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Category: Written Media / Books
Barton’s Bible Bunk: More Evidence of How David Barton Misuses History and Scripture for Political Purposes
By Kyle Mantyla | September 29, 2022 4:11 pm
Earlier this month, we published a piece exposing how religious-right pseudo-historian David Barton routinely misrepresents history and scripture to support his Christian nationalist political agenda.
In that case, we examined how Barton distorted a speech delivered by Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention to claim that it was filled with Bible verses.
As we have explained before, one of Barton’s favorite techniques for convincing his audience that America was founded as a Christian nation is to assert that Americans of the founding era were so deeply knowledgeable about the Bible that they referenced it continuously in their writings and speeches. If people today are incapable of recognizing all of those Bible verses, Barton asserts, that is just because they are “biblically illiterate.”
Even though we debunked Barton’s claim about Franklin’s speech, he continues to make this false claim in his presentations to churches around the country. On top of that, he recently started citing additional historical speeches and documents that he claims are overflowing with biblical citations.
Here are just a few of his misleading and grossly exaggerated claims.
When Barton spoke at the Truth & Liberty Coalition conference in Colorado earlier this month, he claimed that Patrick Henry’s famous “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech contained multiple Bible quotations, as did a letter written by President George Washington to a synagogue in Rhode Island.
We don’t know the Bible even as much as our least religious Founding Fathers used to know the Bible. And by the way, other examples, if I take you, for example Patrick Henry, you may be familiar with his famous speech, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” That speech that he gave in the legislature of Virginia—which by the way, the legislature of Virginia met at St. John’s Church in Richmond. So the legislature is meeting in the church? What happened to the separation of church and state stuff we’re told the Founding Fathers wanted? Yeah, the legislature met at the church, and [Henry] gave a passionate speech that day, and in that speech that he gave if you want to read it, it’s 14 sentences long. But the same question [is] how many Bible verses? There were 11 Bible verses. He’s just rattling off the cuff. He is so frustrated with what the other legislators are doing that he just got up and said, ‘Guys, you’re wrong.’ And he just goes into a speech. This is just off the cuff.
By the way, these are the verses. And notice these verses; I’m not sure about you, but I’m going to bet that most people have not memorized Ecclesiastes 9:11 as a favorite Bible verse or Deuteronomy 32. See these verses here? These aren’t the ones that we typically memorize, but this is what they had in their heart, this is what they had memorized, and this is what came out when the time was right and they needed this.
You go to George Washington. In 1789, he becomes president, and in 1790, he decides, “I need to visit every state in the United States because we’ve been separate nations, we need to know that we’re a nation, so I’m going to everywhere, every state.” And in 1790, he had plans to go into Rhode Island, and as he was going into Rhode Island, plans were announced that President Washington is going to visit Rhode Island. There’s a Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that wrote Washington a letter, and it was just an effusive letter, it said, “We so thank God for what you’ve done, what you’ve done for religious liberty, what you’ve done for our freedoms, we think God has raised you up,” and they just gushed all over him. It was just a really nice letter. And so Washington replied back to them, and in reply back—it was a cordial letter, kind of a presidential letter—he said, “Thank you. That’s really nice.” And the letter that he replied back to them in had a total of two sentences. In two sentences, he quoted 10 Bible verses. His letter to the Hebrew congregation is just about Bible phrase after Bible phrase after Bible phrase. That’s what he used to craft that reply.
So when you look back at Founding Fathers, you find that they knew the Bible, they knew it very well, they studied it well.
The first thing worth noting regarding Barton’s claim about Henry’s speech is that the legislature of Virginia did not meet in a church. Henry delivered his famous speech during the Second Virginia Convention, which was only held in St. John’s Church because the colony’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had dissolved the state’s House of Burgesses near the start of what eventually became the American Revolution. Secondly, Henry’s speech was not written down or transcribed at the time, and the version of the speech known today was reconstructed from the recollections of witnesses years after Henry had died. Thus, nobody really knows exactly what Henry said that day.
Regardless, here is the speech we know today:
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
And here are the Bible verses that Barton claims Henry quoted, as displayed in a slide in his presentation.
As with Barton’s claims about Franklin’s speech at the Constitutional Convention, there are some obvious biblical allusions in Henry’s speech, such as his assertion that “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace—but there is no peace,” which is a reference to both Jeremiah 6:14 and Jeremiah 8:11 where the phrase appears. However, it is hard to understand how Henry’s use of this phrase can count as two biblical citations.
While Henry’s language that “the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone” finds an echo in Ecclesiastes 9:11, it is hard to determine where the other Bible verses Barton cites supposedly appear in Henry’s speech:
- Jeremiah 50:22: The noise of battle is in the land, and great destruction!
- 2 Chronicles 32:8: With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles. And the people took confidence from the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.
- Daniel 4:17: The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.
- Psalm 75:7: but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.
- Joshua 24:15: And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
- 2 Thessalonians 1:6: since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you.
- Deuteronomy 32:4: The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.
- Matthew 20:6: And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?
The same goes for Washington’s letter to the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island which, contrary to Barton’s assertion, is much longer than just two sentences:
To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island
[Newport, R.I., 18 August 1790]
Gentlemen.
While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
Go: Washington
Here are the Bible verses Barton claims are cited in Washington’s letter, as seen in his slide presentation:
Once again, there are a few Biblical allusions in Washington’s letter, such as his line about “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree,” which is a reference to language found in 1 Kings 4:25 and Micha 4:4, which Barton yet again inexplicably counts as two citations.
Washington’s language about “the father of mercies” does echo 2 Corinthians 1:3 and the line about “the Stock of Abraham” mirrors Acts 13:26, but the remainder of the Bible verses cited by Barton are difficult to place:
- Isaiah 35:10: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
- Proverbs 4:18: But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
- Psalm 119:105: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
- Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
- Ephesians 4:1: I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
- Deuteronomy 12:10: But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in safety.
As with his claims about Franklin’s speech, there are nowhere near as many Bible citations in Henry’s speech or Washington’s letter as Barton claims there are. In fact, most of what Barton claims are quotes from Bible verses amount to little more than vague similarities in language.
What’s more is that rather declare this to be an explicitly or exclusively Christian nation, Washington assured his Jewish recipients that “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” and that “happily the Government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
The irony of Barton’s complaint about modern Christians being so “biblically illiterate” that they can’t recognize all of the Bible verses allegedly contained in documents from the founding era is that it is precisely the biblical illiteracy that Barton decries that allows him to get away with routinely misleading his audiences, confident in his knowledge that they are largely incapable of detecting his lies and misrepresentations and will never bother to investigate the baseless assertions that he makes.
Debunking David Barton’s Favorite Falsehood About the Bible and Circuit Courts
It has been well-documented that Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton routinely misuses and misrepresents both American history and the Bible in order to promote his right-wing political agenda.
For decades, Barton has worked diligently to convince conservative Christian activists that the Founding Fathers intended for the United States to be an explicitly Christian nation that operates according to biblical precepts. He has doggedly worked to “prove” these claims by incessantly (and falsely) insisting that multiple passages of the Constitution were taken directly out of the Bible and that our laws and branches of government were crafted based on biblical principles.
These false claims have a political purpose. In 2022, Barton traveled around the country on behalf of an organization called Faith Wins, working to mobilize Christian voters heading into the midterm elections by telling them that, according to the Bible, they were responsible for choosing our elected leaders.
An example of the sort of disinformation Barton peddled was on display when he spoke at Radiant Church in Colorado last September. During his presentation, Barton falsely asserted that jurist James Kent set up federal circuit courts and that the concept of circuit courts was rooted in 1 Samuel 7:15-16. That passages reads, “Samuel continued as Israel’s leader all the days of his life. From year to year he went on a circuit from Bethel to Gilgal to Mizpah, judging Israel.”
“James Kent, he’s known as the father of American jurisprudence,” Barton said. “He’s one of the two guys who helped set up the American judicial system. And when he set it up, he set it up with circuit courts. … Back at the beginning, when we had the original Supreme Court justices, they got on their horse, and they rode from town to town and from state to state to have court meetings.”
“And so we have this concept of circuit judges set up, and the guy who set it up said, ‘Well, we got it out of 1 Samuel 7:15-16,’” Barton continued. “It says that Samuel judged Israel, and Samuel rode the circuit. [Kent] said that if that’s the way the Bible does judges, then that’s a good way for us to do judges too.”
We had heard Barton make this claim multiple times before, but didn’t realize how wrong Barton was until we recently read the book, “John Jay: Founding Father,” by Walter Stahr. Jay served as the very first chief justice of the Supreme Court, a position to which he was nominated by President George Washington in 1789 on the same day that Washington signed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created the federal court system.
As explicitly laid out in the Judiciary Act of 1789, Jay and his colleagues were required to travel among the 13 circuit courts established throughout the nation and hear cases in conjunction with local district judges.
While Kent was an acclaimed jurist in the Founding Era, he played no role in crafting this legislation, establishing circuit courts, or in helping to “set up the American judicial system.” In fact, Kent never even served in Congress, and the Judiciary Act of 1789, which laid out the concept of circuit courts, was drafted by Sen. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut.
Barton, of course, provided no evidence to support his claim regarding Kent’s supposed biblical inspiration for creating circuit courts during his presentation. But when Barton made this same false claim in his 2012 book, “The Founder’s Bible,” he cited “The Memoirs and Letters of James Kent.” Predictably, if one actually checks Kent’s memoirs, all that is found is an undated passage in Kent’s diary noting that “the Jewish judges rode the circuits” along with the quote from 1 Samuel.
This is, once again, an example of Barton exploiting the biblical and historical ignorance of his own audiences to feed them a false narrative regarding the founding of this nation that serves primarily to promote his own modern-day right-wing political agenda.
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More Alarm Raised Over GOP Christian Nationalism
the founding fathers knew of the massacres that happened in europe over whether you were protestant or catholic so, of course, they did not want that to happen here, and thus we have freedom of religion. Stupid republicans.
“Many professional historians dismiss Mr. Barton, whose academic degree is in Christian Education from Oral Roberts University, as a biased amateur who cherry-picks quotes from history and the Bible.”
Jay W. Richards, senior fellow at the Christian conservative Discovery Institute, said in 2012 that Barton’s books and videos are full of “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims.”
– Wikipedia entry under his name
Same as Creationists who are all lying amateurs who cherry picks quotes, articles, and outdated materials from the Bible, history, and especially science.
so true,some nutcase politician from NC runs bible classes on sunday..tells the kids that satan created ALL the fossil evidence,just to confuse us and ,that the earth is truly only 6k years old (sigh)..Bartons got plenty of company in the b/s dept.
It was noted that Jefferson felt that the inclusion of any Christian language must be excluded, as he felt that in the future, that enlightened Americans would move away from Christianity, but such any Christian language included in the Constitution might invalidate or complicate its interpretation by a more enlightened America.
…And look where we are with theocrats at the gates, claiming gawd is in the Constitution…somewhere.
Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to his nephew
“The United States is in no way founded upon the Christian religion.” — George Washington & John Adams in a diplomatic message to Malta
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.” — John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson
“I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Lighthouses are more useful than churches” — Benjamin Franklin
“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Adams
Texas activist David Barton wants to end separation of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speaker.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/03/david-barton-mike-johnson-texas-church-state-christianity/
Wake up US public. The Christian theocratic take over of the government is well underway. This is just like Afghanistan and Iran, other countries where religions were allowed to start shaping and making the laws. Individual rights, progressive societies, even science and medical knowledge becomes restricted and regressive to a time of what was written in old holy books as people interpret them now for their own power and profit. Lying and out right making things up is OK to these people in order to institute the Christian dominated society ruled by church doctrine rather than by the will or for the good of the people. This fake historian has rewritten history, simply made up stuff, ignored other stuff and has been used for decades in home and religious schools to spread a false fake understanding of history that now those who were taught it as kids are in positions of authority in state legislatures and as judges to enforce those lies and myths. I remember James as a teen coming to our home after school telling us all about how the founding fathers were highly religious Christians, the laws of the country were founded on Moses and the bible, and that worshiping god was why we became an independent nation, because god himself bless his holy Christian nation. And we had to work hard to get back to that ideal so god would be happy and give us more blessing. After all, it was the liberals with their sexual immorality and push to undo gender roles, take women from the home raising children, and perverting god’s ideal lifestyle of marriage and men’s right to dominate. They also were trying to take god away from everyone and all that was making god angry and he might smite all of us. Such nonsense we had to gently correct for him. Then he would go home to his highly religious very unchristian parents who pushed religion but did not live it. It is scary what is happening. We need to stop it. Hard stop. Hugs
Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas TribuneFor nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation.
Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.
One day after little-known Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected as the new House speaker last week, Barton said on a podcast that he was already discussing staffing with Johnson, his longtime ally in deeply conservative, Christian causes.
“We have some tools at our disposal now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Barton added.
Johnson recently spoke at an event hosted by Barton’s nonprofit, WallBuilders; he’s praised Barton and his “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do”; and, before his career as a lawmaker, Johnson worked for Alliance Defending Freedom — a legal advocacy group that has helped infuse more Christianity into public schools and government, a key goal of Barton’s movement.
Barton, who lives in Aledo, has been a staple of Texas’ own Christian conservative movement, offering crucial public support to politicians and frequently being cited or called on to testify in favor of bills that critics say would erode church-state separations — including in front of the Texas Legislature this year.
Johnson’s election — and his proximity to Barton — is a massive victory for a growing Christian nationalist movement that claims the United States’ foundation was ordained by God, and therefore its laws and institutions should favor their brand of Christianity.
“Johnson’s rise means that Barton and his fellow Christian nationalists now have unprecedented access to the levers of power on the national stage, paralleling the access they already have here in Texas and some other states,” said David Brockman, a non-resident scholar in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Barton and Johnson did not respond to requests for comment this week
Barton has spent nearly all of his life in North Texas, save for the few years he spent at Oral Roberts University, an evangelical school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After graduating with a degree in religious education, he returned to Aledo and worked as a math and science teacher, basketball coach and, later, principal at a K-12 school that grew out of his parent’s Bible study group, according to a 2006 Texas Monthly profile of him.
