by Jennifer Davis –
Melissa Walker Braun describes herself as a “Proud Pride Mom” and an LGBTQ “Mama Bear.” For several years now, Melissa has been proudly and publicly promoting all things LGBTQ+ on Facebook. She “unhesitatingly and wholeheartedly supports” homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer pride. She is also a supporter of gay “marriage.”
Melissa is the wife of Deacon Gary Braun under the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese and serves at St. Athanasius Antiochian Church, in Santa Barbara, California.
Melissa is so passionate about her LGBTQ activism that she’s repeatedly decorated several Facebook profile pictures with the LGBTQ colors to insure the entire Church and the whole world knows where she stands.
On June 15, 2020 on her Facebook page, via a rainbow-colored meme, Melissa reminded everyone that she supports gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Pride not just in June, but all year round:
with june being pride month, i wanted to take this occasion to clearly say this:
i unhesitatingly & wholeheartedly support my lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer friends, their rights, their marriages, their pursuits of happiness and their breath.
this is also true july thru may
On June 4, 2021, Melissa posted another Facebook meme celebrating Pride Month and denouncing Biblical teaching that homosexual behavior sinful.
Being gay is not a sin. Neither is being lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. The Bible never claims it is. Christians should stop saying it is because it’s reckless and irresponsible―and it’s actually killing lost of people.
On June 30, 2021, Melissa followed up with another Facebook meme celebrating Gay Pride ALL year:
On June 26, 2020, following the Supreme Court decision that forced states to accept gay “marriage” Melissa posted that she was “overjoyed” by the court’s decision. She wrote:
For my friends who may still be confused, I haven’t “changed” my views. I’ve just come out of the “closet of lies” I’ve lived in for decades.
Five years ago today the Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality is the law of the land. My youngest child was not yet 10 years old and not yet “out”. But I knew. And I knew that this decision would someday give him a true opportunity to have his own family. So even though all the “churchiest” church people around me were moaning and groaning and acting like life as THEY knew it was doomed, I was quietly overjoyed.
All these posts and comments contradict the actual teachings of the Orthodox Church. They scandalize the Church. They shove innocent and confused souls into embracing madness. They legitimize the homosexual agenda and promote the transgender insanity.
As the wife of a Deacon of the Orthodox Church, Melissa has a prominent and visible status within the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese. When she frequently promotes the radical LGBTQ talking points she undermines the true Orthodox Church teaching and theology and besmirches the honorable positions she and her husband hold. She makes a mockery of the Orthodox Church and the Antiochian Orthodox hierarchy.
Melissa Walker Braun is proudly telling children and teenagers that homosexuality, bisexuality, and other sexual deviances are not sinful. She tells children and teens that transgenderism is legitimate and acceptable. With her wholehearted promotion of the LGBTQ propaganda, Melisa is encouraging and supporting children and teens to seek the chemical castration and surgical mutilation of their healthy bodies; via the horrific process deceptively labeled as “gender-affirming” care.
This is not Orthodox. This is not Christian This is not love. This is not right. This is depraved. This is delusional. This is evil.
There is nothing Orthodox or Christian in this troubled woman’s posts and comments. She has absorbed the false and corrupt LGBT ideology and is cheering others to embrace this madness, all in the name of “love.”
Here’s the true teaching of Scriptures and the Holy Orthodox Church and the Saints:
They really need prayer. Some mental illnesses can be treated.
I do have to wonder where is the Bishop?
Can’t the Orthodox bodies excommunicate her?
I am no longer attending an Antiochian church, and have never attended St. Athanasius Antiochian Church in Santa Barbara, CA. Has anybody belonging to the church spoken with Shamassy Braun about these issues? If that didn’t work out, has anybody brought this to the attention of her priest? If that didn’t work out, has anybody brought this to the attention of her bishop?
