The Media Research Center just hates it when new House Speaker Mike Johnson’s right-wing extremism is called out. Given its insistence that there’s absolutely nothing wrong or creepy about Johnson sharing porn “accountability software” with his teenage son, you can imagine the uproar when another bit of creepiness involving his children was pointed out. Tim Graham whined loud and long in a Dec. 21 post:
First, the secular liberal media mocked House Speaker Mike Johnson for working with his son to avoid sinful sexual Internet sites. Now ABC News is piling on the Jesus-freak thing with an old video of Johnson and his daughter at a purity ball. Here’s the headline online:
[“Speaker Mike Johnson and daughter were profiled attending ‘purity ball’ in 2015 German TV news segment”]ABC reporter Will Steakin reported that they suddenly “unearthed” an old 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.
The German news segment documented Johnson and his family preparing for and then attending a purity ball, a controversial formal dance event, popular among some conservative Christians, that gained notoriety in the early 2000s
“Notoriety”?? Steakin wrote the German story “shows Johnson’s daughter vowing to him to live a life of purity, as well as her signing a pledge.” The congressman and his wife Kelly were both interviewed for that German segment.
Note that Graham’s headline is a lie — at no point does he quote the ABC segment as calling purity balls “notorious.” That’s something he invented in an attempt to falsely conflate “notoriety” with “notorious.”
Graham then suggested that the only possible alternative to “purity balls” for teen girls was getting pregnant or becoming transgender:
No expert takes an opposing expert view that teenagers delaying sexual activity or observing abstinence until marriage results in personal and societal benefits: fewer teenage pregnancies and healthier marriages.
If a member of Congress took their teenage daughter to a Drag Queen Story Hour or pushed them into “gender-affirming care” to try and become a boy, ABC wouldn’t find that “controversial” or “notorious.” It would be painted as admirable, as good parenting.
Graham then went back in time to whine about a 2021 ABC segment in which, according to him, “conservatives are ‘transphobic’ and liberals are never ‘controversial.'” Graham offered no evidence that this assessment of conservatives is in any way incorrect.
An anonymously written Dec. 26 post whined further about the segment, hyping a letter written to ABC by MRC chief Brent Bozell:
Recently, we reported on an ABCNews.com hit piece on House Speaker Mike Johnson, and how a German TV network reported in 2015 that he took his teenage daughter Hannah to a purity ball, which ABC described as “a controversial formal dance event, popular among some conservative Christians, that gained notoriety in the early 2000s.” Democratic members of the House with “trans kids” were treated with great respect and the term “controversial” was reserved for the conservatives insisting boys were boys and girls were girls, and there was no real in-between.
MRC founder and president L. Brent Bozell III has written a letter to ABC News President Kim Godwin — last noticed at a celebratory dinner for Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — lamenting that ABC would engage in this kind of religious bigotry, attacking a Christian family for paying tribute to the idea of delaying sex until marriage.
The letter insisted that purity balls aren’t creepy at all:
We write to object to an article attacking House Speaker Mike Johnson and his daughter Hannah for engaging in “notoriety” when he took her to a “controversial” event when she was 13.
At issue was a “Purity Ball,” a common celebration within the evangelical community to honor the ideal of chastity. The father aims to model how a Christian husband and father should behave. The daughter often signs a pledge to remain chaste until marriage. The daughter wears white to symbolize purity.
[…]ABC could have, and should have, found Christian leaders to explain why many Christians believe in the importance of chastity and the beauty of the Purity Ball. But you chose the opposite. ABC selected as its expert someone who wrote a book touting how she “broke free” of “purity culture,” and argued Christian parents who teach their children to pursue abstinence are pushing “eternal girlhood” within a patriarchy.
Continuing the attack, ABC found another ex-Christian author who “sparked” the purity movement, but then “pulled his once-popular book from circulation and has apologized for any role it may have played in causing harm.” This article is pure religious bigotry.
We call on ABC News to retract this story and apologize to Speaker Johnson, his wife Kelly, and their children.
Only a society that rejects virtue views the pursuit of chastity and holiness as controversial. Perhaps that is why no society on Earth endorses ABC’s world view.
The letter was co-signed by the MRC’s usual collection of fellow travelers. No explanation was provided to defend the viewpoint that purity balls are only about “chastity” and “beauty,” and no reason was provided to back up Bozell’s demand that ABC retract a factually accurate report.