In 1988, Barton founded his group, WallBuilders, to “exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country” and “providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values,” according to the group’s website.
Since then, Barton has been arguably the most influential figure in a growing movement to undermine the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Barton claims the clause has been misunderstood. He argues that most of the Founding Fathers were “orthodox, evangelical” Christians, and that it would thus be more accurate to read the establishment clause’s use of the word “religion” as a stand-in for “Christian denomination.”
“We would best understand the actual context of the First Amendment by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination,’” he has said.
Barton also argues that the country’s founders “never intended the First Amendment to become a vehicle to promote a pluralism of other religions.”
In his mind, the wall separating church and state was only meant to extend one way, protecting religion — specifically, Christianity — from the government, but not vice versa.
“‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant,” his group’s website claims.
And he argues that most of what he considers society’s ills — from school shootings, low standardized test scores and drug use to divorce, crime and LGBTQ+ people — are the natural consequences of abandoning the Judeo-Christian virtues, as articulated in his form of Christianity, that he says are the bedrock of the nation’s founding. Sometimes, he’s drawn fire for those views — such as when he said the lack of cure for AIDS was God’s vengeance for homosexuality or when he compared the Third Reich’s “evils” to the “homosexual lifestyle” in 2017.
Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selective quotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book, “Getting Jefferson Right,” to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.”
Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics. He served as vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for clergy outreach by President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. In 2010, his fellow Texan and prominent conservative personality Glenn Beck praised him as “the most important man in America right now.” Barton was an early and important endorser of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unexpected first win in 2012. And in 2016, Barton ran one of multiple super PACs that were crucial to Cruz’s reelection.
“Having David Barton running the super PAC gives it a lot of validity for evangelicals and pastors,” Mike Gonzalez, the South Carolina evangelical chair for the Cruz for President campaign, told the Daily Beast at the time.
In Texas, Barton has become increasingly instrumental among GOP politicians. He and WallBuilders currently work closely with Rick Green, a former state representative and current leader of Patriot Academy, a Dripping Springs-based group that trains young adults, churches and others how to “influence government policy with a Biblical worldview” and borrows heavily from Barton’s teachings.
Barton has also railed against the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt groups, including churches, from direct political advocacy. And he is frequently called on to support laws that would infuse more Christianity into public life — including in public schools. In May, he and his son, Timothy Barton, testified in favor of a bill — which later failed — that would have required all Texas public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
During the hearing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. His theories were echoed by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, who said that church-state separation is “not a real doctrine.” And the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, extolled Barton and his son as “esteemed witnesses.”
Other prominent Texas Republicans have similarly echoed Barton’s views, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the United States “a Christian nation” and said “there is no separation of church and state. It was not in the Constitution.”
“We were a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution,” Patrick said last year.
The mainstreaming of Barton’s views has corresponded with a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have allowed for a greater infusion of Christianity into the public sphere, and a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement on the right that was turbocharged by former President Donald Trump and his promise to white evangelicals that “Christianity will have power” should they support him.
February polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than half of Republicans adhere to or sympathize with foundational aspects of Christian nationalism, including beliefs that the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation. Of those respondents, PRRI found, roughly half supported having an authoritarian leader who maintains Christian dominance in society. Experts have also found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to immigration, racial justice and religious diversity.
Johnson’s election to House Speaker shows how normalized such beliefs have become, said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for a strong wall between government and religion. She noted that some Republicans — including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, have embraced the title of Christian nationalist in recent years.
Tyler said that Johnson’s views are particularly concerning because of his background as both a Southern Baptist and as a constitutional lawyer. Baptists, she noted, have a long history of advocacy for strong church-state separations because of the persecution they faced during the country’s founding — a stance that she said Johnson has betrayed throughout his legal and political career.
“He has worked actively for these principles that further Christian nationalism,” Tyler said. “I am also a Baptist, and to see someone who is a Baptist really reject foundational concepts of religious freedom for all — concepts which are really core to what it means to be a Baptist — is also very disheartening.”
Johnson played a central role in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election by crafting a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Republicans in support of a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to have election results thrown out in four swing states by President Joe Biden.
At the same time that he was aiding the legal charge to overturn the 2020 election, Johnson was also cultivating closer ties to figures in the New Apolostolic Reformation, a fast-growing movement of ultraconservative preachers, televangelists, self-described prophets and faith healers who abide by the “Seven Mountains Mandate” — a Christian nationalist-adjacent theology that says Christians must fulfill a divine mandate to rule over all seven aspects of society (family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government) in order to usher in the “end times.”
