Yes, new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is anti-gay, opposed decriminalizing gay sex and opposed same-sex marriage. It’s also true that polls show many or most Republicans now disagree with him on these issues (55% of Republicans supported marriage equality in 2021 per Gallup, falling back to 49% in 2023 amid unease over bio males in women’s sports/locker rooms and schools pushing trans identities on gender-nonconforming kids, which, for some, seemed to confirm “slippery slope” fears). Nevertheless, the GOP was hijacked by 8 House members of the ultra-MAGA variety, and they were able to force their will on the Republican’s slim majority because the Speaker must be elected by a majority of the House (not the party) and Democrats were all no votes against any Republican.
If a handful of Democrats had bucked their party’s top-down lock-step tactics and chosen just not to be present for the House vote that ousted the more moderate (certainly on culture-war issues) Kevin McCarthy, then McCarthy could have kept a majority of the House without the 8 insurgents. But that’s not how the game is played in Washington.
Here’s an interesting X thread discussing the awful situation of the Republicans held captive by the anti-gay right (again, a minority of today’s GOP), while the Democrats are captive of the LGBTQ gender ideologues (trans the kids, no guardrails) left.
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