House Speaker Mike Johnson’s teen son monitors his porn use

Anti-LGBTQ+ House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his 17-year-old son both monitor one another’s use of pornography, Johnson admitted in a resurfaced clip from 2022 from his speech about the “War on Technology” at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana.

During the talk, Johnson said that he and his son had installed “accountability software” called Covenant Eyes on their electronic devices in order to discourage them from visiting porn websites. Anti-LGBTQ+ activist Josh Duggar of the TLC series 19 Kids and Counting used the same software to monitor his internet use. He is currently in prison for possession of child pornography.

Related:

Mike Johnson’s wife removes anti-LGBTQ+ counseling website from the internet

… but the internet always remembers.

“It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it,” Johnson said.

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“It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week,” he continued. “If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”

Johnson also linked the software on his Facebook account in 2020 and said that it was “one excellent solution” to “protect our children from the darkness of the culture.” He even included a refer-a-friend link that gave him $20 for each referral.

The use of the software is notable, considering Johnson’s preoccupation with queer people’s sex lives. He’s argued that gay sex should be illegal, opposes same-sex marriage, and is a proponent of debunked attempts to turn gay people straight.

He has sought to criminalize private gay sex between consenting adults, called gay marriage the “harbinger of chaos,” and said gay people should not be a protected class because they “are capable of changing their abnormal lifestyles.” He also believed the fall of ancient Rome was caused by “rampant homosexual behavior.” 

Johnson has previously said that same-sex marriage will lead to “chaos and sexual anarchy” and “place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation.” He claimed legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to “pedophiles” seeking legal protections for having sex with kids and people trying to marry their pets. He has also said, “Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural… ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.”

Notably, Covenant Eyes is the same porn-monitoring program used by Josh Duggar. Duggar’s wife was the person who received those notifications, but during his trial, prosecution lawyers said Duggar found a technical work-around to download child porn without alerting his wife.

Duggar — who worked for the LGBTQ+ hate group the Family Research Council (FRC) — believed that anti-discrimination measures let “child predators” threaten “the safety and innocence of a child.” He molested and sexually abused his younger sisters.

Similarly, Acton Bowen, a Christian youth pastor from Alabama who sexually abused six kids, was required to install the Covenant Eyes software on his own computer by the board of advisors at his company, Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries.