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In a resurfaced clip from 2022, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted to monitoring his 17-year-old son's internet activity for pornography. Johnson made this revelation during a speech at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana, where he discussed the "War on Technology."
During his talk, Johnson disclosed that he and his son had installed "accountability software" known as Covenant Eyes on their electronic devices to discourage visits to explicit websites.
Covenant Eyes conducts scans of all online activities on various devices and provides a weekly report to an "accountability partner." Johnson revealed that his son, Jack, currently serves as his accountability partner.
You can hear what Johnson said in the video below.
Johnson said:
“It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it."
“It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17."
"So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice."
"I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”
In 2020, Johnson connected the software to his Facebook account, endorsing it as a valuable tool to safeguard children from what he referred to as the "darkness of the culture." He also actively shared a refer-a-friend link, which provided him with a $20 reward for each successful referral.
The disclosure of Johnson's utilization of this software holds particular importance, considering his extensively documented fixation on matters related to the sexual lives of LGBTQ+ individuals. He has consistently championed the idea of criminalizing homosexual acts, voiced his opposition to same-sex marriage, and lent his support to discredited attempts aimed at altering the sexual orientation of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Many were disturbed by the revelation and criticized Johnson's actions in the process.
It's noteworthy that Covenant Eyes is the same software that was used by anti-LGBTQ+ activist Josh Duggar, who is currently in prison for possession of child pornography.
During Duggar's trial, prosecution lawyers revealed that he had found a technical workaround to download child pornography without alerting his wife, who was originally set to receive notifications.
Duggar, a former employee of the Family Research Council (FRC), an organization known for its anti-LGBTQ+ stance, believed that anti-discrimination measures allowed "child predators" to threaten "the safety and innocence of a child." He faced charges related to molesting and sexually abusing his younger sisters.
In a similar vein, Acton Bowen, a Christian youth pastor from Alabama who was convicted of sexually abusing six children, was required by the board of advisors at his organization, Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries, to install the Covenant Eyes software on his own computer.