Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted "conversion therapy," a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.

Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson's media appearances from that timespan.

Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called "ex-gay" movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.

The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the "pain and hurt" his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.

At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.

For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the "Day of Truth" - a counterprotest to the "Day of Silence," a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.

The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the "dangerous" gay lifestyle.