New GOP Speaker defends extreme anti-LGBTQ views: ‘Go pick up a Bible’
Newly elected Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) defended his extremist anti-LGBTQ views on Thursday, telling Fox News, ‘I am a Bible believing Christian,” adding, “go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview.” The Washington Post, in an article published on Thursday that chronicles the congressman’s “campaign against gay rights” throughout his career, reported that one of his aides directed the paper to a Facebook post written by Johnson last year in which he “argued that ‘biblical beliefs’ were inseparable from ‘public affairs.'” After the little-known evangelical Southern Baptist Republican politician was elevated on Wednesday to become his party’s highest-ranking elected official, second in line to the presidency, details about his far-right, socially conservative views began to emerge.
CNN uncovered editorials written by Johnson from 2003 to 2005 in which he argued for the criminalization of gay sex, called homosexuality an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle,” and said marriage equality poses a threat to “our entire democratic system” — warning that “polyg-amists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection.” At the time, and until 2010, Johnson was an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ hate legal group according to The Southern Poverty Law Center, and “arguably the most extreme anti-LGBTQ legal organization in the United States” according to Lambda Legal.
When asked about the op-eds by Fox News personality Sean Hannity, the Speaker said, “I don’t even remember some of them” and defended his work fighting against same-sex marriage on behalf of the right-wing group during the early 2000s.
The Post reports that during this time Johnson was “at the leading edge of litigating high-profile cases contesting protections for abortion, contraception coverage and gay and transgender rights.” Many Louisianans were first introduced to Johnson in the 1990s,
