New House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) received an award and gave a keynote address at a December 5 Christian nationalist conference, where speakers and other award recipients spread virulent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and warned of an ongoing “spiritual war” against “demonic” forces.

The gala, hosted by the National Association for Christian Lawmakers — a “faith based para-legislative organization” that produces model legislation for statehouses across the country — featured a range of right-wing media figures who have pushed extreme anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and Christian nationalist rhetoric. Johnson’s address to the NACL comes as Christian nationalism is growing in popularity among Republican voters and dangerous rhetoric about “demonic” influence and “spiritual war” proliferates among right-wing media figures. 

Johnson, who opened his remarks thanking NACL “for not allowing the media in” to the event, went on to compare himself to Moses. Throughout the evening, right-wing media figures spread bigotry and misinformation about LGBTQ people and warned of “spiritual war”:

• Right-wing televangelist Andrew Wommack also received an award, using the opportunity to declare that transgender people are “demonic” and that being gay “is not a godly lifestyle.” Wommack also claimed that “we are in the latter days,” citing public support for trans people. 
• Wommack said, “It’s a spiritual battle. … I can't see any other justification for why people can’t even figure out whether they’re a male or a female — that’s demonic.” He then noted that “maybe some of you as politicians can’t get by with saying that” because they have to run for reelection, but “this is demonic that people are taking our children and putting them on hormone blockers and giving them sex reassignment surgery and putting pornography into the school system.” 
• Right-wing radio host E.W. Jackson, who has a long history of spreading bigoted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and is currently running for president, said that he refuses “to use the word gay because … there is nothing happy, joyful, and carefree about being a homosexual in rebellion against almighty God.” Jackson also said that he will not “use the term transgender” because “you cannot transition from being a man to a woman or a woman to a man. God made you who you are … I don’t care how dressed up and drag queen you are.” Jackson also claimed that Judith Butler — a prolific scholar on the theory of gender who is nonbinary — “used to be a man [and] is now a woman, I guess.”
• While giving his keynote, Johnson told NACL board member and radio host Bill Federer that he is “such a fan of yours, Bill,” and that he has Federer’s book America's God and Country “on the top of my desk” in the speaker’s office. Federer has a history of spouting anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion rhetoric, including earlier this year at Turning Point USA’s “Pastors Summit” where he claimed there is a split between Christians going in the “evil direction” by staying silent on abortion and LGBTQ issues and those going in “God’s direction” and speaking out against them.
• During another speech at the event, Patriot Mobile executive Leigh Wambsganss said that “this war that we’re fighting is not political; it is spiritual. And we will fight this spiritual war, whether it be at the school house, with the school boards; whether it be in your county house where they’re trying to take over the DAs and all of our important county judges; at our statehouse, … at the U.S. House, and all the way to the White House.” Patriot Mobile is a far-right Christian cell phone company that is allied with right-wing media figures and has connections to figures promoting the so-called “Seven Mountain Mandate,” or “the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key ‘mountains’ of American life, including business, media, government and education.”