By now you’ve likely heard that Representative Mike Johnson—the congressman Republicans finally elected as the new Speaker of the House after 22 days of chaos—played a significant role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, a lowlight on his résumé that is obviously deeply concerning for the future of democracy. Also extremely worrisome? Johnson’s wildly bigoted remarks about homosexuality over the years, and the fact that he supported criminalizing gay sex between consenting adults.

CNN’s KFile reports that prior to his career in politics, Johnson wrote a series of deeply homophobic editorials in his role as an attorney for the socially conservative legal group now known as Alliance Defending Freedom.

      • Album@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        yup like this guy former Idaho Senator Larry Craig - staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ rights caught cruising for dick in a public bathroom. To be clear, the problem isn’t that he was doing gay stuff, but that he was a hypocrite about it and was clearly projecting his own insecurities into law.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal

        • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
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          Same as Clinton, etc. America wasn’t pissed he had an affair … it was that he lied about it.

          Stop. Fucking. Lying.

          • SocialEngineer56@notdigg.com
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            Those are not even remotely the same thing.

            Politicians lying is a bad thing. Politicians making laws that harm Americans for things that they do themselves is worse. It’s lying plus damaging our society.

            Clinton lying about his affair didn’t impact any other American other than Monica Lewinsky and his wife.

          • burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            No. Not the same at all. It was fucking cool that Clinton got a blow job in the Oval Office, it was not cool that it was from a subordinate. Clinton did not commit any crimes nor misdemeanors. Oral sex is not sex.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      Be mindful when he says “he’ll be in his Lab”, he’s not a mad scientist.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      Aye. It’s usually the ones that cry the loudest. How many times haven’t outspoken anti-gay people been caught having affairs with a partner of the same sex?

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        These people legitimately don’t understand that standing on the corner, yelling “I DONT WANT TO FUCK DOGS” at random people is not a good way to convince people that they don’t want to fuck dogs.

  • Dojan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Opposite-sex marriage leads to incest and inbreeding. Maybe we should just outlaw marriage altogether.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      Honestly, I don’t know why marriage is even codified into law.

      I take that back, I do. But it’s a stupid reason.

      There really is no modern reason that marriage needs to be something you need to let the government know about.

      • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
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        This is of course a non-US view, I’m not sure how different the laws are there. But marriage is a great one-stop shop that lets you get a lot of legal kerfuffles sorted in 20-30 minutes with nothing but a couple signatures. I don’t think it is a stupid reason, the stupidity comes from all the other bullshit people want to dump onto marriage.

      • who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.world
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        Modern Marriage is a legal contract, it needs government more than ever because it’s pretty much tax benefits.

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            It also partially excludes those who don’t earn a lot, at least where I live (Ontario, Canada).

            You earn around 30k a year? Hey, you get some benefits! Two people earning 50k a year? Well, obviously you don’t need those benefits anymore. In fact, let’s cut your collective returns down by a nice $342.

            Nothing changes if you’re just roommates, but they sometimes really want to verify that you’re not secretly common-law. You can get in legal trouble if you get caught.

            It was kind of messed up the first year that my partner and I filed taxes together, to be honest. We couldn’t do that until we were living together for 2 years (federal government), and 3 years (provincial government).

            They didn’t tell us to both save the entire previous year’s GST, and it ended with us having to pay between $500 and $700. That was a fun birthday suprise. The bad parts of common-law start before any of the benefits, apparently. They also seem to start before you can legally file. I tell everyone who I know is moving in with a partner, because fuck that noise. I wish someone told us earlier. Anyone, really.

                                            *rage* 
            
      • ramble81@lemm.ee
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        I’ve always thought that the word “marriage” should be removed from all laws since that’s a religious term and constantly quibbled about. Replace it with “civil union” defined as a joining between two consenting adults and leave the definition of “marriage” to the churches.

        • TipRing@lemmy.world
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          I don’t think we should cede marriage to religion. Marriage predates all modern religions. It has always been about property, a civil matter. Religion can fuck right off laying claim to the institution.

        • buddhabound@lemmy.world
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          I feel the same way. For the purposes of government business, all marriages are civil unions, since it’s the contractual part the government cares about. As far as marriage goes, that’s up to each religion to determine according to its own standards and definitions, including who is allowed to conduct the ceremony and who is allowed to participate in the ritual.

          The government shouldn’t be able to dictate who I choose to share my assets and debts with, as long as they’re legally consenting adults who can sign the contract. And if someone wants to get married to a same sex partner in a church and that church won’t allow it, then they can find a church that better suits their values.

          Everyone wins.

          However, this is not what the theocrats want, which is why we have to deal with this shit. They want to be able to dictate what secular people do, and use the power of the state to force their religion on people regardless of church membership.

          • Patches@sh.itjust.works
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            as long as they’re legally consenting adults

            And just like that you’ve lost the republican party support.

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    I’m so tired of these fucking twats inflicting their neuroses, hang ups, mental illnesses, and kinks on the rest of us.

    Get out of politics and get into therapy.

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    So if I’m a male I can fuck my female dog no problem cos it’s not same sex. Good to know.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    IDK about anyone else here, but when I see anodyne-sounding-but-doublespeak org names like ‘Alliance Defending Freedom’, it’s a red flag.

    ADF has never defended freedom, unless by ‘freedom’ you mean the ability to discriminate against LGBT folk and women. They proclaim themselves to be for “the right of people to freely live out their faith” but really that only seems to cover folks whose faith is some flavor of political bigotry.

    Yeah so when Johnson remarked that “God has ordained each of us” to congress, the flavor of God he’s talking about is the one that wants laws to protect anti-LGBT bullies and vigilantes, not their victims. Meanwhile everyone else whose faith does not abet that shit now gets to hear him claim to speak hate on God’s behalf

    Also in case you forgot, the history of sentencing people to ‘hard labor’ derives from the post-civil-war practice of convicting black men in kangaroo courts (after all, the 13th Amendment allowed for slavery if it was punishment for a crime). When they were told they couldn’t keep slaves but they could enslave people if they were convicts, the notion of ‘convict leasing’ was born.

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
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    What is it with “hard labor”? Do the speakers really thing that makes them sound badass? The loss of freedom is a huge punishment already. The labor part is just letting someone profit off of human misery.