How new House Speaker Mike Johnson spent years fighting against gay rights

In the wake of an unheard of three-week void with no House speaker, Republicans on Wednesday elected Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson. While he’s identified inside of some Washington circles for his deeply conservative stances, Johnson, who used to be maximum lately the House GOP convention’s vice chair, stays slightly difficult to understand past the Capitol.

But previous to becoming a member of Congress in 2017, he spent years construction his profession and profile by means of denouncing gay other folks and fighting against gay rights, which he staunchly opposes, mentioning his Christian religion and perspectives on liberty.

An ABC News exam of public data, news studies and paperwork displays the level to which Johnson devoted previous stages of his profession to restricting gay rights, together with same-sex marriage and well being care get admission to, and thru anti-gay activism on school campuses.

In feedback from over fifteen years in the past, lengthy ahead of he become a lawmaker and whilst performing as an lawyer and spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian advocacy staff, Johnson described homosexuals as “sinful” and “destructive” and argued strengthen for homosexuality may result in strengthen for pedophilia. He additionally authored op-eds that argued for criminalizing gay intercourse.

“There is clearly no ‘right to sodomy’ in the Constitution,” Johnson wrote in a 2003 column in a Louisiana newspaper. “And the right of ‘privacy of the home’ has never placed all activity with the home outside the bounds of the criminal law.”

In 2005, all the way through national Day of Silence protests aimed toward addressing anti-gay bias in faculties, Johnson and the ADF spearheaded a counterprotest dubbed the “Day of Truth.” Defending the counterprotest, Johnson on the time stated anti-gay protesters have been “sharing the truth out of love and compassion,” including that the “truth” used to be in response to a strict interpretation of the Bible that “if someone’s trapped in a homosexual lifestyle, it’s dangerous.”

Before his congressional profession, Johnson wore a couple of hats: as a conservative communicate radio host, a columnist, a faculty professor and a constitutional legislation seminar trainer, in addition to a temporary stint as a state lawmaker.

Elected to the House in 2016, Johnson used to be a part of the Republican surge that accompanied former President Donald Trump’s upward thrust to energy.

While in Congress, Johnson served on Trump’s prison protection group all the way through his two Senate trials on impeachment fees and he voted against bipartisan law to codify same-sex marriage.

He used to be additionally instrumental in drafting law just like the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which used to be offered in overdue 2022 however by no means delivered to the ground and would have averted the usage of federal cash to “develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually oriented program, event, or literature” for youngsters underneath 10, with proponents of the proposal announcing it will stay irrelevant subject matter from kids.

Critics dubbed the invoice a federal “don’t say gay” measure, then again, as a result of they argued its provisions can be extensively used to limit different varieties of LGBTQ content material since “sexually oriented” used to be outlined as together with the rest to do with gender identification, sexual orientation “or related subjects.”

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson, in a observation to ABC News, known as Johnson “the most anti-equality Speaker in U.S. history” whilst additionally noting his previous strengthen for efforts to overturn the 2020 election effects.

Johnson’s workplace didn’t right away reply to a request for remark from ABC News.

According to data, Johnson’s time running for the ADF went way back to 2002. The Southern Poverty legislation Center says Alliance Defending Freedom has “supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad” whilst claiming {that a} “homosexual agenda” will spoil Christianity and society,” among other hard-liner stances on restricting LGBTQ people’s behavior. The ADF also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the 2005 counterprotest involving Johnson, ADF distributed T-shirts emblazoned with “The Truth Cannot be Silenced” and cards to students, expressing their refusal to support what they deemed “damaging private and social habits,” in reference to homosexuality, according to reports on the event.

Johnson said he hoped the event would be “non violent and respectful” while not shying away from castigating homosexuality, stating, “You can name it sinful or harmful — in the long run it is each.”

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network at the time criticized Johnson and ADF’s counterprotest for targeting gay students.

In response, Johnson told media outlets, “No one is for bullying and harassment. But that is cloaking their actual message — that homosexuality is excellent for society.”

According to another news report, Johnson said being gay was “morally unsuitable and bodily unhealthy.”

Challenging marriage rights and health care benefits

While working as a senior counsel for the ADF, Johnson fought for an amendment in Louisiana to ban gay marriage, which was approved by voters in 2004 — part of a wave of such restrictions that passed that year nationwide — and he filed suit against a New Orleans law that provided benefits to same-sex partners of city employees. A state appellate court ultimately upheld the benefits.

“These are individuals who imagine within the sanctity of marriage,” Johnson said in 2003, according to reports. He filed the complaint on behalf of six New Orleans residents over its law giving health care benefits to city workers’ gay partners.

“The state has spoken obviously that municipalities do not need the best to go into into this area — the redefining of the circle of relatives,” he said.

While arguing against granting the benefits to same-sex couples, Johnson made anti-gay comments suggesting support for homosexuality could lead to support for pedophilia. “When you tear down the taboos, the doorways open up for the entirety. That’s the chance,” Johnson said. “We don’t seem to be looking to tie homosexuality to pedophilia, however while you tear down one barrier, others fall. … Let’s forestall right here and draw the road right here, as a result of then it ends up in sexual anarchy.”

In 2005, the Family Research Council, an influential right-wing lobbying group, honored Johnson for his work defending Louisiana’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Before the state Supreme Court, according to one news report at the time, Johnson told the justices that “the modification has one goal: to offer protection to marriage from assault.”

Later, while serving in the Louisiana state house, Johnson proposed a so-called religious freedom bill that supporters said would protect people from having to betray their spiritual convictions but which critics and LGBTQ advocates said would make it easier to discriminate against them. He pushed back against those attacks.

“I’m now not a ‘despicable bigot of the very best order,'” Johnson told the Times-Picayune newspaper in 2015, quoting how one Democratic flesh presser condemned him. “I do know that I introduced this invoice for the best explanation why.”

“Defense of liberty isn’t simple,” he said then. “It all the time comes at a price.” (His bill was referred to committee and never passed.)

Johnson, on Wednesday, was unanimously elected as House speaker by his fellow Republicans.

But some in his party don’t hold his same views on gay people. In December 2022, nearly 40 Republican House members — including some of those who later picked him as speaker, ending this month’s chaos — voted with Democrats to enact legislation to mandate federal recognition for same-sex marriages.

Johnson voted against the bill and called it “superfluous” because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing same-sex marriage rights nationwide.

Republican Rep. George Santos, the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress, was one of Johnson’s earliest promoters for the speakership.

After Johnson was elected, Santos tweeted, “This is the person, proper right here.”