(ConservativeSense.com) – The newly elected House Speaker, Mike Johnson, is facing some questions from fellow lawmakers about his record on LGBTQ issues. Opponents of Johnson are worried that his background on LGBTQ issues suggests the Speaker may permit a controversial bill onto the House floor.
In the past, Johnson worked as a spokesperson and an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal group. The Speaker wrote op-eds for the group advocating for criminalizing homosexual activity and suggesting that gay marriage legalization could result in a slippery slope that would eventually allow people to marry their pets.
Johnson was elected to Congress in 2016. On several occasions, while serving, he’s voted in opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act as well as the Equality Act. Last year, he introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal government from funding the creation and distribution of any materials that are “sexually-oriented” to children younger than 10, including anything about gender identity. Johnson said the legislation was necessary to stop a “crusade” by the Democratic Party “to immerse young children” in imagery that’s inappropriate for their age and “radical gender ideology.”
Earlier this year, the now-Speaker co-sponsored a bill that would ban trans-identifying male athletes from competing on female teams at schools receiving federal funding. Johnson also helped the bill pass.
A few months later, Johnson chaired a House subcommittee that held a hearing on the potential dangers of providing so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors. In an opening statement, he claimed teachers and the mainstream media are coercing minors into believing they are born in the wrong body, which he said is something “terribly wrong.” Those who support so-called “gender-affirming care,” such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights legal director Shannon Minter, believe such practices are medically necessary for minors and adults and are endorsed by major medical organizations. Minter spoke as a witness during the subcommittee hearing.
As Johnson continues to seek to ban gender-affirming care, Democrats are concerned even more now that the Republican Party has chosen him as Speaker of the House. He is one of 45 other GOP co-sponsors of a new bill introduced by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that will make it a Class C felony to provide hormones, puberty blockers, and trans surgeries to minors.
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