Mike Johnson says God will punish “depraved” U.S. because more teens identify as LGBTQ+

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently told his email subscribers that the United States has a “depraved culture” because more teens are identifying as LGBTQ+.

Johnson’s email, sent last Sunday, had an image header labeling the message as a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) “news alert.”

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Mike Johnson “applauds” efforts to make gay marriage & sodomy illegal again

Just last year, he said, “What Justice Thomas is calling for is not radical.”

Johnson then wrote that he worries that “our culture has fallen so far” since the United States’ founding in 1776. “I fear America may be beyond redemption,” he adds.

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“1 in 4 high school students identifies as something other than straight- what are they being taught in school?” he added, referencing a recent CDC statistic. “God is mocked openly in the public square…. I cannot conclude anything other than America is hanging on by a thread.”

“Let’s face it – we live in a depraved culture,” Johnson continued. “I fear God may allow our nation to enter into a time of judgment for our collective sins…. America needs to recognize that we have much to repent for if we want to avoid the judgment we so clearly deserve.”

Johnson may not realize that the reason why more youth identified as non-heterosexual in the CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey was because it changed its questions on sexual identity. The most recent YRBSS survey included the two following new options for students to describe their sexual identities: “I am not sure about my sexual identity (questioning),” or, “I describe my sexual identity in some other way.”

Nevertheless, Johnson’s email is just the latest example of how Johnson continues embracing his extensive record of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian Nationalist rhetoric in front of his followers while presenting himself to the rest of the public as a moderate.

When asked by Fox News about his numerous anti-LGBTQ+ statements and policy stances — including his equating of same-sex marriage with pedophilia and his wish to re-criminalize adult same-sex intercourse — Johnson replied, “I don’t even remember some of them.”

This week, Johnson is delivering the keynote speech at a gala for the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL), a Christian Nationalist group with ties to massively influential conservative groups. NACL’s founder thinks LGBTQ+ people and their allies are a satanic cult of child groomers who want to turn kids queer. The group’s legislative members have to agree that the Bible requires “everlasting conscious punishment” of “the unjust,” meaning non-Christians, queers, and others.

Last week, Johnson un-endorsed Scott McKay’s The Revivalist Manifesto, a book that insulted poor people, defended white people using the n-word, and called Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg “obnoxiously gay.” Johnson promoted the book in 2022, calling McKay a “dear friend” and adding, “I obviously believe in the product, or I wouldn’t have written the foreword.”

After reports of the book’s contents appeared on the internet, Johnson’s spokesman said, “The Speaker had never read the passages highlighted in the CNN story which he strongly disagrees with. He wrote the foreword as a favor to a friend, supportive of the general theme of the book but not as an endorsement of all the opinions expressed.”

“Pretty hard to believe,” Buttigieg said when asked about that statement. “I’ve often been called to write a blurb for a book. He didn’t just do that, he didn’t just put a quote on the back of it. He wrote a forward that is in the book, then had this guy on his podcast, and then went out of his way to say things associating himself both with the author and with the book.”

This isn’t even the first time that he has used this specific statistic as an example of why the United States is “depraved.”

“One-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight,” he said on a World Prayer Network call on October 3. He then talked about Sodom, a city in the Bible that was destroyed by God. Many evangelical Christians claim that it was destroyed because there were gay people in the city.

“We repent for our sins individually and collectively. And we ask that you not give us the judgment that we clearly deserve,” he said at the closing of his prayer.