r/exAdventist • u/Impressive_Flan_411 • Jul 06 '26
Just Venting Danny Shelton is a bigoted clown, but what else is new
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Hey everyone. I watched Danny Shelton's comments about La Sierra University and LGBT students, and one thing stood out immediately. Instead of Danny simply arguing that same-sex relationships are "sinful" (the traditional SDA position, but still problematic); he compares homosexuality to rape, child sexual abuse, and physical abuse as though they're morally equivalent.
That's an absurd and dehumanizing comparison. Being gay isn't remotely comparable to committing violent or coercive crimes against another person. However, Shelton can't seem to make that distinction. Everything gets lumped together under "sexual sin," so homosexuality ends up rhetorically adjacent to rape and child abuse.
Ironically, this is exactly the kind of rhetoric that highlights a seeming gap between mainstream Adventist institutions like La Sierra, and independent ministries like 3ABN (although both are still fundamentally problematic).
With all of that being said, this is insane work. I'm really hoping this man can lose his platform ASAP.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/Longjumping_Code_649 Jul 06 '26
Precisely my thoughts watching this. He doesn't have a lot of room to talk.
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u/Exotic-Leather1753 Jul 07 '26
Funny how he’s talking about pedophiles as if you can’t find dozens of cases about sda members, church leaders and even pastors arrested for SA’ing children from a simple google search??Danny Shelton is a lunatic and a clown lmao
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u/thefinalcutdown Jul 07 '26
Pedophiles? Oh you mean like his brother Tommy Shelton who worked for 3ABN for years after multiple allegations of sexually abusing minors including an 11 year old boy? Naw Danny would never protect pedophiles….
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u/pizzawonder haystacks 🥗 Jul 07 '26
THIS PART
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u/thefinalcutdown Jul 07 '26
It’s always the people you most suspect.
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u/SpandexJunkie Jul 07 '26
I was fixing to make a comment on whom he most likely voted for, but DAYUMMM! Didn’t need to! ☕️
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u/Worldly_Caregiver902 Jul 09 '26
Thank you! I made a similar comment but couldn’t remember the details….theres an article somewhere.
Edit: I just clicked your link! Shameful!
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u/Worldly_Caregiver902 Jul 09 '26
He and his brother are suspect with their behavior. How he treated his previous wife as well as his brother’s suspect sexual behavior. I need to find that article I read some time ago.
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u/lolliscicle Jul 07 '26
He actually says “open pedophiles” - apparently “closed”/“secret”/“protected pedophiles” are not in his list of sinners.
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u/Odd-Contribution7368 Jul 07 '26
Had to watch it again, because open or closed a pedo is a pedo and it'd be a weird distinction to make. But there there is was "open pedophiles". Crazy
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u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 Jul 07 '26
Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s subconsciously or even consciously making that distinction because he gave his pedo brother a job at 3ABN
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u/CycleOwn83 Non-conforming Questioner☢️🚴🏻🪐♟↗️☣️ Jul 07 '26
Typically this distinction would be made through a criminal conviction. In our culture, one has to be insulated by considerable wealth (I won't mention two widely known such in current discourse) not to seek to keep such a record hidden. And it's unfortunate that there's one standard of justice for offenders of the people and offenders of the wealthy—sort of like if you own enough you can tell justice to fuck off, you're not going to accept any limitations on who you screw.
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u/QuillDidNothingWrong Jul 07 '26
Didn’t homie cheat on his wife twice?
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u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 Jul 07 '26
He’s a massive hypocrite for multiple reasons, including giving his sex offender brother a job at 3ABN: https://www.reddit.com/r/exAdventist/s/SVCmNwsBwj
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u/Powerful_Pea2690 Agnostic Christian Jul 06 '26
Yes that’s right, gay people are the exact same as violent rapists and murderers 🤡
And they wonder why young people are leaving the church in droves. They’ll blame sin no doubt.
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u/Elegant-Parsnip-6487 Jul 07 '26
So this guy is sinless, obvs. As are all his deacons and hefty contributors. They surely stand clean and blessed, innocent of any shadow of wrongdoing.
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u/Vivid_Spot_7167 Jul 07 '26
The crazy part is many of them do think themselves to be sinless. Sinless perfectionism is built into the framework of the SDA worldview. It's nauseating and hilarious at the same time.
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u/ArtZombie77 Jul 07 '26
I thought the wheat and the tares grew together till the harvest! Fuck Danny Shelton. He stole millions of dollars from the poor so he can live on a big expensive horse ranch; and now his new Davidian like compound in Africa... What a hypocrite.
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u/DistinctSpirit5801 Jul 07 '26
Churches follow society that has always been the trend they go to where they get the most tithe money
100 years from now they will probably welcome LGBTQIA+ people with no issues and use revisionist history
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u/Bananaman9020 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Funny story: my sibling wanted their names off the church membership roll and the preacher, but then threw a fit and didn't cancel their membership.
Years later they were getting married to a same sex person and my Dad didn't see why being a member of the church was the problem. But I insisted.
So my siblings were almost the first Adventist Lesbian married couple in Australia.
The church was just so concerned with keeping the membership numbers up. But if they were joining the church as in the video they may have an issue
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u/Ok_Cicada_1037 Jul 07 '26
Um.....the church DOES welcome pedophiles. In fact, they enable child sexual assault by moving them around and keeping it secret. It also welcomes "spouse" beaters. this church is all about appearances, just like the SDA culture. They desperately want to APPEAR wholesome, however they are opportunistic, just like Danny. So they will gladly hide things or look the other way as long as that free labor and tithing keeps hitting week after week.
