The leftist media meltdown over Christian conservative Mike Johnson replacing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives is intensifying, with Salon.com claiming his ascension is symbolic of “the incel-ization of the modern GOP”.
An “incel” is an involuntary celibate, i.e. a person incapable of finding a sexual partner. Speaker Johnson is accused of harboring “strong incel energy” not because this appears to an issue for him – he is married with four children – but because he subscribes to Christian teaching on sexual morality, which Salon’s Amanda Marcotte characterizes as “the politics of bitter sexual obsession”.
Johnson, Salon complains, once described same-sex marriage as “the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” adding “If only it were that exciting!” and accusing him of bigotry:
He’s repeatedly described homosexuality with terms like “sinful,” “destructive,” “deviant,” and “bizarre.” He, like all these bigots, compared same-sex marriage to the right of “a person to marry his pet.”
Johnson is also accused of being an incel because he opposes abortion, with Salon taking particular umbrage with his 2016 observation that “[w]hen you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.”
Johnson, for his part, has stood by all his past remarks, saying he “genuinely love[s] all people regardless of their lifestyle choices” and urging critics: “Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe, so I do not apologize for it.”
