Mike Johnson Laments the Number of Queer Kids in GOP Fundraising Email

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is again lamenting the number of young people who aren’t straight, this time in a fundraising email for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In the email, dated Sunday and obtained by Punchbowl News, Johnson asks, “Does America need more God?” and writes, “1 in 4 high school students identifies as something other than straight — what are they being taught in school?”

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Johnson also bemoans the decline in church attendance and says, “You don’t even want to see the filth that passes for popular culture these days.” He continues, “Let’s face it — we live in a depraved culture. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I fear God may allow our nation to enter into a time of judgment for our collective sins. The only question is, is He going to give us one more chance to restore our foundations and return to Him?”

The email doesn’t ask directly for money, but it asks for a response to “this urgent question.” It’s signed by Johnson and his wife, Kelly.

The National Republican Congressional Committee finances the party’s candidates for the U.S. House and supports them through voter registration drives and other means.

The speaker, who has an intensely anti-LGBTQ+ record, had made a similar statement about queer youth in a “prayer call” with Jim Garlow, cofounder of the World Prayer Network and founder and CEO of Well Versed, a Christian right organization, October 3, just hours before Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker and three weeks before Johnson was elected to the post.

“The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable at this point,” Johnson said on the call, which was posted on the Well Versed website the following day. Among the signs of this are that church attendance has dropped below 50 percent and that “one in four high school students identified as something other than straight,” he said, putting air quotes around “straight.” “We’re losing the country,” he added.

Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ+ views became subject to much scrutiny after he was elected speaker — he was little known outside of Louisiana and far-right circles previously. He’s written opinion columns against marriage equality, called LGBTQ+ people “deviant,” proposed a bill in Congress modeled on Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, and much more. He was once a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents many anti-LGBTQ+ clients. Kelly Johnson runs a Christian counseling practice whose website has likened homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia — but now the website has disappeared.