Congress
LGBTQ activist who knows Mike Johnson warns he must be taken seriously
New GOP Speaker believes he is on a mission from God
Nearly 20 years after he wrote editorials in defense of sodomy laws, does the new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) still believe that states are not just constitutionally permitted but also morally obligated to criminalize sex acts between consenting adults?
Moving forward, is he willing to downplay or compromise on some of his socially conservative policy positions, perhaps if it means protecting GOP members running in purple districts and, potentially, maintaining the Republicans’ majority control of the lower chamber next year?
Last week, Johnson responded to the pundits and political reporters who were hungry for details about his views and eager to explore their potential political implications by instructing them to “Go pick up a Bible.”
Like others who knew Johnson before the House GOP conference voted to make him the top elected Republican second in line to the presidency last week, Bruce Parker says the evangelical congressman’s words should be taken as he intended them: literally.
His message echoed comments by avowedly anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who said during an interview with NTD Television on Oct. 27, “I’ve known Mike for probably over 25 years, and he operates from his faith, and so that guides what he does…as Christians engage in the political process, who are Bible believing Christians, it’s not difficult to know where we’re going, where we’re coming from.”
“It’s hard for people who don’t believe that way” to understand, Parker told the Washington Blade on Tuesday, but Johnson says God communicates with him directly. “I think Speaker Johnson would say — or he would have said, to me, when I spoke to him frequently — ‘it’s not my position that has to change, Bruce; it’s God’s.'”
Likewise, with respect to his work on behalf of powerful organizations on the Christian right like Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ hate group monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Johnson “would tell you that was legal work, but also moral work in the sense that I think that he thought he was helping carry out God’s will on Earth,” Parker said.
Now the deputy director of Out Boulder County, in 2015 Parker was engaged in advocacy work focused on LGBTQ and reproductive rights on behalf of Equality Louisiana and Louisiana Progress while Johnson, then a state legislator, was trying to pass his Marriage and Conscience Act.
The legislation, which ultimately failed, sought protections for those who objected to same-sex marriage on religious grounds, but it was characterized by critics as a license-to-discriminate bill.
During this time, when he was regularly in touch with Johnson, sometimes speaking with him as frequently as twice per day, Parker said, “I developed a genuine appreciation for parts of who he is” — though it was often difficult to reconcile how this was someone who “is super nice to you,” someone who, for example, “consistently” asked how Parker’s partner was doing, but at the same time “would work very hard to make sure you don’t exist.”
“The Speaker understands himself to be an authentically nice person,” Parker said, but his kindness should not be mistaken for weakness, and “people would be making a severe mistake to underestimate him” because the congressman is “a smart politician” who is strategic in every conceivable sense.
“There’s a correlation between being able to be super nice and polite to a queer activist, and learning how to talk about your values and your mission in ways that are not read as off-putting to the vast majority of the population,” Parker noted.
While he is certainly a lower-profile figure than some bomb-throwing members of the GOP conference like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Parker said “it’s not that [Johnson] is lesser known, it’s that he has a mild mannered approach that doesn’t feel threatening to people, and so he will hug you and be really sweet to you while trying to pass legislation to make sure that you can’t get health care that is essential for saving your life.”
Johnson “has an agenda,” Parker said. “He has had that agenda for a very long time. And he believes that agenda comes from a place bigger than him. And that is overlaid with conservative values and politics, but I think at its core, there is what he would understand as a divine mission.”
So, while he can be expected to lead House Republicans strategically, “I can’t imagine how Speaker Johnson can put social issues on the back-burner because they’re not social issues to him,” he said.
In his 20 years of advocacy work fighting for abortion and LGBTQ rights in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, and, now, Colorado’s Boulder County, Parker said he has never encountered someone as convinced as Johnson of the righteousness of his own positions.
Parker suggested the fact that he was raised in the church and conversant in Christianity may have endeared him to Johnson, who, in turn, may have softened his anti-LGBTQ rhetoric if not his anti-LGBTQ policy positions, “which is a part of what good queer activists do in southern and conservative places,” he added, putting a human face on the issue.
Still, “I don’t think that this is a person who will respond to political pressure,” Parker said. “I don’t think it’s a case where the right person can make a pro-LGBT argument and shift his perspective, and, so, I don’t know that that is a useful effort.”
Congress
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country
By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.
Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?
Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Congress
House blocks effort to codify transgender servicemember ban into law
Lawmakers approved two anti-trans NDAA amendments
The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have codified a ban transgender servicemembers in the military.
The bipartisan vote was 212-217.
The NDAA is for the 2027 fiscal year and sets policies for the Defense Department programs and activities and the national security programs of the Department of Energy.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) proposed the amendment on July 21. It stated that all personnel are required to serve in accordance with their biological sex, citing military readiness and discipline.
Human Rights Campaign Senior Director of Government Affairs Jennifer Pike Bailey stated that she is grateful for the bipartisan vote that rejected President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “dangerous and discriminatory policy that has kicked brave transgender servicemembers out of the military and weakened our national security.”
“Everyone who meets the same rigorous standards should be able to serve their country. We should honor that patriotism, particularly in this moment where we are witnessing brave servicemembers making the ultimate sacrifice for our country, instead of ending their careers and politicizing their existence. We’re grateful that a permanent extension of this ban failed, and we will keep fighting to reverse this senseless policy,” Bailey said.
Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, stated that he and his members put in countless hours of work to kill the amendment.
“When Americans know they or their families are going to be targeted by or not supported by the military, that leads them to avoid signing up to serve or staying in the service — making it harder to keep the ranks of the armed services full and our nation safe. My colleagues in the Equality Caucus and I will continue working to prevent these attacks on our servicemembers and their families from becoming law,” Takano said.
According to the Congressional Equality Caucus, two other bills could potentially be passed that would also target the transgender community, both of which were proposed by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.).
The first was a bill that would have prohibited gender-related medical care under TRICARE and to prevent TRICARE from covering certain gender-related medical procedures and treatments, which was approved in a vote of 219-208.
The second was a bill that would have prohibited male participation in female sports at DoDEA schools. DoDEA schools are Department of Defense Dependents Schools, which is a network of primary and secondary schools.
The amendment was approved in a vote of 221-203.
Congress
Lindsey Graham has passed away. Do LGBTQ people have a right to celebrate his death?
SC senator opposed marriage equality, despite speculation over sexual orientation
Uncloseted Media published this article on July 16.
By SPENCER MACNAUGHTON | On Sunday, the office of Lindsey Graham reported that the Republican senator and Trump ally from South Carolina died “from a brief and sudden illness.” The office said that the preliminary cause of death was a rupture of his aorta due to a hardening of his arteries.
Since then, many folks in the LGBTQ community, including a large number of Uncloseted followers, have — for better or worse — celebrated the senator’s death. When we posted the news on our Instagram page on Sunday, our followers commented:
- “Maybe he rest in hell”—this one got 194 likes.
- “She made sure to wait until Pride was over.”
- “And just like that the world is a better place.”
These responses are fueled by allegations that the senator lived as a closeted gay man while supporting policies that would roll back LGBTQ rights. In 2006, he voted in support of a constitutional amendment that would have restricted marriage to only being between one man and one woman. After gay marriage became legal across the U.S. in 2015, he said “I am a proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, he told CNN he would oppose the Respect for Marriage Act and later reiterated that states should decide the issue of marriage.
Outside the Washington rumor mill, there wasn’t much evidence that Graham could be gay until 2020, when adult video performer Sean Harding wrote on Twitter that “There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than Trump who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the lgbt and minority communities. Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?”
Harding followed up with another post, writing “If you’d be willing to stand with me against LG please let me know,” and, “So far I have two individuals who would be willing to go public and support my claims. Anyone else?”
A few days later, another anonymous sex worker came forward and made similar allegations.
But after that, there was silence, with some believing these sex workers were slapped with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). And while at least one lawyer took to Twitter saying that he’d “be more than happy to read the NDAs and look for loopholes. For free!” nobody else came forward.
That is until earlier this week, when author Jesse James Rose posted to her Instagram that Graham had paid her for sex work prior to her gender transition. Rose wrote that “Most of you know him as the homophobic senator from South Carolina but to me he will always be the man who paid a twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash to do unspeakable things to him in a hotel room while he wore red lingerie.”
This dynamic has created a complicated question for LGBTQ people: Is it appropriate to posthumously celebrate the death of a man who railed against our community and used his position of power to make our lives less equitable and less safe? Is it even more fair to criticize him if he was living a secret queer life?
Or should we go high and give his track record on LGBTQ issues a positive spin now that he’s no longer with us?
In a time where social media feels like a breeding ground for angertainment, I’ll admit that the immediacy of the response to his death at first felt intense.
At the same time, I knew I didn’t want to send thoughts or prayers to a man who tried to rip my rights away.
If the alleged NDAs that Graham handed his sex workers were legitimate, they likely evaporated after his death. So now really may be the first time people can speak their truth and offer an accurate window into the absurd hypocrisy between Graham’s public and private life.
For that, I think it’s fair game to speak candidly about the story he may have worked hard to muzzle while he was here.
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