WASHINGTON — Mike Johnson, the most anti-LGBTQ+ House Speaker in history, is the focus today of a damning trio of news reports that dig into his relentless hatred toward the LGBTQ+ community and his willingness to make that animosity one of the signature positions of his anti-equality majority in the House.

Articles in the Daily Beast, Media Matters and Punchbowl News paint a picture of an attorney and lawmaker who has been integral to the national assault on the very existence of LGBTQ+ people in this country — and his clear intention to use the power of the Speaker’s gavel and his fundraising influence to keep that assault at the very top of the GOP agenda in the House.

“House Speaker Mike Johnson, the man second in line to the presidency, is busy leading a parade of hate across the country rather than doing his job,” said HRC President Kelley Robinson. “While he ignores pressing issues to fundraise off of his virulently anti-LGBTQ+ ideology and headline the stage at white Christian Nationalist awards ceremonies, the American people pay the price. His obsession with extremely anti-LGBTQ+ law and policy and his desperation to impose that agenda on the nation are a stain on the GOP and all those who supported him.”

This Morning’s Latest on Johnson Rubbing Elbows with Hate

• Today, Johnson will accept an award at the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) annual gala. NACL, a white Christian Nationalist organization, will also be featuring speakers who have advocated for conversion therapy, blamed gay people for biblical floods, and warned that Democrat-controlled states are “demon possessed.”

• In a fundraising email sent on Sunday, Johnson laments that “1 in 4 high school students identify as something other than straight- what are they being taught in school?,”... “Let’s face it, we live in a depraved culture,” the email reads … coming from the same man from whom supposed moderates like Rep. Mike Lawler have sought fundraising.

• As a lawyer representing white Christian nationalists prior to his time in Congress, Johnson worked with people who gloated of killing gay people and who said the government “should be a terror” to abortion providers and the LGBTQ+ community. One of his clients now leads an organization tied to the 2009 murder of an abortion provider in Kansas.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.