Abby Johnson Blasts CPAC: Not 1 Keynote Speaker Addressed Attacks on Traditional Marriage
It almost seems quaint to remember a time when the sanctity of marriage was ground zero for the culture wars.
Now with the proliferation of radical gender theory that advocates puberty blockers for children and double mastectomies for healthy but gender-confused teenage girls, same-sex marriage seems so trivial — except that it’s not, at least according to Abby Johnson.
Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, railed against Conservative Political Action Conference keynote speakers for intentionally dropping the issue for the 2021 agenda.
“Transgenderism is running rampant through CPAC and we’re not talking about traditional families, we’re not talking about traditional marriage …. because we have compromised to this false sense of diversity,” Johnson said, according to LifeSite News.
“They haven’t had one keynote speaker stand up there and talk about the attack on traditional marriage,” Johnson said to a breakout panel discussion at CPAC last weekend.
“And they can’t. Because some of their sponsors are gay conservatives,” she charged.
This year’s conference took place in Orlando, Florida, between Thursday night and Sunday with its agenda featuring speakers such as former President Donald Trump, Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and many other prominent voices on the right.
According to LifeSite News, organizations such as Log Cabin Republicans and Atheists for Liberty also had a presence at the conference which seemed to fuel Johnson’s outrage as she joined former White House advisor Jenna Ellis in Sunday’s discussion.
The most prominent speech of the three-day event was delivered by Trump who brought down the house with his call for a return to Judeo-Christian values and a focus on the greatness of America.
“We are committed to defending innocent life and to upholding the Judeo-Christian values of our Founders and of our founding,” he said, although he did not mention a return to traditional marriage values.
For her part, Johnson also pointed out the “attack on Judeo-Christian beliefs in this country” but lamented that they were not “addressing it at our country’s largest conservative conference.”
“Because what? Because we want sponsorships to roll in?” Johnson asked rhetorically. “Come on.”
“We have a problem in the conservative movement,” she later said, “because we are allowing diversity to trump Jesus Christ.”
One of the surprising political demographics Trump was able to court during his presidency was a growing number of conservative homosexuals, which became something even The New York Times couldn’t ignore.
It’s possible that organizers of the annual conservative event sought to solidify that support going forward, or that they simply see the more immediate threats to liberty that are still on the table, unlike same-sex marriage which has been codified into law and settled in much of the culture.
The Western Journal has reached out to conference organizer American Conservative Union for comment but has not yet received a response. We will update this article if and when we do.
Still, Johnson has a point about CPAC forgetting one of the key issues that used to drive its reputation for being a bulwark against the radical left that seems to have been sacrificed to avoid offense.
“We are too worried about offending our neighbor and we should be 100 percent worried about offending the heart of God,” she said, calling on religious leaders to also cast off worries about offending their congregations.
“We have a problem with the conservative movement,” Johnson continued, “and the only way to bring back truth — big “T” truth — in the conservative movement is to focus less on diversity and to focus more on Jesus Christ.”
Going back decades, Christians have repeatedly warned about the “slippery slope” as each new immorality becomes accepted, yet they throw up their hands when such predictions come true.
When the attack on marriage began with the proliferation of no-fault divorce laws, churches should have pushed back against anything that made it easier for couples to part ways without showing any real cause.
(That’s, of course, not to say that divorce isn’t appropriate for situations that involve addictions or abuse, but being able to sever the union without showing cause logically leads to more divorce.)
Now that simple acceptance of homosexuality has turned into a push for acceptance of the radical gender ideology, Christians seem to again be ceding the territory that led to this situation in the first place rather than continuing the fight.
Families are the building block of society, and thousands of years of human history guided by God and nature have demonstrated that the nuclear family structure built on a married mother and father is best for bringing up children.
This issue has not become less important because a major battle has been lost, but rather has gained importance as the ripple effect from the destruction of traditional marriage ushers in an ever-escalating fight against Judeo-Christian values.
Johnson is absolutely correct — the conservative movement should welcome all who want to join, but not to the exclusion of what’s best for society and commanded by the Creator.
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