Comments on Youth Pastor Watch

Dan, it's all God's fault. You see, if He hadn't made teenagers so horny, none of this would be happening.

At quick glance, I thought the name of the pastor in the first story was P. Diddy.

So New York bans transfat and not Youth Pastors? Where is the protection from this horrible problem? I demand answers Bloomberg.

Is the third story supposed to shock me in some way? A youth pastor is marrying an adult woman... I don't get it. Why is this part of the Watch?

@4: Well, he is a little sketchy lookin'.

@4: I think the item was included to highlight that although New York now recognizes youth pastor marriage it's still a very contentious issue.

@4: He's been doing that lately.

Porn & hookers from your youth pastor? Friendship Baptist Church indeed.

My take on the third story is that Dan is pretending (for the humour value) that it's remarkable news that a youth pastor could have an adult relationship.

Confirm/deny, Dan?

Dan's repeated inclusion of the innocent third story in with the apparently guilty ones reminds me of the right-wing tactic of grouping homosexuality in with bestiality and necrophilia.

9 and 10 are probably both right. Good luck to Ms. Rebecca Michelle Wolf, hope you picked one of those non-child rapist youth pastors to marry.

Regarding the first story- To be fair, Dan, I get the point of these stories, but I wish you'd include only the ones tried by the court... ya know, that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. A teacher at my high school was accused by a female student of sexually abusing and using her, showing "evidence" of letters written between them. The teacher had to be fired-even after it was discovered the letters were written by the 15 yr old's boyfriend and the teacher was completely innocent.

His wife also divorced him, and he cannot teach for the rest of his life, even though he was one of the best social studies teachers I've ever encountered.

So, to summarize: I get the idea. Please stick with the guilty sickos.

marty- he can't teach for the rest of his life even though he was proven innocent? what!?

He wasn't proven innocent because there was no trial to prove he's innocent at. He could sue (didn't, far as I know) but no school system is going to hire him with a scandal attached. Imagine if he applied for, say, a youth pastor position... and Dan Savage got a hold of the old newspaper article from our small hohum town trumpeting the "molestation of innocent girls!"

But it IS amusing that the sidebar to the engagement announcement lists "Sex Offenders Moving To Rural Counties" as the paper's #1 most viewed story in the last 12 hours. And the bride's town is nothing if not rural (been there... briefly...)

You need to make a category in the archives for Youth Pastor Watch so that bloggers can link to a list of all the youth pastor incidents you've reported.

Also, It would really be great if we could browse a list of post titles in the archives instead of having to page through entire posts. It would save bandwidth.