No place for Christians?

When Floyd Brown was hired as vice president of development for the Kennedy Center, he was thrilled. After the backlash to President Trump’s installation as the Center’s chairman (including performance boycotts), Brown looked forward to strategizing and fundraising with the newly overhauled board. But just weeks later, he found himself facing an unexpected dilemma: Deny your Christian convictions about marriage or lose your job.

Brown claims he received this ultimatum hours after CNN approached him for comment about a pending story on his past remarks about homosexuality. Despite his staunch Christian faith, Brown was prepared to work collegially with the Kennedy Center’s new president, Richard Grenell, who in 2020 became the first openly gay cabinet-level official in American politics. After all, that’s what MAGA was all about: people with diverse ideological views coming together to make America great again. Wasn’t it?

If you’re on the record being vocally impolitic about gay marriage, apparently not. Through Brown’s immediate overseer, he claims that Grenell personally demanded a retraction of the comments CNN had unearthed and then ignored emails seeking an explanation. But that’s not all. Grenell has repeatedly denied that he even knew Brown, something Brown says can be easily disproven.

The old remarks included a clip from a Christian conference Q&A where Brown explained why social conservatives have struggled to change the culture, even after winning elections. Brown tells the questioner about Beltway Republicans’ long-running “dirty little secret”—that many of their staffers are gay. Back when he was a young staffer, Brown saw politicians exploiting gay men’s freedom to work 24/7 while young family men like himself had to divide their time. And long before Trump hired Grenell, George W. Bush hired Ken Mehlman, who initially kept his sexuality private but came out in 2010 to advocate for same-sex marriage. (Gay screenwriter Dustin Lance Black called this “an incredible coup.”). So Brown isn’t surprised to see the Republican Party more or less going as the culture goes. “I just described a situation,” he says in an interview with Lance Wallnau, “and I described it accurately.”

Other past comments included a podcast appearance where Brown bluntly described homosexuality as “a punishment that comes upon a nation that has rejected God” and said active homosexuals are “debasing themselves and their humanity.” However, as Brown wrote in his direct reply to CNN, he has never sought to “attack or demean” anyone and sees it as his Christian mission to “love others unconditionally.” He shares with Wallnau that he had even begun a habit of specifically praying for Grenell and other Kennedy staff members.

Brown was also deeply loyal to Donald Trump, convinced that his election had created a “breach” in what seemed like an impenetrable wall and that Christians had a duty to rush in and serve however they could. As recently as May 15, he was retweeting posts like this from Grenell, going after Hollywood celebrities who want to claim Trump has defunded the Center. Grenell has been hyping the recent successful showing of the animated film King of Kings as part of a new initiative to showcase family-friendly content. He would have had a willing collaborator in Brown.

Brown and Wallnau still appear baffled by Brown’s treatment, but they should understand that it’s a feature from the administration’s point of view, not a bug. Trump will not return social conservatives’ loyalty if they threaten his goals with bad optics in the eyes of the amoral majority. This was evident when he stripped the Republican platform of distinctly social conservative language, including language about the traditional definition of marriage. Richard Grenell is simply demonstrating the harsh political consequences of that shift. It is not just abstract. It will concretely affect sincere believers like Floyd Brown who refuse to self-censor in the face of changing political winds.

Before homosexuality was widely normalized, someone like Grenell would have led a double life. Jamie Kirchik’s book Secret City corroborates Brown’s report about the Beltway’s “gay underground,” except from an affirming liberal historian’s perspective. The story of one Reagan aide, Terry Dolan, ended in tragedy when he died in the AIDS epidemic. However, Dolan was haunted by and eventually returned to his family’s Catholic faith. Meanwhile, when facing the public, he had to keep his sexuality out of sight and out of mind.

What Floyd Brown’s story demonstrates is that the game of “who stays in the closet” will always be zero-sum. Either homosexual acts are a public embarrassment, or a Christianity that lovingly but clearly condemns them is. There is no workable middle ground. 

Right now, faithful evangelicals like Brown are on the “losing” side of that game. If they’re looking to President Trump for backup, they should bear in mind that this president doesn’t like “losers.” Thankfully, history’s “winners” and “losers” will be judged by an authority much higher than President Trump.