The twisted fantasy behind Mike Johnson’s “purity” pledge

Several years ago, when many Democratic strategists were demanding that the party embrace the tenets of the Christian Right in order to win over the salt of the earth, Real Americans (whom they insisted were essential to a legitimate governing majority), the media briefly reported on some of their more extreme rituals. They looked at “purity culture” practices such as gay conversion “therapy”, masturbation abstinence and “purity balls” which feature a pseudo-wedding ceremony between a father and daughter. 

All these practices were disturbing enough that they pretty much went underground after being publicly exposed and the culture wars turned to their next battlefield, the latest being the cruel bullying of transgender teens and the banning of gay literature in schools. 

There was something particularly creepy about the purity balls. TIME Magazine reported on one of the balls back in 2012, where girls as young as eight or nine don long white dresses and listen to their fathers “promise ‘before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity,’ and to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a culture of chaos and by so doing guide their daughters as well.” He promises to protect her “purity of mind, body, and soul” and the girls are given lockets with a key, which the father keeps until the girl gets married at which point they turn it over to her husband. (I guess chastity belts are hard to find these days.) Here is a scene-setting description of the event: 

After dinner comes the ballet performance, when seven tiny ballerinas in white tulle float in; then seven older dancers carry in a large, heavy wooden cross, which they drape in white, with a crown of thorns. Four of the five Wilson daughters are among the dancers, and they offer a special dance to their father, to the music of Natalie Grant: Your faith, your love And all that you believe Have come to be the strongest part of me And I will always be your baby …

Then Randy and his friend Kevin Moore stand in front of the cross, holding up two large swords, points crossed. Fathers and daughters process beneath the swords to kneel; the girls place a white rose, symbolizing abstinence, at the base of the cross while the fathers offer a quiet blessing.

I don’t know if these purity balls have completely gone out of fashion but you don’t hear about them much anymore. At least not until last week, when this story from ABC News showed up in our news feeds:

Years before Mike Johnson would ascend to No. 2 in the presidential line of succession, a German TV news outlet profiled the future speaker of the House and his then-teenage daughter.

“This looks like a wedding,” a news reporter says in German in a 2015 n-tv news segment that was unearthed by ABC News. “But they are not bride and groom — but rather father and … daughter,” the reporter adds, referring to Johnson and his then-13-year-old daughter, Hannah.

According to ABC News, the segment shows him nodding along as his daughter Hannah vows “to make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future husband, and my future children … to a lifetime of purity, including sexual purity.” That’s quite a pledge to require a 13-year-old to take. (Mrs. Johnson is shown in the film saying that they don’t even discuss contraception because premarital sex is completely out of the question.) 

Is it at all a surprise that Mike Johnson engaged in this bizarre practice? Of course not. It’s a wonder nobody thought to ask him about it before. After all, he was already on record as a staunch believer in purity culture when he said that he installed so-called accountability software called “Covenant Eyes” on his and his teenage son’s devices so they can catch each other if they ever view pornography. He and his wife have a “covenant marriage” which makes divorce very difficult (and which Johnson tried to make into law when he was in the Louisiana legislature.) He even says God told him he’s Moses chosen to pull Republicans together.

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a fundamentalist with a theocratic agenda that he’s been pursuing for many years. And like so many other Christian nationalist leaders, he’s made common cause with a man one would think a true believer like Johnson would think was the antichrist. Has the man who forced his little girl to take that purity pledge ever seen this?

Johnson obviously doesn’t care about any of that. He worked with other leaders of the Christian Right to help Trump’s coup attempt in 2020 and raced down to Mar-a-Lago the minute he got the speakership to endorse Donald Trump immediately. 

As the New Republic pointed out, Johnson has been groomed for power for years by some of the most influential right-wing organizations in America, including the secretive Council for National Policy which “journalist Anne Nelson, author of the book on the Council for National Policy, Shadow Network, has described … as ‘the secret hub of the radical right.’ She has also described Johnson as their ‘creation.'” They all, including Mike Johnson, clearly see Donald Trump as a useful tool and nothing more. 

Johnson said during a Fox News interview, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: 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 certainly checks all the boxes, even going so far as the strange rituals of fundamentalist purity culture. 

But you know what they say about power corrupting even the most pious of believers. Mike Johnson aligned himself with the most morally corrupt politician to ever run for the presidency and he doesn’t seem in the least bit conflicted by it. Clearly, he didn’t take any of his purity pledges seriously at all.