Husker’s coach faces firing calls after speaking against gay rights ordinance

 Nebraska football assistant coach Ron Brown is facing calls for his firing after testifying against extending an Omaha anti-discrimination ordinance to cover gay and transgender people. According to the Associated Press and ESPN, Brown’s testimony occurred at an Omaha City Council  hearing and lasted three minutes. Brown told the commissioners that the Bible does not condone homosexuality and challenged them:

“The question I have for you all is, like Pontius Pilate, what are you going to do with Jesus? Ultimately, if you don’t have a relationship with him, and you don’t really have a Bible-believing mentality, really, anything goes. … At the end of the day it matters what God
thinks most.”

The call for Brown’s dismissal came quickly from a local educational board member, who argued that the university has a policy against discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, among other things.

But this is nothing new for Brown, who has spoken out and been called out before. Counting the cost is something Jesus told his disciples to do (Luke 14.27-30), and it appears Brown has done just that. “To be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn’t win enough games,” Brown told the AP. “I haven’t lost any sleep over it. I realize at some point, we live in a politically correct enough culture where that very well could happen.” Brown says losing his job is nothing compared to the price of life which many Christians have paid for their faith down through history.

Counting the cost seems to be something Brown has been around all his life. Born to an unwed mother in New York, he was placed in an orphanage. He was adopted by parents who had to struggle to make ends meet. They raised him in the Roman Catholic Church, and he was able obtain assistance to attend Brown University based on his academics. There, he played football and starred as a defensive back. During his college years, Brown felt a spiritual emptiness and became an evangelical through the influence of one of his teammates. Brown has been speaking out and evangelizing for Christ ever since. He heads FreedMen Nebraska, a Christian organization
dedicated to seeing –

– Every believing Nebraska man experience Christ through reading the Word, listening to the Holy Spirit and making the God connection in every realm. That he and the young men in his life would enter a training regime that allows no compartmentalization apart from Christ.

– Every believing Nebraska man understand and embrace the reality that he is the most powerful creature in our state. He has been given the authority and leadership role by God to tear down that which is wrong and build up that which is right, sovereignly impacting the culture in our state.

– The unified Body of Christ-following men of our state to begin linking arms to strategically advance Nebraska Kingdom ground together, so that every individual in our state has an authentic opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel in this generation.

Brown has been on a media roller coaster ride of late, having earned national acclaim six months ago for leading in a prayer for healing before the Cornhuskers’ football game at scandal-besieged Penn State.

“Hero to goat,” is how Brown summed it up. Advocacy groups have called for Brown’s dismissal at least since 1999, when he spoke against homosexuality on a Christian radio show. The ACLU has threatened to sue Nebraska public schools that have had pupils attend Brown’s Bible-based motivational talks. Head football coach Bo Pelini has faced a lot of questions as to why he doesn’t fire Brown. “Why don’t you ask me why I hired him?” Pelini has responded. “I hired him because he’s a good football coach. He’s trustworthy. He has a lot of integrity. I hired him because I believe in him as a football coach and a guy who has positive impact on kids.”

Brown says he isn’t picking on homosexuals, but simply responding to the gay agenda in America:

“I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin. That has created a flame within itself. But I’ve decided I’m not going to be afraid of people calling me a bigot or a homophobic or narrow-minded out of a simple, gentle, compassionate expression of the truth of God’s word. I’m not going to be bought off by that. … The same thing that was a sin 2,000 years ago is a sin today. The thing that was right 2,000 years ago is right today.”

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* Information from The Associated Press and ESPN was used in this post.