of things sometimes or catch a video clip, but it's like I watch Fox News every night.

I don't. And I've said for many years, there's bias on the left and there's bias on the right. And I appreciate so much of what Tucker Carlson said and other things that would differ, would differ with the spirit or tone of it, whatever.

But many things I appreciate the courage he has and I appreciate him willing to take things on and expose a lot of the junk that's going on in the culture. So I went to watch the video in question to see what he actually said. He's not supporting white supremacy.

He's not endorsing that. He's he's simply talking about a reality and a concern that if the nation is flooded with immigrants, many of them not going through the legal process, and if they now get benefits that don't come to others, if they get vaccinated before others do, if they get job opportunities or whatever, or they are all going to vote in a certain direction. You know, someone said, what would the Democrats do if it was known that the flood of immigrants coming across our border, many of them illegally?

Of course, we welcome as many legal immigrants as we can as part of who America is. But if many came across illegally and it was known that the more immigrants came in, that 90 percent of them or 80 percent would vote Republican, what would the Democrats be saying about? I mean, so obviously it's just a matter of whichever way this thing goes politically, you're going to take the other side. He's just talking about a real societal reality, something that's taking place that raises concerns. So then, Mark Stein, there was nothing about white supremacy. There was nothing about suppressing others. There's nothing about keep the Asians down, keep the blacks down, keep the Hispanics down, keep the Jews.

No, nothing whatsoever. Let alone the idea that Jews were somehow behind this, that Jews were the ones fueling these fires, that a cabal of Jews were behind this. This is the replacement of whites is actually something being sponsored by Jews and American Jews.

The vast majority are white themselves, are they not? Seems self-defeating. But it's if you watch the clip from CNN, I thought, what did Tucker Carlson say?

What did he do? Yikes. Now, just joining all of those acts of violence and terror together was a stretch to start. All right. You know, the slaughter of Muslims in New Zealand. Yeah, I understand.

Well, we don't want these foreigners here, et cetera. But that's not that's not what Tucker Carlson was saying. And I watched it, not with the presupposition of I'm going to defend Tucker Carlson against an attack by CNN. I thought, well, what did he say?

Did he cross the line? You watch it. You tell me. You tell me who you would find more reliable. The the CEO of the ADL and CNN are Tucker Carlson and Fox just based on the clips in question.

But here's the problem. Many people only watch CNN. Others only watch Fox, only watch MSNBC, only watch this outlet or that outlet. So what they hear is the only reality they know. And they're stewing, they're steaming over Fox and their support of white supremacy and their support of this hyper bigot, Tucker Carlson, who downplays mass murder.

I mean, that's the picture you get some friends. Check your sources. Check your sources.

Look for reports on different Web sites when you hear something that someone did something crazy on the left or on the right. Check different news sources, the reporting, and then get to the actual facts. You know, Jesus said in a totally different context that the truth will set you free. He meant the truth of the gospel, the truth about him. Generally speaking, though, being committed to following the truth, it may be difficult, but it's liberating. Another program powered by the Truth Network.