Driven by that theology, New Apolostic Reformation figures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, combining Trump’s lies about a stolen election with claims that they were engaged in “spiritual warfare” with their political enemies and, thus, extreme and anti-democratic measures were not only necessary, but God-ordained.
Disclosure: Rice University, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and Texas Monthly have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ce3304c12c048d392c33fa8f29b1eb09/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%202012)
Scamvangelical Posts Candidates For 30 School Boards
PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Wommack says homosexuals should have a “warning label on their foreheads.” Wommack says he prayed away “the curse of mildew.” Wommack says Jesus protects Christians from COVID by “turning off your virus receptors.” Two dozen Christians get infected with COVID at Wommack’s illegal bible conference. Wommack says he knows COVID is “no big deal” because his wife and son were “raised from the dead.”
I went to the link in the story above. This guy is one hell of a piece of shit hate preacher. He wants a complete take-over of civilian life, politics, government, every aspect of your life he wants to control. It is a total power grab for him and his followers, in the name of his god of course. Someone has to speak for god, he was just the one chosen to rule your life. Some of the batshit crazy stuff in the article will chill you on what these people believe. And they’re doing it by stealth and then steam rolling over ever right of others to form their perfect society in the name of their god, you know the one that god wants so to hell with your wants or needs. And as you can see they will break the law because god’s will is far more important than the laws of men. Plus once in power they will brook no disagreement with them, 1st amendment be damned. Some quotes listed below. There is much more of the danger these people represent in the article and the Joe My God post also.
“We have enough people here in this school we could elect anybody we want,” he said at a meeting of the Citizen’s Academy, an event held at Charis by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a nonprofit organization also founded by Wommack. “This county ought to be totally dominated by believers.”
When voters in 30 school districts go to the polls Tuesday (Nov. 7), they will find ballots primed with candidates recruited and trained by Transform Colorado, a movement, launched by Truth & Liberty, “that unites Christian leaders to restore biblical values in the public square,” according to its website.
As in Woodland Park, where Wommack succeeded in getting his chosen candidates elected to City Council and gaining a majority on the school board, the goal, in the words of one victor, is to oppose “the teachers’ union and their psycho agenda.”
Truth & Liberty has lately served as Wommack’s main tool in reversing Colorado’s shift from red to blue, a tragedy he blames on “demonic” liberals. As proof, Wommack has claimed his “spies” in the local school system had found hundreds of obscene books. He warned that public schools taught fourth graders how to have anal sex and that they placed litter boxes in classrooms for students who identified as dogs or cats.
Wommack is harsh in his opposition to LGBTQ rights. The day after five people were killed and 18 injured in a Nov. 19, 2022, shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Wommack said he was “not endorsing” violence against LGBTQ people but complained they received too much sympathy, calling homosexuality “one of the major threats of the devil.”
But once elected, Woodland Park’s new conservative majority worked quickly — sometimes meeting in private, she alleged, in violation of state law — to turn the district upside down.
The district became the first and, so far, only locality in the U.S. to adopt the controversial American Birthright social studies curriculum, which has been rejected by Colorado’s State Board of Education. Since it was adopted, some students have been required to perform make-up work to qualify for college admission.
The school board also put a gag order on faculty and staff who disagreed with the changes, firing some who aired their concerns anyway. Recently, more than 80 teachers and staff signed a letter condemning the new “culture of fear and silence” and calling for solutions that “prioritize our children’s futures over politics.”
The district now budgets more than $200,000 a year for legal fees, more than 10 times its legal budget five years ago.
Despite the controversy, Wommack has given the new board his full support. Charis bused nearly 100 students to a May meeting where a vote was being held to elect a new superintendent, displacing hundreds of parents and teachers who were barred by capacity regulations. Some citizens now gather as much as five hours early at board meetings to make sure they can speak and vote.
Students from Charis, which operates a Practical Government school, also often sign up for many of the limited public speaking slots, using their allotted time to criticize “violent, extreme radicals, communists and socialists taking over our schools.”
It would be a useful voting guide for me to know who to vote against.
Bet they are only sending the voting guide to people on the church mailing lists.
Which hopefully someone will leak.
People ask: how do we know who the stealth candidates are so we can vote against them? This is how. Look for who the christfascists are voting for and vote for anyone else. It’s not perfect (some can still slip through) but it will help.
I agree with the idea but…how do I find out who the Republicans are supporting? I can sometimes know when I see school board candidates signs on the same lawn as a Trump one but, mostly, I have to try and read between the lines on their webpages to see if they’re idiots or not…and some hide it really well!
My favorite….
