Mike Johnson said during prayer calls with right-wing pastor Jim Garlow that "depraved" America deserves the wrath of God.
He cited, as supposed evidence, the decline of national church attendance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, Johnson lamented, that “one-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight.”
If I had to invent a strawman to epitomize everything wrong with Republicans, it would not be as abhorrent as Mike Johnson because he's fucked up in ways I haven't even thought about.
That's the rub, ain't it. I understand that these religious world views are their reality, but more and more people are snapping out of it and coming into a more secular state, a common reality. But it is truly worrisome that there are these powerful wingnuts out there that are trying to claw us back into their reality, as if to say "you don't know any better, I am a light of God and I will show you the path, whether you like it or not." Motherfucke,r I don't give a rat's ass about your "christian" views and how I am somehow divinely mandated to oblige it because you say so. I guarantee that my morality is more Christian than yours, and that most of us just want to go about our lives in peace and not waging holy war against those who aren't in lockstep with our views.
Except in many countries, these guys seized power and kept it. Iran, Afghanistan... This is what's happening in the US right now. If there's no pushback hard, soon, I really don't think you will still be a democracy in 10 years.
beginning to believe his christo-fascist bullshit and Tuberville's logjam on top military brass are both preambles to the 2025 project the fucking Heritage Foundation is promoting.
Imagine for just one fucking second that an liberal group produced that fucking seditious, anti-american trash plan? There need to be hearings about this shit: your plan is to gut the government, deploy the military and set up camps day 1? WHAT THE FUCK?
You don’t even have to make that challenge. The god you and I used to believe in can’t even pass its own ethical scrutiny, even if there were a deity like that it would be a cruel and evil one
The only thing that would be the icing on the cake would all of these "Christians" would still be firmly on planet earth while everyone of the LGBTQ Alphabet would ascend. I know I am being hyperbolic but people can understand what I am getting at.
To think if this man hadn't accepted a nomination for the speaker of the house we would have never known how wack-a-doodle the man is. So crazy he doesn't even have a savings, checking or retirement account because he is so crazy and modest.
He has been asked since he became speaker and instead of answering he talked about being a man of "modest means". Everyone now knows he's hiding something, and quite possibly broken the law a few times, so now we just wait. Either investigative journalism will give us the answers or a government inquiry will. Hopefully in the interim nothing bad happens.
Why is it that everyone who thinks their god wants to punish someone takes it upon themselves to do the punishing? Is god so fucking weak that he wants to punish us, but can't do it himself? If god wants to punish us, let him do it and Mike Johnson can stay the fuck out of it.
Talking to pastor Jim Garlow on a broadcast of the World Prayer Network, Johnson spoke ominously of America facing a “civilizational moment.” He said, “The only question is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judgment for our collective sins? … Or is he going to give us one more chance to restore the foundations and return to Him?”
The segment was filmed Oct. 3, just weeks before Johnson’s unexpected rise to become speaker of the House. Garlow pressed the clean-cut Louisiana congressman to say “more about this ‘time of judgment’ for America.” Johnson replied: “The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable.” He cited, as supposed evidence, the decline of national church attendance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, Johnson lamented, that “one-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight.”
Discussing the risk of divine retribution, Johnson invoked Sodom, the Old Testament city destroyed by God for its wickedness with a rain of burning sulfur. Johnson is a polished orator, but in a closing prayer with Garlow he grew tearful. Johnson intoned, “We repent for our sins individually and collectively. And we ask that You not give us the judgment that we clearly deserve.”
Oh no, gay people aren't being persecuted and people don't believe in my brand of absurdity. My imaginary friend hates that!
Funny enough, he doesn't exactly get why Sodom was destroyed. They wanted to take a guest in their town and rape them. Lot offered his daughters instead of the guest, who was an angel, and they refused. (And for some reason, God said Lot was alright despite that.)
What brought down the divine retribution itself wasn't being gay, but hostility and violence to guests. It wasn't even sexual assault, since God found Lot to be upstanding and he was going to offer his daughters.
I feel like this interpretation jives pretty well with what Jesus actually said, and ironically enough for Johnson, that places him and his party squarely under God's wrath. I mean it's no surprise, but the dramatic irony is hilarious.
Yeah the story of Sodom is a pretty clean example of a hospitality myth. Basically don't be an asshole to those showing you kindness.
I wonder if the reason these myths seem relatively universal in the eastern Mediterranean is due to the bronze age collapse and raiders. Basically raiders pretend to be refugees to get into a city which that cant easily take from without.
One doesn't do this unless they have an unhealthy relationship with sexuality and porn:
he and his teenage son monitor each other’s every keystroke in an effort to make sure they don’t expose themselves to pornography.
This was recently revealed in a clip that was posted by the user Receipt Maven on X. Last year, Johnson spoke on a panel during a “War on Technology” conference sponsored by a Baptist church in Benton, La. In it, Johnson enthusiastically endorsed a surveillance app called Covenant Eyes. The app, which is promoted by churches and other conservative religious groups such as Promise Keepers, has users designate “accountability partners” to hold them to task in the event they stray into illicit digital outer space. Often the accountability partner is a pastor or fellow church member.
Covenant Eyes, which costs about $15 a month, takes one screenshot per minute, Wired reported last year in a story about what it called “anti-porn shameware,” which is a multimillion-dollar industry.
Johnson’s accountability partner, he said, was his teenage son Jack. Once a week, he said, he and Jack receive a report of what the other has been doing on his phone, laptop or tablet.
“If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice,” Johnson said. “It looks for keywords, search terms and also images. It’s really sensitive.” Johnson said he once got an alarm about Jack’s questionable internet usage involving a blurry image of two women. “I had to zoom in on it and unblur it,” Johnson said, “and it’s two middle-aged teachers.”
