It didn’t take long for the left-wing knives to come out — figuratively speaking — for newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The Louisiana Republican appeared on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program Thursday evening to clap back at liberal critics who have labeled him “homophobic” for prior work he did for a Christian-based legal organization.
At one point, Hannity brought up an article by CNN’s KFile that picked selective quotes from old editorials to portray the new Speaker as being an advocate for the “criminalization of gay sex,” a smear that other Democrat Party media megaphones will likely amplify.
“Already, the press, the left have come at you and come at you hard,” Hannity noted. “You once worked for the Alliance Defense Fund – a Christian advocacy group, and comments you had made both in writing and advocacy for this group about homosexuality, calling it sinful, destructive, and not supporting gay marriage, quote, ‘no clear right to sodomy in the Constitution.’ You have been getting hammered on this. And I wanna ask you about it. I wanna know exactly, you know, where you stand. Some of these comments were 15 years ago.”
“I don’t even remember some of them,” Johnson responded. “I was a litigator that was called upon to defend the state marriage amendments. If you remember back in the early 2000s, I think there were over 35 states, somewhere in that number, that the people went to the ballot in their respective states and they amended their state constitutions to say marriage is one man and one woman.
“Well, I was a religious liberty defense and was called to defend those cases in the courts,” he continued.
He added: “Let me state this very clearly, and there’s been questions about this, let me say where I am. I am a rule of law guy. I made a career defending the rule of law. I respect the rule of law.”
“When the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell that became the law of the land,” he added, referencing a landmark 2015 ruling that universally legalized homosexual marriage.
“I respect the rule of law, but I also genuinely love all people regardless of their lifestyle choices,” Johnson added. “This is not about the people themselves.”
“I am a Bible-believing Christian,” he said. “Someone asked me today in the media, they said, “It’s curious, people are curious. ‘What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’” I said, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it, that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”
“That’s your personal worldview?” Hannity asked.
“That’s my personal worldview,” Johnson replied. “Everybody comes to the House of Representatives with deep personal convictions. But all of our personal convictions are not gonna become law. This is a big body of people. There’s 435 members in the House.”
“You have to argue and find consensus and all of that so I have no agenda other than what’s best for the American people,” he added. “And to defend the rule of law and that’s what we’re doing.”
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