Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is promoting his far-Christian right beliefs in his latest fundraising email, which asks, “Does America Need More God, Patriot?”
Johnson, who last year was the lead sponsor of a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill, lamented in his email that an increasing number of high school students identify as LGBTQ+. He also claimed “America is hanging on by a thread,” “I fear America may be beyond redemption,” and said, “we live in a depraved culture.”
“I’m uneasy, Patriot,” Johnson’s email, sent via the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), begins, as Insider reported. (Google cache copy here.) “This is Speaker Mike Johnson, and I just had to send this email. I’ve been thinking about the state of our country, and I cannot conclude anything other than America is hanging on by a thread. Our culture has fallen so far since the founding of our country, and it’s just getting worse.”
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“Just consider the frightening drop in church attendance over the past several decades,” he continues. “1 in 4 high school students identifies as something other than straight- what are they being taught in school? God is mocked openly in the public square. And you don’t even want to see the filth that passes for popular culture these days.”
“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.”
Insider points to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that it says finds “25.7% of high school students do not identify as straight, with 3.2% identifying as gay or lesbian, 11.9% identifying as bisexual, and 9% identifying as something else, or questioning.” Insider adds, “it’s been no secret that Johnson is an evangelical conservative who has previously supported the criminalization of gay sex.”
Johnson has spent a large portion of his career pursuing an anti-LGBTQ agenda.
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The Daily Beast on Tuesday revealed that before Johnson was elected to Congress, his “ardent religious beliefs and Christian nationalist ideology brought him to serve, often for free, clients affiliated with some of the nation’s most extreme anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ groups in the country—including agitators connected to militant movements with a penchant for violent expression.”
The news outlet examined Johnson’s legal clients from his time as a Louisiana attorney who later worked for a far-Christian right organization now designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. That “review turned up one former Johnson client who said the government ‘should be a terror’ to abortion providers and the LGBTQ community.”