via Truth Wins Out: House Speaker Mike Johnson Once Partnered with 'Ex-Gay' Conversion Therapy Group

Andrew Kaczynski wrote an excellent article at CNN that revealed Mike Johnson, the radical, new Speaker of the House used to promote “ex-gay” conversion therapy for LGBTQ Youth. In his role with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), now the Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson partnered with now defunct “ex-gay” group Exodus International. At the nine second mark, you can see Johnson on a 2007 Exodus International promotional video produced exclusively by Truth Wins Out.

“Mike Johnson is an extremist who is 100% all-in with ‘ex-gay’ conversion therapy," said Wayne Besen, author of Lies with a Straight Face and Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "He personally promoted it and advocated it for vulnerable LGBTQ youth. He’s a dangerous demagogue and religious zealot of the worst kind. His new title should be Preacher of the House.”

From the CNN article:

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.

Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.

“Day of Truth was really established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.

Those who worked to counter ADF and Exodus at the time, said the event was dangerous to confused youth.

“This directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. “This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate.”

Besen is the author of a new book debunking "ex-gay" conversion therapy, Lies with a Straight Face: Exposing the Cranks and Cons Inside the 'Ex-Gay' Industry.