New GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson blamed mass shootings on women having rights—I’m serious.

Every House Republican voted for him

Pastors pray over Speaker Mike Johnso

House GOP Speaker Mike Johnson—the election denying, anti-LGBTQ bigot—believes “thoughts and prayers” can stop mass shootings. We heard that on Thursday when he was asked about the brutal mass shooting in Maine that left 18 dead.  In response, the man every single House Republican voted for stated: “Prayer is appropriate at a time like this, that this senseless violence can stop.”

But that’s nothing compared to the revolting and revealing comments Johnson made in 2016 blaming women having increased rights and freedoms as the reason why we have mass shootings. As the Democratic National Committee War Room highlighted, Johnson told the audience in his 2016 sermon titled “Preserving Liberty” at the Christian Center of Shreveport that mass shootings were caused because feminism and abortion have somehow caused Americans to believe “there is no right and wrong.”

Johnson stated, “If you remember in the late ‘60s we invented things like no-fault divorce laws. We invented the sexual revolution. We invented radical feminism. We invented legalized abortion in 1973, where the state government sanctioned the killing of the unborn.” He continued on to state that these developments have led to a society where a “a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates…because we taught a whole generation, a couple of generations now, of Americans that there is no right and wrong.”

Johnson citing everything from “feminism”--which simply means the equality of the sexes in every area of society--to abortion to “no fault” divorces has a common thread. All these developments were about women having increased control of their own lives—something religious fundamentalists like Johnson abhor.

For example, the constitutional right to abortion articulated in the 1973 Roe decision was not just about reproductive rights--but also empowering women to make decisions about their own destiny. A woman—on her own—was finally empowered to decide if she wanted to give birth to a child or not.  

But Johnson has long opposed that concept—instead championing the imposition of his religious beliefs as law to oppress women. After the GOP Supreme Court struck down Roe in 2022, Johnson not only cheered the decision, he praised on social media a Louisiana law that went into effect that would imprison and even impose hard labor on any person helping women have an abortion. The GOP Rep wrote: “The right to life has now been RESTORED!” Perform an abortion and get imprisoned at hard labor for 1-10 yrs & fined $10K-$100K.”  

And in 2021, Johnson co-sponsored a bill that would have nationally banned abortions past roughly six weeks of pregnancy including in cases of rape or incest. Simply put, Johnson is saying women across the nation should be forced by law to follow his religious beliefs when it comes to their own freedom.

Johnson citing “no-fault divorces” might surprise some, but this type of divorce has long been opposed by the “Christian right” because it provided women with more agency in deciding to remain in a marriage or not. Ironically, the first governor to sign into law “no-fault divorces”--where neither party has to prove the other engaged in adultery, abuse, etc. and instead could end the marriage because of “irreconcilable differences”--was California’s Ronald Reagan in 1969.

As years went on, religious extremists began railing against “no fault divorces” as being an “evil” as bad as slavery. Their argument was that this simpler form of divorce “undermines the institution of marriage.”

In reality, as experts like Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania noted, “the introduction of no-fault divorce benefits women.” Why? For a few reasons. As a lawyer who specializes in divorce law wrote about the time before “no fault divorces,” “When it came to a contested divorce, women often found themselves at a distinct disadvantage in that they were up against male attorneys and male judges who often came to the party with a conspicuously male viewpoint.”  She added, “Fighting for standing in an almost certainly good-ol’-boys atmosphere made it probable that women would not get a fair shake in a divorce.” But no-fault divorces helped even the playing field in court.

In addition, as Stevenson explained based on research, the introduction of no-fault divorce led, “to a 30 percent decrease in domestic violence.” Not only was it easier for the abused to escape their marriages, but potential abusers are also less likely to act because they're aware that their spouses can leave them. And the data found that, “no-fault divorce also makes women less likely to commit suicide.”

Like abortion, and equal rights for women via the feminist movement, “no-fault divorces” have empowered women. That is something religious extremists oppose. And that is what Johnson is.

In fact, he is gleefully telling us that. On Thursday night, Johnson appeared on Fox News’s Sean Hannity show where he proudly declared that his views on policy are based on his extreme religious beliefs. The newly elected Speaker told Hannity that when people ask, “’What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?'” I said, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview.” He added, “That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”

Johnson is telling us he unapologetically follows the Bible which tells him that women are inherently subservient to men. For example, as the New Testament states in 1 Timothy 2:10-13: “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

As the Bible explains, the women must be silent because of her own fault: "For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided [she] continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty."

And then there’s the Biblical mandate that, "Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church," found in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. 

I don’t mean to unfairly cherry pick from the Bible—there are equally oppressive portions concerning women to be found in the texts of all three Abrahamic faiths. But the new Speaker of the House who is second in line of succession to be President has told us his views on policy are based on the Bible.

This is why “MAGA Mike Johnson”—as Rep Matt Gaetz proudly called the new Speaker--blames women’s rights for mass shootings—as opposed to the male shooter or easy access to weapons.

Again, this is the man that every single House Republican voted for to be Speaker.

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