After roughly three weeks of chaos on the floor of the House of Representatives, House Republicans have finally settled on a new speaker, after tumultuous fighting over who to elect as a party.
Tragically, the newly-elected speaker Rep. Mike Johnson R-Lou. has a long history of harshly discriminatory comments against the LGBTQ+ community, as well as his choice to support overturning the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump, has left many in shock, including myself, that someone with such flagrantly extremist views is now third in line to the presidency. His election has cast yet another dark shadow on a sharp return to religious extremism in recent years.
Mike Johnson’s first main hurdle once being thrust to the forefront of American politics is that he’s made quite damning and blatantly homophobic comments throughout his career, calling homosexuality “unnatural” and “dangerous.”
He also defended the disproven idea that homosexuality and being transgender are choices, and he called these choices “bizarre.” He has also equated gay marriage to bestiality, and also called it a “dark harbinger.” Additionally, Johnson wrote a 2004 news column against gay marriage, citing unspecified “studies,” saying that they clearly prove gay marriage is “harmful.” Are the studies in the room with us right now, Speaker Johnson?
Like any sensible politician, when he was faced with perfectly reasonable backlash from his bigoted comments, he chose to lie through his teeth, saying to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “he doesn’t even remember” making some of these comments. Convenient!
The entire Johnson family supports these outdated ideas, mainly his wife, Kelly. Kelly Johnson founded a company called Onward Christian Counseling Services, which compared gayness in its operating documents to both bestiality and incest.
Also amongst his impressive repertoire are his views on the separation of church and state; he stated that “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.” To me, it seems just a little bit crazy that someone with so much power in the government has made his mission clear; he’s advocating for American Christians, not the American people as a whole, and his views are a dangerous backslide into the lands of Christian nationalism, a term defined as the desire for a Christian theocracy.
But of course, the cherry on top of this bad-tasting cake is that he was a leading voice to overturn the 2020 election, which has been certified by researchers of all ideologies. He filed a lawsuit, which was swiftly thrown out by the Supreme Court, attempting to overturn President Joe Biden’s justified presidential win. As the person in charge of certifying the 2024 election, one can assume from prior events that Johnson will again attempt to pull ridiculous and outlandish shenanigans to overturn the election.
Johnson, having just been elected, has not managed to do much so far, but the little he has done has been impressively dividing between the Democrats and Republicans, as he exploited the bipartisan goal of aid for Israel to pick a fight with President Biden; he and House Republicans proposed a bill Monday, including $14 billion in aid for Israel, but cutting that same funding for IRS funding, the Inflation Reduction act, and a climate, health care and tax law funding Biden signed last year.
What we can assume from his early days in office is that Speaker Johnson will lead a controversial and polarizing regime over the house, but what has even more catastrophic consequences is his advocacy to push his own religious views to the forefront of politics, even though his views do not encapsulate the good majority of the American peoples and that we are likely in for more chaos and shenanigans in the house when the time comes to certify election results. This will be a fun two years!
