New House Speaker Mike Johnson spent years building his career and profile by denouncing gay people and fighting against gay rights, which he staunchly opposes
Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson. While he is recognized within some Washington circles for his deeply conservative stances, Johnson, who was most recently the House GOP conference's vice chair,
"There is clearly no 'right to sodomy' in the Constitution," Johnson wrote in a 2003 column in a Louisiana newspaper. "And the right of 'privacy of the home' has never placed all activity with the home outside the bounds of the criminal law." While in Congress, Johnson served on Trump's legal defense team during his two Senate trials on impeachment charges and he voted against bipartisan legislation to codify same-sex marriage.
At the 2005 counterprotest involving Johnson, ADF distributed T-shirts emblazoned with "The Truth Cannot be Silenced" and cards to students, expressing their refusal to support what they deemed "detrimental personal and social behavior," in reference to homosexuality, according to reports on the event.
According to another news report, Johnson said being gay was "morally wrong and physically dangerous."While working as a senior counsel for the ADF, Johnson fought for an amendment in Louisiana to ban gay marriage, which was approved by voters in 2004 -- part of a wave of such restrictions that passed that year nationwide -- and he filed suit against a New Orleans law that provided benefits to same-sex partners of city employees. A state appellate court ultimately upheld the benefits.
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