They’re not just targeting trans kids. For example, in states where these extremists have seized control of education, they’ve banned books, pedagogical content and practices and entire subjects, adopted curricula and standards and materials that turn the clock waaaay back on the rights and recognition of BBIMP, immigrants, Jews, people practicing minority religions, women and girls, disabled people as well LGBTQI+ people.
American Talibangelists…
Before you know it, women and girls will be banned from schools.
A great new site I was introduced to.
Stop Trying to Hide S-E-X From Students in School – They Already Know All About It From the Internet
A wonderful post. I got the link from https://poodyheads.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/stop-trying-to-hide-s-e-x-from-students-in-school-they-already-know-all-about-it-from-the-internet/ and adult who thinks kids own bodies are not driving their innocent angels to pleasure are beyond stupid. Most of them deny their own preteen / teen years. Heck, can any of us at any number claim to know that we did not know that rubbing and touching ourselves felt good. I remember as a 14 yr old seeing a classmate rub his junk on a counter and I wondered if he knew he was doing it. He knew it felt good, or he wouldn’t have been doing it. But yes kids often younger than age 8 know it feels good to touch themselves. Why do you think adults get so upset and punish toddlers for doing that in public, because the youngest kids know it feels good, and the adults want them to feel shame over it and do it sneakily in private.
Of course as the post hints to abused kids like me knew all those things. I can not remember the first times I was abused sexually I was so young. But I knew about touch, how to touch, what happened at the end that made the abuser happy when the white stuff came out. You know what I did not know? That I could have gotten help! That it could have stopped! The reason I did not know that is because the right to my body was not taught in my schools back in the late 1960s. The idea of consent or where to go if an adult uses you was not taught. No kid knows about that so lets not burden with it, was the idea. Think of the abused kids lives could be saved and changed if the fundamentalist Christians would move aside and let schools educate kids. Then I remember, a lot of the Christian churches have huge sexual abuse of children scandals. Then I remember that every attempt to raise the age young girls can be forced into a legal marriage, which in many red / religious states is 12, and the Christian religious leaders come out strongly to defeat those bills / laws. I wonder why? Would they be just as happy with a 12-year-old boy being required to marry an adult man? Anyway here is the post and it is a great one. Hugs. Scottie
“Mr. Singer, do you know what foot finder is?”
“No,” I said to the 5th grade girl in the class where I was substitute teaching.
Her friends and her giggled through an explanation of the Website where people post pictures of their feet for sexual gratification.
***
Several days later, I tried to play a video on ancient Rome for my students, but before it even began the 8th grade class burst into laughter over the station identification.
The video was produced by the British Broadcasting Company. The BBC.
I looked at them in confusion until I heard some of them muttering about “Big Black Cock” – a class of porn video many of them had seen online identified with the same abbreviation.
***
Yesterday I overheard some of the girls in my 7th grade homeroom talking. One girl was saying how she really liked a certain boy but wasn’t sure if she was ready.
I smiled thinking about my first kiss. Then I heard her ask a friend, “Can you get pregnant from swallowing it?”
This is middle school, people.
Most of the kids here already know about sex. They know way more than I did at their age. But what they know is a jumble of images and details without the big picture.
And here come Republicans with a bunch of copycat laws to make sure public schools do nothing to dispel children’s ignorance.
In my home state of Pennsylvania, GOP lawmakers are taking action once again to hide any mention of S-E-X in schools throughout the Commonwealth.
They’re sending Senate Bill 7 to Harrisburg, another piece of legislation pumped out by the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC) following in the fundamentalist footsteps of fascist Florida.
The latest bit of dark ages lawmaking would require parent authorization before schools from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia could provide students with materials that contain anything that might be considered sexually explicit.
For kids in kindergarten through 8th grade, this even includes books with depictions of any kind of nudity.
God forbid they saw a wee wee or a va-jay-jay!
Fun fact: did you know that most public school students have genitals?
It’s true.
Many boys have access to a penis anytime they want – in their underwear.
Many girls have access to even naughtier bits.
And don’t even get me started on nipples! Under their shirts, the Devil’s raisins!
Thankfully the GOP legislation only prohibits depictions of these things in books. Kids are still allowed to look at their own bodies.
For now.
The bill passed the Senate in a 29-21 vote nearly along party lines, with only one Democrat supporting the proposal. It faces an uncertain future in the House where Democrats hold a one seat majority and would also require the signature of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro before becoming law.
A similar measure was passed before Democrats took the House last year but was vetoed by the previous Democratic Governor Tom Wolf.
If the new bill became law, districts would need to go through all books in their libraries and classrooms and list any that contain potentially sexual material. These would be books used in classroom instruction or available in the library that would then require parents to sign an opt-in form to grant permission for their children to access the books.
The bill defines sexually explicit as showing “acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if the person is a female, breast.”
It is beyond ridiculous.
Not only is it closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it’s a transparent attempt to quash any discussion of LGBTQ issues.
