Christian Conservatives Out Here DEFENDING That Youth Pastor Who Dated A 14-Year-Old!

M.B.

Remember this guy? About a year ago we first learned the story of Joshua Wesely. He’s one of those “cool” youth pastors who makes Christian YouTube content, very hip with the kids. Though once you know the rest of the story, that’s awful wording…

Wesely went viral when the internet found an Instagram post in which he celebrated his girlfriend’s 18th birthday. Yes, you read that right. He wrote about then-girlfriend (now wife) Isabelle in November 2020:

“Finally 18. I can’t describe with words what you mean to me and what kind of person you are. You’ve been my best friend for four years, you are my girlfriend that I love, appreciate, respect, and admire more than anything.”

“Finally 18” is a gross enough thing to say with no context at all, but the “four years” part was what really caught everyone’s attention. It took minimal research to uncover the fact these two had been dating since she was just 14 years old!

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The year before the “finally 18” post he had put up an anniversary pic of the two together, captioning it:

“Anniversary: 3 YEARS! Thank you for the last three years my wonderful friend. You made them the most beautiful of my life and showed me what love really is. I don’t deserve you and I thank Jesus every day for this huge gift that he gave me!”

Joshua Wesely Anniversary Post Instagram
(c) Joshua Wesely/Instagram

That was when she was 17, so it means they started dating when she was 14. He was about 19 at the time, btw. It’s unclear if he knew her before that. It’s all pretty horrific.

Anyway, the story caught fire again this week, presumably after being shared on the anniversary of its first go-round. Folks tend to stay outraged when creeps face zero consequences. And the worst this guy has had to face for grooming a young girl when his job was literally to give her and her peers moral guidance? He had to take down a few IG posts to avoid negative comments. His weird anti-vax movie got some bad reviews. (Not sure if the IMDB trivia page has been “fixed” yet, but it was a scream for a while.) And no, the guy didn’t get arrested or anything. Mostly because all this was in Germany — more on that later. No consequences means, yes, folks are still pretty upset.

This time, however, the story had even more fuel for controversy as it popped up in a world where the idea of “grooming” is even more of a hot button. See, conservatives have devolved into fighting culture wars because their positions on actual pressing political topics have become all fringe and weird. They used to be against big government, now they want an authoritarian state where books get banned and women’s periods get tracked to make sure they aren’t secretly pregnant. They’re also weirdly pro-Putin now. Importantly one of their big talking points is against “groomers.” Their definition, however, seems to be anyone in the LGBTQ community who dares to show kids that being gay is OK. Drag shows are being banned all over the country. Never mind the fact these things have nothing to do with actual “grooming.”

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That brings us back to Pastor Josh here. When faced with an actual groomer, a man who picked out a young girl and started a relationship with her — the thing they say they’re upset about — a funny thing happened. A bunch of these conservative Christians have actually been defending him! Really!

Take author Mike Partyka, a conservative Christian author and YouTuber who has spent the past couple days fighting ALL COMERS to argue why Wesely is in the right. He first posted on Tuesday:

“This 24YO German youth pastor:

1) Dated this girl since she was 14YO (Germany’s age of consent).
2) Married her when she turned 18 (knowing she’s only going to get older).

He did nothing illegal, didn’t trade her in for a new 14YO, and *of course* he’s being called a pedophile.”

Yes, the age of consent in Germany, with parental consent, is 14 — assuming you are up to 19 years old, which he was. So yes, what he did is legal. Not the best argument for it being OK though, is it? Plenty of things have been legal but also morally reprehensible. Just off the top of our heads: child labor, marital rape, slavery. But Partyka has vehemently been arguing that a 19-year-old dating a 14-year-old is perfectly normal! In fact, he thinks it’s the way things should be!

“What was he ‘grooming’ her to be? A heterosexual woman? Which she was? Which is what every woman should be?”

Not even hiding the homophobia. Super cool. He even made the juxtaposition himself so no one else had to wonder. He said:

“Some Leftists were so pissed off today tweeting about a German 19YO’s legally dating a 14YO that they almost forgot to take their preschoolers to tuck dollars into a drag queen’s garter.”

Seriously… HOW CAN YOU SAY YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT GROOMING AND THEN DEFEND THIS??? This guy is calling people “groomers” in the same breath as saying 19-year-old should be allowed to date 14-year-olds! For real, just look! He continued:

“Meanwhile left-wingers are out there grooming kids to be sexual deviants because the current 5% of the population isn’t enough for them to get their rocks off steadily.”

Again, this is someone who’s using the word “grooming” to refer to “telling kids their genders and preferences are actually fine and NOT an abomination.” When faced with actual grooming, a textbook case of someone in a position of authority getting their claws into someone far too young — even dating them — and that’s morally right? When critics rightly pointed out his argument implied that as long as a pedo stayed with the young girl, the earlier sexual abuse was justified, he responded:

“My argument is that “grooming” implies setting a 14YO on a course he or she ought not to have gone, so there’s a higher burden of proof of ‘grooming’ when the end result is a trad-wife. What deviant looks at a trad-wife and thinks, ‘Something went wrong’?

The ones who did the math and saw he was dating her when she was 14 years old and he was a grown man of 19! Because GROSS! This guy is actually arguing in favor of child brides! And the LGBT community are the ones creeping him out? WTF?!?

This guy even revealed he asked out a 14-year-old when he was a college freshman, and it was fine because they were both “teens.” When someone called him out, he defended himself by saying:

“I think you’ve got a stereotypical 14YO in your head that looks, sounds, and acts way too young for the stereotypical 18YO in your head. But reality doesn’t consist entirely of stereotypes.”

No, see, she was really mature for her age… *shudder*

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When someone asked about the “teen” angle, why it was OK in his mind at 19 and not at 20, he really told on himself, saying:

“Just happened all the girls I was attracted to after those two were 18+. Would I have asked out that same college 14YO had I been was 20YO or higher? I think the fact that my age no longer ended in “-teen” would’ve been a mental roadblock for me.”

And he added:

“Plus people’s sideeye kicks in.”

There it is. Ultimately, he’s saying he wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with it if that darn ol’ society wasn’t breathing down his neck.

BTW, Mike wasn’t the only commenter we saw defending this actual grooming, but it was the most entertaining as he just kept revealing more about himself as he responded to every critique. Hilarious… but also exhausting. Because this is what we’re up against.

The next time you hear these people yelling the word “groomer” just remember how none of them spoke up about this actual grooming. Because Mike was right about one thing — it was all “leftists” we saw upset about Wesely. All the conservative culture warriors were silent about this.

There has not been one single documented case of sexual misconduct against a child at a drag show. But try googling the words “youth pastor” and NOT seeing multiple cases of guys arrested for taking advantage of kids. These are both in the past hour as of this writing:

But conservatives aren’t out there picketing to get rid of Sunday Schools or firebombing Jesus camps. Because it’s hetero, because it’s church folk. Because they don’t actually care about white guys with underage white girls. They don’t actually care that GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz was accused of sex trafficking a 17-year-old. He’s one of their guys.

They don’t care about any of that. Because when they say “grooming” it isn’t about grooming at all. All this new crusade is really about is a new way to attack the LGBT community they hate so much.

[Image via Joshua Wesely/Instagram.]

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