ABC News Goes After Mike Johnson for Attending ‘Controversial’ Dance Event With Daughter Years Ago

ABC News generated controversy after attempting to portray a Christian event that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) attended with his daughter nearly a decade ago as a  “controversial formal dance event.” 

ABC News uncovered a news segment from ntv, a German news outlet, showing Johnson attending a Christian “purity ball” in 2015. 

“This looks like a wedding,” a German news reporter said in the segment. “But they are not bride and groom — but rather father and … daughter.” ABC attempted to portray the event as “controversial” in a Wednesday article.

“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,” the outlet wrote. 

A purity ball is a family-centered event, usually featuring a father-daughter dance and encouraging sexual abstinence before marriage. ABC described purity balls as a subject of intense debate within Christian circles. 

“Since growing in popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s,” the outlet wrote, “purity balls and purity pledges have faced increased scrutiny from both inside and outside the Christian community, ranging from criticism that the practice places too much of a burden on young women to accusations that the balls themselves objectify young girls.”

“At a typical event, fathers and their teenage daughters dress in formal ball attire for a night that involves dinner and dancing and culminates with the daughter signing a pledge to her father to abstain from dating and to remain sexually abstinent until marriage,” ABC wrote. 

ABC highlighted comments made by Kelly Johnson, the speaker’s wife, and a Christian counselor, who spoke out against contraception in an interview with the German outlet. 

“We don’t talk to her about contraception,” she said. “Sex before marriage is simply out of the question.”

The ABC article was bashed by many on social media, with one user replying on X, “ABC hard at work, as always, trying to undermine and discredit a powerful conservative and his family.”

Another user noted the recent gay sex scandal at the Capitol, and Democratic support of pornographic books for children, before joking, “Media: ‘BREAKING: Disturbingly, Speaker Johnson has told his underage children not to have sex.’”

 Johnson is a Southern Baptist, and has received intense scrutiny over his Christian faith. In a November article from NPR, titled, “Speaker Johnson’s close ties to Christian right — both mainstream and fringe,” highlighted Johnson’s faith and beliefs, and attempted to connect him to Pastor Dutch Sheets, who they alleged was responsible for organizing “Christians for January 6th.”

In October, HBO host Bill Maher compared Johnson to the mass shooter suspected of killing nearly 20 people in Maine, because the shooter “heard voices,” and former White House press secretary and MSNBC host Jen Psaki called Johnson a “religious fundamentalist,” in October. 

For his part, Johnson has defended his faith in God, saying that the Bible is his “worldview” since being elected as speaker.

“If you truly believe in the Bible’s commands, and you seek to follow those, it’s impossible to be a hateful person because the greatest command in the Bible is that you love God with everything you had, and you love your neighbor as yourself,” Johnson said.

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