What better way to discourage certain lifestyles than to legislate them out of existence?
Schools can provide a safe place to discuss issues kids may be uncomfortable talking about with other adults. Books provide a safe way to mentally grapple with concepts and ideas of the adult world.
For example, in my 7th grade classes, we read “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konigsburg. The book is about a middle school age boy who has gone mute after a questionable interaction with an adult.
There’s nothing very graphic in the text, but among other issues it does discuss physical attraction, sexual coercion and an erection.
The book was approved by the school board and has helped foster many productive – if uncomfortable – conversations that help kids put their thoughts on these matters into words.
In my daughter’s school, in 9th grade she read “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book is about a high school girl dealing with being raped and the stigma of trying to talk about it.
The text does a marvelous job of getting into the point of view of the girl and the trauma she endures while still being humorous, touching and empowering.
Narratives like these are absolutely vital. They allow kids to relate to issues many of them have not directly experienced (but some have) and find a common language to discuss it. When we censor sex and sexuality and paint all of it as something dirty that can’t be talked about seriously, we do our children a major disservice.
Conservatives complain that talking about these things grooms kids for greater sexual activity, but that’s nonsense. Kids grow into adults many of whom become sexually active. That’s positive and healthy. Meeting that in the safe places of the classroom and books helps kids prepare for adulthood without becoming victimized.
But nothing grooms a victim more than the prohibition against talking about trauma.
Finally, let’s consider the amount of ridiculous extra work this bill demands of schools and teachers. You really expect every educator with a classroom library to go through every book in it looking for anything that someone might consider sexually explicit!? Some people might think a book about a kid with two daddies is sexually explicit. You want teachers to become your perverted morality police!? Please!
I dearly hope this bill has little chance of passing.
It’s just another example of the Republican culture war against reality.
It’s a way of insinuating that public schools are doing things they aren’t.
No school is indoctrinating kids to be sexually active. But kids are coming into contact with sexually explicit material – usually on the Internet – and they have few tools to deal with it.
Taking away public schools’ power to combat this ignorance is the worst way we could respond.
Just some things I found this morning
Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/01/politics/mike-johnson-kfile-invs/index.html
Every major medical association affirm that conversion therapy is torture and not medically sound. It doesn’t work and creates lifelong issues and problems. It is abuse. Sexual orientation is something one is born with. No matter who you find sexually attractive, ask your self when you choose that? Who sits down with a bunch of different pictures of men and women and says you know I think I will be sexually attracted to these. It is a body reaction, not a mental one. My dogs that love gravy these people understand that because they use torture methods including some put electrodes on kid’s scrotum to shock them if they get excited over male nudes. WTF, no one chooses and these people did not choose who they are attracted to and get the tingles from. The fact is they demand we all ignore reason and medical science so their holy book written 2,500 years ago when people were ignorant even of germs that caused sickness is correct. Yes they tell us, just ignore everything that makes sense and the medical people are telling us to that the desert nomads of 2,500 years ago are correct. The want an old dusty geopolitical warlord text to relate to our modern life. Why did their god not know about cell phones? Why wait to give life-saving health information to the people. Because their god only knew what the people 2,500 knew. Do they really want to claim that is the highest pinnacle of human knowledge? But what is telling is his organization tells kids / teens they don’t need to accept kids who are different. He is telling kids to not be tolerant or even accepting of LGBTQIA kids in schools. Just like he doesn’t want to accept or tolerate that there are LGBTQIA people in society he has to accept are there. Kill them all, or if you can not do that, just make don’t say gay laws that erase them from society. Hugs. Scottie
5 minute readNewly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) in the House chamber after his election at the US Capitol on October 25, 2023 in Washington, DC.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.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
In print, radio and on television, Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, frequently disparaged homosexuality, according to KFile’s review. He advocated for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire.
“Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a CNN request for comment asking about his work with Exodus.
A close collaboration
Exodus International joined ADF’s Day of Truth event in 2006 and the groups worked together on promotional material for the event, including a standalone website which pointed users to Exodus’ conversion ministries. Documents on that website cited the since-repudiated academic work in support of conversion therapy. Exodus Youth, the group’s youth wing, promoted the event within its blogs.
Videos put out by Exodus and ADF on their standalone Day of Truth website featured two Exodus staffers speaking about how teens didn’t need to “accept” or “embrace” their homosexuality. The videos featured testimonials of a “former-homosexual” and “former lesbian.”
Documents on the website were not archived online but were saved by anti-conversion therapy groups such as Truth Wins Out in 2007 and 2008. The website featured a FAQ on homosexuality provided by Exodus and sold t-shirts saying, “the Truth cannot be silenced.”
