Spoiler: This is a tale of not just of your normal everyday evangelical hypocrisy, but instead is hypocrisy on steroids and takes it to an entirely new level. If you are a fan of these people then you might wish to consider stopping here are not reading any further.
Let’s start with a brief overview of “My Faith Votes”.
Who are “My Faith Votes?
My Faith Votes is a non-profit that … oh come now, the clue is in the name. They want to encourage you to vote. They claim to be non-partisan, but you know how this works. Hint: Mike Huckabee is the Chairman, so if you don’t vote the way he would want you to vote, then you are clearly not a “Christian”, as defined by Mike.
To work out what the right thing to do is, a common idea that became popular in the 1900s was “What Would Jesus Do?“, or WWJD. Well … here it can more or less be summed up as “What Would Mike Do?” when it comes to telling you how to vote. These days if they tried to run with “What would Lincoln do?” or even “What would Reagan do?” they that would seriously scupper their goal because today’s GOP, led by the sexual predator and convicted felon, would be completely repugnant to both of them.
“No no no”, their CEO Jason Yates insisted during a Fox News interview back in 2021, “We don’t tell people who to vote for,”.
BS.
Ministry Watch has the evidence …
…has aggressively promoted Trump to evangelical voters since 2016, when Yates organized a game-changing meeting. “A Conversation with Donald Trump and Ben Carson” was designed to introduce then-candidate Trump to hundreds of conservative Christian leaders. In a press release, Yates said the meeting would “strengthen relationships and build unity” before the 2016 election. He has never organized any meetings with Democrat candidates.…
…has regularly issued press releases praising Trump and demonizing Democrats…
…has embraced Trump’s [Utterly False] claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent…
…It has never criticized Trump and the GOP, and it has never praised a Democrat…
…In a recent press release entitled, “My Faith Votes offers Virginia’s pastors questions for Vice President Kamala Harris’ church tour,” it coached Christian leaders on Critical Race Theory and the Equality Act. MVF never offered any questions challenging Vice President Mike Pence during his four years in office….
In other words, the claim that they are non-partisan is a lie.
Beyond the politics, there is also some deeply dubious financial stuff going on. Once again Ministry Watch Reports …
…has failed to provide audited financial statements after numerous requests …
While all of this is indeed very hypocritical stuff, it’s just background noise and context. We have yet to get into the real meat of this.
Let’s talk a bit about the CEO of My Faith Votes.
Insights into Jason Yates
What does Jason Yates believe?
He recently wrote an article within the right-wing leaning Washington Times about how there is a deep need to protect children. As a hit for what is coming, I can no longer provide you with a link to that article because the Washington Times have removed it. There is a reveal coming up that explains why.
Below, is an extract from that article now withdrawn article, but first a bit of context for the extract. While visiting the University of Minnesota for his son’s robotics competition he explains how kids were being pushed to … “embrace strange new sexual horizons” …
…We were immediately confronted with posters encouraging children to embrace strange new sexual horizons. They were handing out literature with an agenda to teach him to doubt the link between his mind and body — his self, and his self-image. They offered Levi a rainbow button to wear, encouraging him to declare his gender preferences. Wasn’t this supposed to be a robotics competition?
There was an LGBTQ poster he did not like, and somebody offered his kid a rainbow button … and his conclusion is that his kid was being recruited into some gay sex cult … WTF!
The point is this – he wants to protect kids.
Well …
Guess who turns out to be the biggest threat to kids?
Yep, it is reveal time.
Via Ministry Watch once again.
My Faith Votes CEO Charged with Child Porn Possession
Jason C. Yates, the former CEO of My Faith Votes, has been charged with eight felony counts of possession of child pornography.
Each of the eight charges, filed in McLeod County, MN, carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000. They note that Yates has a prior conviction and is a registered predatory offender.
According to the court records, Yates was released on his own recognizance on November 4. As a condition of his release, he is to have no contact with persons under the age of 18.
Just to be clear about it, this guy was discovered to have a hard drive stuffed full of child porn involving very young children – aged between 5 and 7 years of age.
Once all this was revealed it soon came out that this was not his first offence. He already had a prior conviction for child pornography.
The Court Documents reveal more
The official records explain how it was discovered and also list out the details of it all …
Witness #1 provided the following information. Witness #1 came into possession of the hard drive after arelative (“Witness #2”) accidentally discovered it in the office of Jason Yates [Jason Christopher Yates(Date of Birth: June 13, 1969) (“Defendant”)]. Witness #2 was related to Defendant. Witness #2 tried toput the device in Witness #2’s computer for more storage. Witness #2 put the device into his computerand discovered a collection of CSAM. Witness #2 subsequently contacted Witness #1.