The Antiochian church has a new Metropolitan. I read a little bit about him and he doesn’t strike me as being the type who would just sweep this thing under the rug. However, it’s a shame if this matter can’t be dealt with appropriately before it reaches him (as perhaps it ultimately must, if nothing else suffices).
Seems like this has been going on for years, and just keeps going on. What is going on here??? How can the church have any credibility if it allows any member, let alone the wife of a deacon, to publicly dissent from the teachings of the Orthodox Church?
Something is terribly wrong with Melissa Walker Braun. She needs real spiritual counseling, help, and support. Unfortunately, neither her deacon husband, nor her priest/Father confessor, nor her bishop seem to have the courage to approach her or reach out to her and provide genuine help. Tragic!
It’s not enough that this woman screwed up her own son’s life (she “intuitively” knew her son was gay when he was just 3 years old), but now she’s working to screw up other children’s lives. As the author indicates this is evil. As Fr. Seraphim Holland recently preached in his sermon, this Pride/LGBTQ+ movement is demonic, it really devours children and families!
This is the sermon by Fr. Seraphim Holland I was referring to.
Pride Month is Demonic, It Devours Children and Families
https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2023/06/pride-month-is-demonic-it-devours-children-and-families/
This is true Orthodoxy!
Show off your Sin month is over. please delete this giant mistake.
Should not Gary Braun be removed as a deacon as well.This type of behavior would not fly at the Antiochian church my family attends in Houston, TX John Chrysostom gave correctly very harsh comments about homesexuality. They should be read by all Orthodox Christians. The homesexual, transgender, LGBQ movements and the like are all evil ideas spawned by Satan
A shame, her father was an Orthodox priest.
Her husband’s dad is currently a priest at the parish she attends. What a scandal.
Gary’s dad (melissa’s father-in-law) is also a priest at that parish. His name is Father Jon Braun, former priest of St Anthony in San Diego. He hasn’t done one thing about her mouth, not one! (Nor have the other clergy there). They just let wolves rant on!
Another day, another limp-wristed coward of a man incapable of controlling his own wife. Gary Braun will probably never see this comment, but in case he does: MAN UP! The West is the way it is today because men like you were foolish enough to let women nag their way into power for the sake of a false “equality”, now buzzworded as “equity”, always pushing for the normalization of sin as though it were righteousness! The West will never recover until men repent and take control back from their ever-decieved women folk. As Eve decieved by the serpent in the garden, so too are women by the nonsense of the age.
At the risk of being blasted by everyone on this site, this is one of the main reasons I don’t go to church anymore. I find it hard to believe in a God after reading all the judgements passed by everyone on this site. It honestly makes me sad. Do we forget about the Publican and the Pharisee? Why worry so much about the practices of others? Is it so easy to sit behind a screen and disparage another family who rescued several children from horrible situations? Continue to clutch your pearls, with nothing better to do. Continue to partake of the Eucharist in full judgement of others. As an agnostics view, why not pray for them, your loved ones, and yourselves? There is so much worse in this world then one of their sons attractions. For full disclosure, Melissa and Gary are my aunt and uncle. Call me biased. They are lovely, as are their children. Feel free to come at me, a non believer who is also a sinner.
“…These I say are even worse than murderers: since to die even is better than to live under such insolence. For the murderer dissevers the soul from the body, but this man ruins the soul with the body. And name what sin you will, none will you mention equal to this lawlessness. And if they that suffer such things perceived them, they would accept ten thousand deaths so they might not suffer this evil. For there is not, there surely is not, a more grievous evil than this insolent dealing.
For if when discoursing about fornication Paul said, that Every sin which a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18); what shall we say of this madness, which is so much worse than fornication as cannot even be expressed? For I should not only say that you have become a woman, but that you have lost your manhood, and hast neither changed into that nature nor kept that which you had, but you have been a traitor to both of them at once, and deserving both of men and women to be driven out and executed, as having wronged either sex…” – Saint John Chrysostom
The daughter is as worldly and dismissive of Church teachings as her mother.