I suspect the only way he can stop looking at that sweet sweet man-flesh on the internet is knowing his son is looking at his screen over his shoulder at all times.
If he referenced Sodom and Gemorah then he doesn't really know why the Bible says those cities were overthrown. It wasn't because they had gay sex. It was because they abused travelers.
The modern day version of the travelers are immigrants. Remind me which party is a fan of abusing immigrants again?
Who gives a shit if 1 in 4 high schools identifies as something other than straight?
How about focus on the actual commandments Jesus taught, which by the way, were: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself". FFS.
In their mind they do. "Love the sinner, not the sin" is what they always say. They think them caring about the person being less gay is them "loving them"
They use the first to bridge right into the things that overrule the second.
Loving God means fearing Him, following all the commandments and heading the cautions of a reprobate nation and what happens. After all that fear and anger, there's not as much room to hear about love in a meaningful, non-sublimate-y way.
Some Christians make it work and genuinely care. They aren't the noisiest and they aren't what we see from Christian nationalists.
I will say, caring means caring, regardless of the faith of the recipient. Jesus said nothing about faith testing the poor.
No need to elaborate. If you read what Jesus said, it's pretty fucking obvious that religious nutjobs promoting hate are exactly who Jesus disliked, and would call Pharisees.
Christianity in the Republican Party didn't just destroy Republicans. It also enabled the rise of evangelicals who have driven away everyone else from churches. A corrupt bargain where (hopefully) they all get what they fucking deserve.
How does anyone look at that picture, and think those people are perfectly normal?
How does anyone listen to Mike Johnson without concluding that man is crazy?
I'll tell you how, the only way is that they themselves are crazy too!
I'm Jewish and thus not an expert on Jesus, but from what I know if Biblical Jesus were to appear in the US today, the only reason he'd enter one of these churches would be to flip over some tables.
I've committed adultery; I've slept with married people, and I had sex outside of my marriage. I've had sex with men and women, all outside of marriage. I've been to sex clubs and orgies. More than one three-way and one more-than-three-way. I've made and participated in porn. I've been to strip clubs. Based on my experience, I'd say depravity is on the whole pretty damn fun, and I recommend depravity to my fellow Americans, although if you want to be monogamous that's fine too.
Some people act like non-monogamy is easy. That it's just cheating or promiscuity disguised. But, if you're doing it right, it requires emotional intelligence and endurance, the self knowledge to be able to set good boundaries and the maturity and empathy to respect others'. It requires a good amount of time, effort, and resources. Negotiating schedules, balancing the needs and wants of each involved, etc. Even those who do it selfishly (or worst case, abusively) would need to expend energy hiding their ways from the community at large (which honestly seems more exhausting). And it's not like monogamy let's you avoid those types of people.
Separation of Church and State is just a myth right now. This is the problem right here, radicalized beliefs are dictating the governing in the country.
Ehh... I grew up in an Evangelical household. And back then we only had dial-up, but my dad put some kind of Christian filtering software on it... Let's just say I found ways to find porn (one good trick was searching in Spanish lol). Probably forced me to become better at using computers in the long term lol
I'd like to know where he got these "facts" because I know no such study with any validity exists. Did he just ask 4 high school students and call it an undeniable truth? That sounds like the kind of logic I'm used to from people like this.
Well if god created them all, they can't be mistakes, right? Maybe the republican lawmakers are the ones who have strayed. Love your naighbour and all that?
With the biggest hedonists on earth hiding behind pulpits in churches, legislatures and boardrooms, of course he's going after people practicing actual love and intimacy with others.
I remember some YouTubers talking about how SBF was only capable of doing what he did because he had no moral compass and that his philosophy of Effective Altruism was the culprit. The they went on about how Christianity was the way to go. I'm like, you guys never met a Christian that used their God to justify anything? It's absolutely crazy.
Talking to pastor Jim Garlow on a broadcast of the World Prayer Network, Johnson spoke ominously of America facing a “civilizational moment.” He said, “The only question is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judgment for our collective sins?
NAR leaders embrace “dominionism,” the concept that Christians are supposed to rise and rule over “the nations,” in order to bring the globe into a biblical alignment, in preparation for the second coming of Jesus.
In 2008, he played a leading role in promoting the passage of Prop 8 — a California initiative, rooted in anti-gay bigotry that for a time outlawed same-sex marriages in the state.
And with the power of God and the global praying church behind you, you shall recover all that the enemies have stolen.” (Separately, Garlow was dismissing the ideology of the incoming Biden-Harris ticket as “anti-Christ, anti-Biblical to its core.”)
The early-morning event was attended by leading Charismatic figures like the Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn and former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, as well as more than a dozen members of Congress — including then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
The doleful day began with a bleat of a ram’s horn and introductory words from Garlow, who welcomed “Americans repenting for the sins of our nation.” Garlow then presented a stark warning, invoking two biblical kingdoms of Israel that he said squandered heavenly favor only to have God “take them out.” America, he suggested, was on that same path: “Present-day Americans do not consider the possibility that God could…” He stopped dramatically asking the assembly to “finish the sentence.”
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Whatever happened to all the American leftists who love second amendment and love to quote Marx's 'Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary'?
You on the right post? Or are you saying we should commit an insurrection over who got elected into office? Because that didn’t go so well the last time it was tried
I'm asking why do self proclaimed leftists say those things but do nothing when their country is sliding into fascism?
Don't forget that MAGAt lawmakers in Ohio are ignoring the voters in recent abortion rights amendment and not a single republican as called them out on it.
So please don't equate this to MAGA cultists rejecting results of legitimate elections. GOP is time and again undermining the American democracy.