A Pittsburgh pastor who wrote a not-quite-bestselling book about his successful struggle to become a former gay has been arrested for sexually assaulting a teenage boy. On the one hand, it looks like pretty strong evidence that attempts to pray away the gay just don’t take, but I’d also like to point out that, coming right down to it, the gay is a far less problematic issue here than the teenager-raping. Dare I even suggest that if Bishop Duane Youngblood of the “Higher Call World Outreach Church” had just settled down to being a happily gay man instead of trying to force himself to be straight, it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t have done nonconsensual sex to a teen who came to him for counseling? I don’t know, I’m not the expert.
The boy, who is now 21, says that Youngblood molested him from 2009 through 2011, and that it only ended when he went to college and “told Youngblood he didn’t want to be counseled by him anymore.” Which is not to say that he doesn’t now need tons of counseling; this time, perhaps a more reputable therapist? Youngblood reportedly told the boy not to tell his mother about the “counseling,” of course, because “he didn’t want to get into trouble.” Continue reading
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