New GOP Speaker Advocated For Criminalizing Gay Sex and Claimed Same-Sex Marriage Would Lead Someone to ‘Marry His Pet’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

CNN’s K-File reported Wednesday on the many anti-LGBTQ editorials and statements made in the past by newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

“Johnson’s past includes harsh anti-gay statements, including support for criminalizing gay sex. In the mid-2000s, he called homosexuality ‘inherently unnatural’ and a ‘dangerous lifestyle,’ and said it could destroy America,” wrote Andrew Kaczynski in his reporting.

Kaczynski and CNN’s Allison Gordon dug through old editorials Johnson wrote for his local Shreveport, Louisiana, newspaper and “found Johnson called homosexuality ‘inherently unnatural’ and [a] ‘dangerous lifestyle’ that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy ‘the entire democratic system.’”

“Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do. This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices,” he wrote in an op-ed in 2005.

Johnson wrote the op-eds while working as an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a Christian group dedicated to rolling back abortion and LGBTQ rights.

While working for the group, Johnson wrote against the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which made it illegal for states to criminalize homosexual sex between consenting adults.

“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote, adding:

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.

The state and its citizens have a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of the marital union by making opposite-sex marriage the exclusive form of family relationship endorsed by the government.

In another 2004 column, highlighted by CNN, he also warned same-sex marriage will end democracy:

If you were shocked by the moral lapses at the Super Bowl you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.

Read the full CNN report here.