Mike Johnson happily soaks up applause for being called a “despicable bigot”

A newly unearthed video from 2015 shows anti-LGBTQ+ House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) thanking audience members who applauded his being called a “despicable bigot of the highest order” for introducing an anti-LGBTQ+ bill in the Louisiana state legislature.

Johnson spoke at the 2015 Watchmen Summit, an event organized by the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Family Research Council (FRC). At the time, he served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and, in April 2015, he introduced the Marriage and Conscience Act, a bill that would have prevented the state government from punishing any person or individual who discriminated against same-sex couples. The bill would’ve allowed private businesses to deny partner benefits to an employee’s same-sex spouse, even if the businesses offered the same benefits to other employees’ different-sex spouses.

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In his summit speech, Johnson said that, while watching Meet the Press one Sunday morning, he heard the show’s participants “saying horrible things about me.” He then said the front page of The Baton Rouge Advocate, Louisiana’s largest daily newspaper, called him “a despicable bigot of the highest order” because of his bill.

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After announcing the newspaper’s statement, summit audience members broke out in applause, to which Johnson replied, “Thank you,” as if it was an honor to be called a bigot.

The FRC is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was founded in 1981 by James Dobson, a longtime homophobe who also founded Focus on the Family (FOF), the largest theocratic-right organization in the United States.

Both FOF and FRC oppose same-sex marriage and sex education in schools (except “abstinence-only”), support so-called conversion therapy, and generally oppose anything that promotes the so-called “homosexual agenda” — even concepts of tolerance and diversity which, according to Dobson, are “buzzwords for homosexual advocacy.” Dobson has also compared proponents of same-sex marriage to Nazis who want “the utter destruction of the family.”

According to Dobson, the goals of this homosexual movement include “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, the discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrination of children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.”

Peter Sprigg, FRC’s Senior Researcher for Policy Studies, says that same-sex sexuality should be legislated and declared illegal and that “criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior” should be enforced. Tony Perkins, president of the FRC, has argued that “homosexual men are more likely to abuse children than straight men.” He believes that the Bible commands Christians to kill gay people and has urged his followers to pray against any expansion of LGBTQ civil rights.

Similarly, 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.”

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.”

“I don’t even remember some of [those statements],” Johnson claimed last week when speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In 2015, Johnson blamed abortion for school shootings, saying, “When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.” In a 2016 speech, he blamed the “sexual revolution,” feminism, and liberal divorce laws for mass shootings.