The Hidden World of Mike Johnson, Culture Warrior - Joe Conason

[justaprogressive]

House Speaker Mike Johnson, lately elevated to one of the most important posts in the federal government, is nothing if not a fervent culture warrior. If Johnson had his way, not only would abortion and homosexuality be absolutely outlawed, with severe criminal penalties as punishment for any infraction, but so would contraception and what he calls "no-fault" divorce.

It even seems likely that he would require everyone's children to pray to his deity in schools, where the teaching of evolution also might no longer be permitted, since Johnson says he believes that actual science leads people to devalue life and commit mass shootings. Both his extreme policy views and his absurd ideas about dinosaurs on Noah's Ark and other such superstitions have become notorious since his GOP colleagues unanimously chose him as their leader.

The hermetic world of far-right religion where Johnson has prospered is a very strange place, not well known to most Americans. It is a world where the homosexual behavior he considers "deviant" has often been concealed and protected, even or especially when that conduct involves the exploitation of minors — just so long as the perpetrators are powerful white men. And there is no doubt that Johnson knows all about this sinister sanctimony.

We know that he knows because the new speaker's resume, which traces his rapid ascent from obscurity on a legislative backbench in Louisiana to the pinnacle of congressional leadership, omits a certain telling episode: his brief service as the dean of a scandal-ridden "Christian law school" that never opened. Envisioned as a competitor to the highly successful (and profitable) Liberty University law school, the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law at Louisiana College was named for a reactionary Texas jurist and far-right activist in the Southern Baptist Convention.

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[keithbvadu2]

1. As Mikey J shows, IOIYAAR. It just has to be hidden.

[3auld6phart]

2. :where the

Do you find these backwards nutters.Huckabee the grifter, tubbyville the idiot.. just to gawddamn many losers out there, dragging the USA to wrack and ruin. Sad.

[czarjak]

3. SBC equals KKK.

It ain't rocket-science, ladies and gentlemen.