With all the time they spend bashing homosexuals, you might think that conservative lawmakers hate gays in real life. However, as Newt Gingrich has shown us, it's entirely possible to treat your lesbian sister like everyone else in the family while advocating for policies that discriminate against her — if you're a raging hypocrite, that is. Alabama politician Bill Johnson has now joined the long list of Republican politicians who publicly attack gays even though privately they have no problem them (or perhaps are homosexual themselves). It's been revealed that Johnson, who was a top state official for six years before running for governor, has secretly donated sperm to many women in New Zealand, including some who are in same-sex relationships.


According to Politico, last year Johnson ran for governor as a conservative Christian who opposed gay marriage. He earned only 2 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, and after the election he moved to New Zealand to help with earthquake recovery. Now the New Zealand Herald reports that he was also working to help a conspicuously large number of women become mothers. Though fertility clinics in the country say men shouldn't provide sperm donations to more than four families, Johnson was in contact with at least nine women and has already impregnated three.

When the paper caught up with Johnson as he was leaving a lunch with one of the women he impregnated, he explained that his wife had spurred his sudden interest in sperm donation, saying being a biological father is,

"A need that I have ... I am married to the most beautiful woman in the world. When I married her I knew we couldn't have any more children. She had a hysterectomy 10 years ago. There is nothing my wife would want to give me more in the world than a child of my own."


He added:

"Every person who is a father and a mother knows why I am doing this. If life's circumstances had dealt me a different hand I wouldn't be doing this. It is not the hand that life has dealt my wife ... Reproduction and having children is as basic a human need as eating."

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But despite his confidence that his wife Kathy would support his plan, he decided not to tell her or the prospective mothers about his prolific sperm donations. When asked if Kathy knew, Johnson said, "She does now," but it turns out she was surprisingly uncool about his efforts to create a colony of little Johnsons on the other side of the globe. She told the Alabama Press-Register, "This is a really, really difficult time for our family ... I'm still in disbelief and very hurt, and our family has a lot of healing to do."

Before accusing the Herald of illegally obtaining information about him, then admitting the paper didn't do anything wrong, Johnson said he was trying to get his family to move to New Zealand, and planned to be as involved in his babies' lives as their mothers would allow him to be. A number of the women Johnson was involved with are lesbians, but he said he didn't know their "relationship status." When the paper asked if it mattered, he said, "I'm not going to answer that question."


Thinking that he could create a some kind of international Brady Bunch situation with his wife and nine other women after he lied to all of them may make Johnson sound like an idiot, but there is one more shocking twist in this story: He's a member of Mensa. Though, just because Jonson could beat most of us at Scrabble doesn't mean he isn't a bonehead.

Sperm-Donor Kept Wife In The Dark [New Zealand]

Report: Alabama Pol's Secret Life Abroad [Politico]


Earlier: Newt Gingrich's Lesbian Sister Urges You To Vote For Obama