Speaker Mike Johnson Advocated For Discredited Gay Conversion Therapy in 2008, Per New CNN Report
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Years before his unexpected rise to the third-highest political position in the United States, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was an attorney working on behalf of a controversial anti-LGBTQ group that promoted “conversion therapy.”
Johnson had a record of his anti-LGBTQ positions well before he became Speaker of the House, but CNN has more details about exactly what he was doing back in the 2000s. CNN KFile’s Andrew Kaczynski dove into Johnson’s involvement with Exodus International, a group that advocated the use of “conversion therapy” that claimed to be able to change people’s sexual orientation. It has not only been discredited as ineffective, but it’s also been condemned by the medical community as harmful.
Mike Johnson was not just in favor of the discredited treatment, he defended it as an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, a faith-based, conservative legal advocacy group that claims to defend “religious liberty” and freedom of speech. Back in the 2000s, Exodus International worked with the ADF, and Johnson was front and center in the fight against LGBTQ rights from 2006 to 2010.
Johnson’s involvement, however, seemed to go beyond just legal representation. According to sources quoted in the report, Johnson’s mission was to actually stop homosexual “behavior”:
“This directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. “This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate.”
But if you don’t want to believe that, there are Johnson’s own words. The KFile report is primarily based on Johnson’s media appearances during the years he was working with ADF. One example is his belief, which he has reiterated since becoming speaker, that homosexuality is a choice:
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
He also confirms the recent meme that men think about the Roman Empire a lot, and in Johnson’s case, he blames its fall on “rampant homosexual behavior” (among other things):
“Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
In his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity after he was elected as speaker, Johnson claimed to not remember some of these things, that he’s just a lawyer who was defending a client, and that his personal worldview differs from his political one.
