ABC News Wednesday published a hit piece against House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, for encouraging his then-minor daughter to remain abstinent back in 2015.
“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,” wrote the controversial article’s author Will Steakin:
“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.
Steakin used negative language to describe the “purity ball” that took place one year before the now-Speaker was first elected to Congress.
The ABC News reporter called the father-daughter dinner “a controversial formal dance event, popular among some conservative Christians, that gained notoriety in the early 2000s.”
He went on to claim that pro-purity events have garnered criticism “that the practice places too much of a burden on young women” and “accusations that the balls themselves objectify young girls.”
Steakin then quoted far-left ex-Evangelical author Linda Kay Klein who wrote a book titled “Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free.”
Klein told Steakin that
purity culture attempts to create this eternal girlhood among girls — you never really grow up, you never really have headship over your own life. You ultimately are there to be guided by and to support and to champion and to be led by somebody greater than you: a man.
However, a report from the Biden administration – of all places – appeared to contest this notion that teenage girls who choose chastity make this decision out of fear or because they are “controlled.”
Ben Johnson of The Washington Stand wrote Sunday that according to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, “the most common reason females in their teens say they have not had sexual relations is that premarital sex violates their ‘religion or morals.’”
From the CDC report:
In 2015–2019, the main reason most commonly chosen by female teenagers for not having had sex, among the options provided, was ‘against religion or morals” (32.5%), followed by “haven’t found the right person yet” (25.3%), “other reason” (16.2%), and “don’t want to get pregnant” (15.9%).
“Among male teenagers, the most commonly chosen main reason for not having had sex was ‘haven’t found the right person yet’ (35.3%),” the report continued.
Per The Washington Stand, the study also found that “living with two biological or adoptive parents also made teenage girls 60% less likely to have sex before the age of 17.”
“Wow, imagine caring about your daughter so much that you encourage her to wait until she’s in a loving marriage and can handle family responsibilities,” The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett wrote in reply to Steakin on X (formerly Twitter). “Sounds like a fantastic father.”
“ABC News and their ilk have no shame,” said CatholicVote Director of Governmental Affairs Tom McClusky. “They have made it clear they have no problem attacking teenage girls if it furthers their perverted agenda. An agenda that only Jeffery Epstein could approve of.”
Some observers were also quick to point out the apparent silence of ABC News on matters of gross sexual immorality.
“ABC News published a piece decrying Mike Johnson and his daughter for attending a purity ball,” a RedState writer noted on X. However, “ABC News did not publish a piece decrying the ‘twink’ staffer who filmed himself having anal sex in the Capitol Building.”
This is not the mainstream media’s first attempt to smear the devoutly Christian Johnson and his children.
Early last month, Rolling Stone published an article in which author Daniel Kreps attacked Johnson for using the well-known application Covenant Eyes to prevent his then-minor son from accessing online pornography.
As CatholicVote then reported, “Kreps called the successful software ‘creepy’ and compared it to ‘Big Brother.’”
Covenant Eyes “helped over 1.5 million people quit their pornography addictions since its original launch in 2000,” CatholicVote noted.
Rolling Stone was quickly taken to task on X by mystery author Daniel Friedman.
“What [Johnson] actually said is that he installed accountability software on his son’s devices to keep his son from using porn, and he put the same software on his own devices to show his son he wasn’t using porn either,” Friedman wrote.
“But Rolling Stone is a dishonest publication,” he added.