One video featured Johnson, who was later quoted in a press release on Exodus International’s website ahead of the event, saying, “An open, honest discussion allows truth to rise to the surface.”
Johnson promoted the event heavily in the media – through radio interviews, comments in newspapers, and an editorial. In interviews, he repeatedly cited the case of a teen who went to school after the Day of Silence wearing a shirt that read, “Be ashamed. Our school has embraced what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful.” The teen was suspended and ADF represented him in legal action over the incident. The case was dismissed because the teen graduated, and the court found he no longer had standing to challenge the dress code.
“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.”
Randy Scobey, a former executive vice president at Exodus, who worked on the Day of Truth in the organization’s collaboration with ADF, called the event one of his biggest regrets.
“It was bullying those who were trying to not be bullied,” said Scobey, who now lives openly as a gay man. “That was one of the public ways that the Alliance Defense Fund worked with us.”
Ties between Exodus and ADF extended beyond the event.
ADF, which has since changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted Exodus International in promotional brochures in 2004, crediting it as an organization that “played an instrumental role in helping thousands of individuals come out of homosexual behavior.”
Scobey recalled Johnson as quiet, but firm in his beliefs that homosexuality was wrong. He said Johnson and ADF provided crucial legal advice to Exodus and its “member ministries.”
“We worked with them behind the scenes a lot,” Scobey told CNN, saying the group offered them legal guidance over their ex-gay counseling. “They were very important to us as far as helping us to feel more secure legally and politically.”
Exodus International stopped sponsoring the Day of Truth event in 2010, saying it became adversarial and counterproductive.
As I previously reported, Johnson and Alliance Defending Freedom helped create the so-called Day Of Truth as an on-campus Christian counter protest to GLSEN’s annual anti-bullying Day Of Silence.
Per CNN’s new reporting, Mike Johnson collaborated with Exodus for years on the Day Of Truth.
When Exodus finally collapsed in 2013, founder Alan Chambers issued a lengthy apology and admitted on CNN that ex-gay torture had never turned any of his thousands of victims heterosexual. Not a single one. Video below.
Exodus was a steaming pile of self hating homos hitting on each other. If Johnson was working with them, he was likely fucking around with one or more of them. There is tea that needs to be spilled.
A Netflix documentary call Pray Away dropped earlier this year. Tip of the iceberg stuff. There is another (now out) gay man that spent his professional life working for the LDS church and living a lie. He is now speaking his truth. Johnson has got gay face to the level that breaks my gaydar machine to a smoking ruin. I grew up among people just like him.
Exodus is an example of that fine xstian love bullshit. This presumably straight guy and his ilk should be forced into homosexual conversion, although, I suspect that they are, in reality, self-hating (for whatever reason) Gays who tried to convince themselves and the desperate Gays and/or their families who attended conversion camps that it could be done. If by some chance you have not seen “Boy Erased” I highly recommend it. It’s a very well done feature film on this very subject. IMHO it’s a 5 star winner. “Fair Haven” is another good one. There are a number of films on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
In the Netflix documentary, Pray Away, your assertions are confirmed. There wouldn’t need to be any homosexual conversion because most of them were gayer than geese the entire time. Imagine that. Several of the leaders admit to the lie. Boy Erased was heartbreaking, and Fair Haven really drove home the isolation and self hatred that many of us have been forced to carry.
I hope his “adopted” African American son steps forward with clarification on their relationship. I have a strong suspicion Johnson does not want that to happen.
I think he’s 40/in his 40s now? The article I read said he went into Johnson’s “custody” when he was 14 and Johnson was something like 27. Or maybe younger. It was before he was married. Strong “Nestor” vibes there.
That’s not to say that a young, single man can’t adopt a teenager he wants to help, just that it’s unusual enough that there should maybe be some extra scrutiny of the situation.
Republicans were actually really smart about how they slipped this guy in under the radar. People actually believed that the chair would remain vacant because the GOP couldn’t get their shit together… but in fact, they were just holding out for a true Nazi to install.
There’s a couple of TikTok videos going around in which Louisiana locals claim that Johnson was once a well-known patron at the Baton Rouge gay bar Central Station. I’ve found no reputable reporting on this, but nothing would be surprising when it comes to closeted Republicans.
Here’s one of those TikTok clips: https://www.tiktok.com/@mam…
Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much is entirely a thing.
maybe that is why he has a covenant marriage, so he can’t get out of it.
The Apache Drive-In over in Tyler, Texas is closer. It’s long been a hookup spot for the sexually frustrated from East Texas and northwest Louisiana.
As someone pointed out he adopted a 14yo boy when he was 25 or 26 and then married a conversion therapist 2 years later.
Hmmm. Wonder how long it took him to seek out the therapy?
You seem to think he sought therapy, instead of the obvious, got a beard
Scottie's Playtime 