Witness #1 continued with the following information. Witness #1 kept the hard drive for safekeeping. Witness #1 was able to view some of its contents using Witness #2’s computer. The contents includedover 100 sexually explicit images of children.…
…Witness #2 said no one in the house uses Defendant’s computer. …
The Court documents then describe, textually, the details of the porn images involving very young under age children (which I’ll not replicate that here).
They then interviewed Yates and verified that it was indeed his porn material …
On September 13, 2024, BCA agents and a child protection supervisor met with Defendant andDefendant’s attorney. During that meeting, Agent Gernentz clarified with Defendant that this was notWitness #2’s collection of CSAM. Defendant confirmed the images on the storage device were not fromWitness #2. Defendant stated he had a prior conviction, which had been expunged, related to CSAM/childpornography.
During the interview, Agent Gernentz informed Defendant that she was aware of his TOR encrypted files. Defendant was asked if he wanted to provide the password for those files. Defendant declined to providethe passcode for the files.
BCA Digital Media Examiner (“DME”) Johansen located extensive evidence related to the possession ofthe CSAM material. DME Johansen generated individual time lime reports for 02/03/2023, 03/21/2023,and 03/30/23 which were dates of some of the CSAM downloads.
DME Johansen noted the default username associated with the storage device wasJason.yates@[organizational email address]. DME Johansen determined the domain user accountJasonYates required a passcode to logon.
CSAM files viewed on 03/21/2023 included a created date and last modified date of 03/21/2023, and alast accessed date of 07/26/2024. This information was significant to Agent Gernentz because it indicatedto her that the CSAM images were already on the device, prior to the reported discovery date.
They have, at this stage got probable cause.
Right now he is out on Bail on the condition that he has no contact with persons under the age of 18.
No doubt when it goes to trial lots more about all of this will crop up.
The Washington Times Article
If you go to the Washington Time story Yates previously wrote last July, you get to a page that explains …
Yea no kidding, running articles by child sexual predators is not a great look.
There was also a copy of hat same article on the My Faith Votes website. That also is now gone.
What about My Faith Votes?
He was, until this happened, CEO of My Faith Votes.
Religious News Service (RNS) reached out to My Faith Votes and asked, “Hey your guy has been revealed to be a child sex predator, what do you have to say about that?” (no that’s not what they actually sent, that’s just me paraphrasing it).
…An attorney for Yates declined to comment.
For much of its history, Jason Yates was the CEO and president of My Faith Votes. He was still listed as CEO on the group’s website as of Aug. 19 but his name and image were removed sometime after that date.
“In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO. Over the last three months Chris has been working with the dedicated My Faith Votes team to encourage millions of Christians to vote, pray and think biblically about this election in America,” a spokesperson for My Faith Votes told RNS in an email.
The Key point here
Mr Yates led a group that demonized non-religious people who only wanted to see tolerance and basic decency for themselves and others. As explained by the RNS article …
The group’s website blames Christians for failing to stand up against “secular progressives” — which the group faults for a host of social ills.
“As a result of apathy at the voting booth and in public life, we’ve suffered devastating moral decay, declining religious freedom, immoral national debt, and the erosion of traditional family values,” the group’s website reads.
The article written by Mr Yates adopts that precise stance. He declared them as the cause of all that is wrong in the world today within a widely circulated public newspaper. As I previously outlined earlier, he had attended an event at a University with his son where he saw LGBTQ posters and buttons, and immediately labelled this as filth that needs to be pushed back against because society needs to be protected from stuff like this.
As I said at the start – hypocrisy on steroids. The real social danger, the actual evil in play here was himself. This voracious consumer of perverted child porn is now exposed as the real danger.
Time after time, the deeply religious deploy their gross intolerance and hatred by demonising others, and again and again and again, it is the Youth Leaders, Pastors, and religious fanatics like Mr Yates that are exposed as the actual perverts.
As one commentator on all this beautifully puts it …
…The same people who wanted to elevate a lying, racist, sex predator for president were fresh off of being led by an alleged child sex predator.
At what point will any of these Christian organizations reckon with the fact that the biggest threats to children are often in positions of power within religious organizations and not in the crowd of people fighting for civil rights and social justice, or reading books to children in libraries, or flying rainbow flags?
The calls are coming from inside the house but none of these people are willing to pick up the phone.
Oh, and for the record, once again, not a drag queen.