A right-wing group partnered with a convicted sex offender in holding a “Pastors Summit,” Ja’han Jones writes for MSNBC’s The ReidOut Blog.
Turning Point USA held the Pastors Summit May 24-26 in Nashville, Tennessee. Among the event’s corporate sponsors was a Christian fashion company run by Shawn Bergstrand, a registered sex offender who served time in federal prison for attempted coercion and enticement after trying to persuade a female juvenile to engage in sexual activity, the report said.
Jones writes that “Members and affiliates of the right-wing, extremist-friendly group are some of the most vocal in the crusade to malign LGBTQ people and their allies as child sex predators.
“But the group appears to be more accepting of those found to have preyed on minors than it lets on. And that hypocrisy led to a wave of criticism over the weekend.”
Bergstrand’s role in the Pastors Summit was first reported by Rolling Stone.
A TPUSA spokesman, in a statement to Rolling Stone, said the group was unaware of Bergstrand’s background but noted that he was not a speaker or organizer, and wasn’t “professing doctrine from the stage.”
“One of the core tenets of the Christian faith is forgiveness rooted in repentance. After discussing the issue with him, we believe [it] was critical to bringing him to faith,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Rolling Stone.
“He doesn’t hide from what happened, he instead posts his testimony online on his company website. TPUSA Faith will not toss away a repentant, decent person because of a mistake that happened over a decade before, or because a leftwing outlet wants to write a hit piece on the amazing work our team is doing.”
Jones notes that far-right commentators such as Candace Owens, who previously served as the group’s communications director, tried to depict Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “pedophile sympathizer” during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year, alleging that Jackson “took a uniquely soft approach to sentencing people convicted of child sex crimes.”
Jones writes that, “It's ironic given TPUSA President Charlie Kirk's recent rants about purported ‘groomers.’ Needless to say, if you’ve been baselessly lobbing allegations of child sex predation at others, it’s probably best to ensure no one you're affiliated with has been convicted of similar crimes. This rule apparently never made it into the TPUSA trainers’ manual.”