Congressional Republicans have finally chosen a speaker; an inexperienced member hardly anyone knows. Here is what to know about Mr. Mike Johnson.
In addition to his work trying to illegally overturn the election of Joe Biden, he served for eight years as an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom — a group the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group. As such he was and is extremely homophobic in his views. In editorials that ran in his local Shreveport, La., paper, The Times, Johnson called homosexuality an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy “the entire democratic system.” He has argued in favor or criminalizing homosexual behavior.
Johnson has led plenty of other Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuits aimed at stripping women of their reproductive rights. Lest you think he has changed his views, in April he gave a speech decrying the “so-called separation of church and state.”
In selecting Johnson as speaker, the Republicans have warned us all. They are an extreme, anti-democratic, anti-reproductive rights, anti-gay rights faction of what used to be the Republican Party. This is definitely not your parents’ Republican Party.
