February 5, 2024 -- SOTH Johnson feverishly burying his gay past

publication date: Feb 5, 2024
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February 5, 2024 -- SOTH Johnson feverishly burying his gay past

The Central Station in Shreveport, Louisiana bills itself as the largest alternative lifestyle nightclub in the Ark-La-Tex region. For gay patrons, leather aficionados, and drag show fans, the nightclub is certainly a virtual island of refuge in a sea of evangelical Christendom. Central Station, according to musicians and drag show performers, was also a frequent hangout in the 1990s for LSU law school student Mike Johnson, the current Bible-thumping fundamentalist Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Johnson's frequenting of Central Station in the 1990s coincided with his and later, he and his wife's, "adoption" of a 14-year-old black teen Michael T. James of Baton Rouge. After the Johnsons moved from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, their guardianship of James ceased.

Johnson was born and raised in Shreveport but he lived in Baton Rouge while attending LSU as an undergraduate and law student. Shreveport, nicknamed "Queerport" because of its thriving gay social scene amid a bastion of Christian fundamentalism, appears to have drawn Johnson to its alternative entertainment venue more so than the generally gay-friendlier New Orleans. According to some social media sources, Johnson apparently solicited sex from at least one New Orleans-based gay prostitute on multiple occasions.

Why has Johnson's alternate lifestyle not attracted more attention from the media? The answer to that question involves the mafia-like code of silence surrounding Johnson's involvement in the cult-like New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement. NAR, which has rewritten portions of the Bible to comport with its own radical Christian Dominionist dogma, has provided a shroud of secrecy to its pastors and lay officials charged with sexual abuse.

One of the founders of the NAR, Mike Bickle
of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, has stood accused of multiple incidents of "sexual immorality" over several decades. Another NAR leader, Bridget Ziegler, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, member of the Sarasota, Florida School Board, and member of the Ron DeSantis-appointed Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which exercises far-right political control over Disney World, has come under law enforcement investigation for alleged sexual assault and rape incidents. The sex scandal involves her, her husband -- ousted Florida Republican Party Chair Christian Ziegler -- and a female victim who had participated in a series of ménages-à-trois encounters.

One of the most well-known NAR leaders is Lance Wallnau, the pro-Donald Trump author of 
God's Chaos Candidate. Wallnau, who claims that gays and female prostitutes were "saved" and converted as a result of eating an anointed layer cake, believes that a Christian dominion over the nation is not possible until someone like Trump destroys the entire federal government structure. Wallnau claims that the MAGA movement is the "manifestation of an enraged demon through the populace" and that only Trump can deliver the nation from the "spirit of witchcraft in the Biden Oval Office." NAR-devotee Johnson is currently practicing the cult's belief in Christian destruction and "rebirth" in sinking the proposed federal budget agreed to by President Biden, Senate Democrats and Republicans, and House Democrats and a handful of Republicans.

Other noted NAR leaders include Trump's "spiritual adviser," the three-times-married televangelist Paula White of Apopka, Florida; Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz; former drug addict Todd White,
President of Lifestyle Christianity University in Watauga, Texas; and MorningStar Ministries television huckster Rick Joyner, who has urged Christians to purchase weapons for the impending civil war between MAGA adherents and those Americans who support the Constitution.

This editor's 2015 book, The Christian Mafia: The Rise of the Dominionist Movement and How It Threatens America's Democracy, warned of the situation now faced by a nation threatened by a Christian Dominionist theocratic state.

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