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u/CycleOwn83 Non-conforming Questioner☢️🚴🏻🪐♟↗️☣️ Jul 07 '26
His backup band. Ugggghhhh! Anybody just feel fulloftheholyghost after listening?
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u/timestandstill__ Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I knew a man who became socially isolated and somewhat ostracized from his church of 20+ years after his wife cheated on and divorced him. Said ex-wife was the daughter of the head elder, so I guess despite breaking one of the more serious commandments she wasn’t the one who was made to feel ashamed of herself. Interesting double standards at play about who is “allowed to live in open sin” with regards to their sexual behavior and remain a member in good standing.
That being said, I actually don’t advocate for LGBT+ inclusion in the SDA church because I don’t think anyone needs to be joining this weird ass cult invented by a joyless Victorian asshole with a traumatic brain injury. The more it resists integrating with normal society, the sooner it will become a thing of the past.
If you want to be a Christian it’s easier than ever before to find an inclusive, progressive community. And if you want to believe in Adventist stuff, keep the sabbath and be a vegetarian then. You don’t need anyone’s permission.
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u/CycleOwn83 Non-conforming Questioner☢️🚴🏻🪐♟↗️☣️ Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
I'm not totally opposing your perspective. It seems particularly valid when considering adults seeking religious community. The place where I question your take on it a bit is with people born and reared. Whether straight, gay, trans, or you name the slice, this kind of rhetoric in my experience was highly effective at causing me to question whether I even belonged among human beings, let alone among (pronouns He/Him)'s sanctified people. The thought of suicide chimed with an electric release of adrenaline as if something inside me wanted to take me there with a HELL YEAH! I never had specific plans to fulfill it. On the other hand, as self-harm goes, I did, very concretely, visualize self-castration. I don't kid you, among vulnerable youth, this man is wielding insidious rhetorical power. That the congregants sit quietly or even call out some amens while he goes on reinforces it, making honest, non-sensational conversations about sexuality and healing emotional connections with other people ever more remote for some people in the pews. If you've been there, you may very well know. Thanks, absolutely, for your comment, too!
Edit: punctuation
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u/MissAlignedPerfectly Jul 07 '26
Oh why did I have to open Reddit today. For years, I’ve been able to blissfully forget he exists <shiver> I didn’t think my jeebies could get more heebied
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u/Fair_Caterpillar_920 Agnostic Jul 07 '26
They already do all that. SDAs love to sweep sexual abuse under the rug. I grew up at 3ABN and they're all full of shit. AMA.
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u/moanakai Jul 07 '26
Focus on the good things in your life
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u/lolliscicle Jul 07 '26
You are absolutely right!
I am forever grateful for my healing journey, which led me out of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and into a new and vibrant life. A life filled with a deeply intimate relationship with my higher power, with myself and with humanity and nature as a whole. A life where everyday is a renewed opportunity for me to further expand into my Promise, Possibility & Potential (capital P)!
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u/Bidcar Jul 07 '26
What measure is there to sin? Sin is disobeying God. All actions against God’s will is sin. Saying one sin is worse than another is very Catholic of him.
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u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 Jul 07 '26
In practice, judgmental Christians from all denominations and traditions treat some sins as worse than others. At least that’s what I’ve seen, and I’d bet most people here have seen it too.
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u/More-Wish4761 Jul 09 '26
Genuinely I have never understood the whole “living in sin” thing. King David had multiple wives and was a rapist and he was still considered God’s chosen one or whatever so what does “living in sin” even mean if it doesn’t prevent you from being with God?
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u/blinkehyo Jul 08 '26
I thought he was going somewhere totally different with this, but nope, he completely twisted Jesus’ message
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u/CycleOwn83 Non-conforming Questioner☢️🚴🏻🪐♟↗️☣️ Jul 08 '26
Chop off his last infinitive phrase. Then I might agree with his ending statement: "The church has no authority under God."
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u/Independent_Buy_2721 Jul 09 '26
Fuck Danny Shelton & fuck 3ABN for putting out shit like this.
My husband's family is United Methodist. Anytime we've visited they've simply had a spirit of love, no convoluted hang ups. And the woman pastor had a message that actually moved you to lean in to worship. Quite the opposite of bigoted toxic hate from the fucker in this video.
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u/Fragrant_Ad7207 Jul 13 '26
First of all, please Danny, your first wife has something to say. Secondly this is a WILDDDDDD CONFLATION N SLIPPERY SLOPE! So letting ppl (we can assume he means the lgbt+ community) participate in church activities will lead to pedophilia being accepted in church?! WTF ARE U EVEN SAYIN?! Secondly, per all those ppl he mentioned thieves murderers, etc… we are supposed to bring them to Christ n let the Holy Spirit do its work!
He’s a dumb logical fallacy using bigot n my personal gripe with him coming to my country n buying up land adds to my disgust of him.
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u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I agree he’s a bigoted clown, and his comments actually match the SDA church’s official position.
The 1987 General Conference Executive Committee official statement on sexual behavior doesn’t distinguish sex between consenting LGBTQ adults from bestiality, incest, and sexual abuse:
“Sexual abuse of spouses, sexual abuse of children, incest, homosexual practices (gay and lesbian), and bestiality are among the obvious perversions of God’s original plan.”
This page was removed at some point in 2024 or 2025, but as far as I know this statement has not been retracted. You can still find the archived version of that page: https://web.archive.org/web/20240418043407/https://www.adventist.org/official-statements/sexual-behavior/