By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
Johnson had made a similar statement in an interview with a right-wing activist shortly before he became House speaker.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is again lamenting the number of young people who aren’t straight, this time in a fundraising email for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
In the email, dated Sunday and obtained by Punchbowl News, Johnson asks, “Does America need more God?” and writes, “1 in 4 high school students identifies as something other than straight — what are they being taught in school?”
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
Johnson also bemoans the decline in church attendance and says, “You don’t even want to see the filth that passes for popular culture these days.” He continues, “Let’s face it — we live in a depraved culture. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I fear God may allow our nation to enter into a time of judgment for our collective sins. The only question is, is He going to give us one more chance to restore our foundations and return to Him?”
The email doesn’t ask directly for money, but it asks for a response to “this urgent question.” It’s signed by Johnson and his wife, Kelly.
The National Republican Congressional Committee finances the party’s candidates for the U.S. House and supports them through voter registration drives and other means.
The speaker, who has an intensely anti-LGBTQ+ record, had made a similar statement about queer youth in a “prayer call” with Jim Garlow, cofounder of the World Prayer Network and founder and CEO of Well Versed, a Christian right organization, October 3, just hours before Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker and three weeks before Johnson was elected to the post.
“The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable at this point,” Johnson said on the call, which was posted on the Well Versed website the following day. Among the signs of this are that church attendance has dropped below 50 percent and that “one in four high school students identified as something other than straight,” he said, putting air quotes around “straight.” “We’re losing the country,” he added.
Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ+ views became subject to much scrutiny after he was elected speaker — he was little known outside of Louisiana and far-right circles previously. He’s written opinion columns against marriage equality, called LGBTQ+ people “deviant,” proposed a bill in Congress modeled on Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, and much more. He was once a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents many anti-LGBTQ+ clients. Kelly Johnson runs a Christian counseling practice whose website has likened homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia — but now the website has disappeared.
It has recently come out that Johnson wrote the foreword to The Revivalist Manifesto, a 2022 book by blogger Scott McKay that disparages LGBTQ+ people and poor people, in addition to promoting the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that falsely claims top Democrats were involved in a pedophile ring run out of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. A spokesman for Johnson said the speaker was not familiar with certain sections of the book and does not agree with all the opinions expressed in it. In more public venues, Johnson has sought to downplay his extremist views. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News early in November, he claimed he didn’t remember some of his previous remarks on homosexuality. “I am a rule of law guy. … I respect the rule of law, but I also genuinely love all people regardless of their lifestyle choices,” he added.
