After a tumultuous two weeks of bickering and voting showdowns, the U.S. House of Representatives has elected 51-year-old Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson as the next Speaker of the House. This comes after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his position after working with Democrats to pull together a bill funding the government to push off a government shutdown.
Prior to his election as Speaker, Johnson was known for his right-wing “Christian-Conservative,” beliefs — ranging from calling for the criminalization of gay sex to denying the results of the 2020 election. Now, he is the third in line for the presidency.
Prior to being elected in 2017, Johnson wrote consistent editorials in his local newspaper, The Times (of Shreveport), where he called homosexuality a “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle,” allegedly leading to legalized pedophilia.
“Your race, creed and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do,” he wrote. “This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”
In a July 2003 editorial, Johnson wrote there are “many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse.”
“By closing these bedroom doors, they have opened a Pandora’s box,” he added. “There is clearly no ‘right to sodomy’ in the Constitution … And the right of ‘privacy of the home’ has never placed all activity with the home outside the bounds of the criminal law.”
Another editorial from 2004 from Johnson includes more anti-LGBTQ+ views, as he voiced his support for an amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Louisiana.
“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote. “Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”
Now, Johnson has catapulted into the third most powerful position in the United States where most Americans — 80 percent, according to PRRI— are in support of LGBTQ+ rights. While Americans in general have become more accepting of LGBTQ+ people, Johnson continues to voice his disdain for queer Americans as he voted to not codify same-sex marriage or interracial marriage in 2022 when the House passed the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act, which also requires states to respect marriages performed in other states.
Johnson also filed a bill in 2022 people have likened to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bars federal funds from being used to “develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually oriented program, event, or literature” for kids under 10. According to reporting from ABC News, critics have opposed this bill as they believe it will be used to “restrict other kinds of LGBTQ content since ‘sexually oriented’ was defined as including anything to do with gender identity, sexual orientation ‘or related subjects.’”
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson called Johnson the “most anti-equality Speaker in U.S. history,” citing his editorials and association with organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom as a danger to the American people.
“Johnson is someone who doesn’t hesitate to express his disdain for the LGTBQ+ community from the rooftops and then introduces legislation that seeks to erase us from society,” Robinson states. “Just like Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson is an election-denying, anti-LGBTQ+ extremist, and the lawmakers who appeared to stand on principle in opposing Jordan’s bid have revealed themselves to be just as out-of-touch as their new leader.”