Pastor who condemned book with gay characters charged with sexually assaulting child from church

Silas Shelton said being gay was a "health risk." All the while, police say he was targeting a little girl who attended his church.

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In August of 2023, Silas Shelton appeared in front of the Little Miami Local School District board of education in Ohio to complain about a book series that was being sold to children at the Scholastic Book Fair.

Shelton, pastor of the Blanchester Community Ministries, was furious that Alice Oseman’s popular “Heartstopper” books (later turned into a Netflix series) was being marketed to his 12-year-old daughter because it had gay characters and he “got sick reading that stuff.” (In the graphic novel, two teenage boys meet in class and develop a relationship that involves hand-holding, hugging, and—yes—some kissing.)

You can hear Shelton whining in the video below. (Because of poor sound quality in the school district’s video, I’ve enhanced the audio in the clip and provided a rough transcript.)

You guys just had a little book fair. My 12-year-old daughter came home from it. And I’m a guy that… I don’t think kids should ever question their sexuality. I don’t think kids should ever explore their sexuality. I don’t think any of that stuff ever ought to be in our school. But she come home asking me why certain books were in that book fair, which were pertaining to books of gay. One of them was “Heartstopper,” which is where a gay boy pressures a straight kid into kissing him. I don’t understand why we have this kind of stuff in our libraries, in our book fairs. I mean, just a Mayo Clinic discussion on health risk of being gay. We could go on… I’ll tell you, I got sick reading that stuff today.

And the number one health issue, of course, is mental health. We worry about drugs, we worry about alcohol, we worry about bullying, we worry about all this stuff, but we’re not allowed to talk about the health risk of kids being gay. And yet we got flags in certain classrooms talking about Pride. It’s a disgusting display of what we would call pride, anyway. Be happy with who you are. I don’t understand why we have to have flags that display one thing or the other. They call it tradition. It took my… my 12-year-old daughter comes home to me, and she says, “Dad, why are these books in our library? Why are they at the book fair?” I know you can sit back and fire back at me and say, “Well, there’s other kids that ask why these books aren’t there.” And I can tell you that a good part of it always comes down to you guys’ search for money…

I’m going to tell you this, if nobody in this board will stand, nobody in the school system stands, I don’t know what we actually stand for. I really don’t. It isn’t a religion matter… It’s a health risk. It’s mental health. You take a young man or a young… girl that comes in and is exploring drugs and so forth, you all are programming… But yet, we’re here as a society, pushing this drug on these kids when they shouldn’t... That stuff shouldn’t even be put in front of them. I don’t care what you are. I don’t care what you do as an adult. I don’t care what you do at home. But in our schools, it should be a place of education. Education being reading, writing, and arithmetic, learning how to work with each other, learning at the career center. You name it. Figure out what you’re good at. Figure out your skill level. Not coming home confused…

My daughter came home and she couldn’t understand why this crap was there. Why should I be given the opportunity to explore something…? 18 years old, you can join the service. That’s a big decision to do. 21 years old, you have the right to buy alcohol. There’s no confusion what gender you are. You’re born a boy or a girl. You want to mess with that as an adult? That’s your problem. That’s your decision. But this stuff can’t… it can’t go on in our schools. We sit back and we see more and more mental health problems.

Guys, what do we stand for? And if you are a religious person, what are we doing? What are we doing? Look at the kids… The last thing I’ll say, and you all know where I stand, which is: Better to die a millstone around your neck and throw it in the lake than lead a kid astray…

Even if that’s not a perfect transcript, this much is clear: Shelton didn’t think kids should be exposed to gay characters because it might expose them to “health risks.” He compared homosexuality to a “drug” being thrust upon children. And he believed anything would be better than leading an innocent child down the path of homosexuality, including sacrificing your own life.

He also told a local news affiliate he was concerned about all the “sexual innuendo” in the books. And he proudly posted graphics on Facebook about why “Scholastic can’t be trusted with your kids.”

That little protest of his had an effect. About a month later, the school board decided to hit “pause” on all book fairs in order to put together a special committee that could screen all the material… as if they needed watchdogs to monitor children’s books to make sure they weren’t spreading gay cooties. Then they decided the book fairs could continue, but only on the two nights of parent-teacher conferences, not during the day when students can browse at their leisure—much less 10 days like the original fair.

They capitulated to one pastor’s desire for censorship.

All the while, the Trump-loving Shelton kept preaching about God and why everyone needed to believe.

Anyway. You know where this story is going, right? Of course you do.

Last week, Shelton was arrested on charges of “rape, sexual battery, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, and gross sexual imposition.” He allegedly did all this “over a period of about six years,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Shelton is being held on a $2 million bond in a Clinton County jail.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to online court records. For each charge, a county website listed a September 2019 date as to when each violation is alleged to have occurred.

The police report for his arrest include even more disturbing details:

Wilmington police reported that in the fall of 2019, Shelton allegedly began inappropriate sexual contact with a girl who was 14 or 15 at the time. A detective involved in the case stated that the alleged victim and her family were members of Shelton’s congregation.

… The detective leading the investigation said in a probable cause statement that the alleged abuse continued until a few months ago. The detective described a complex dynamic, suggesting the young woman felt groomed, trapped and manipulated due to Shelton’s position as a religious authority.

… The detective indicated that the alleged abuse occurred at Shelton’s home in Morrow, Warren County, at Cowan Lake in Clinton County, and in local hotel rooms.

Shelton isn’t a drag queen or transgender or an immigrant.

He’s just another white, Republican, Christian pastor who’s been silent on social media since his arrest.

Shelton’s arrest shouldn’t surprise anyone. For decades, men like him have stood at pulpits railing against love, hiding behind the Bible to mask their own bigotry. The louder they scream about protecting children from homosexuality, the more certain you can be that their own hands are unclean. While Shelton was lecturing the school board about the importance of protecting children, he was—according to the police department’s own report—grooming and sexually abusing a child in his own congregation.

Religion didn’t make him righteous. It made him a threat who was hard to say no to. It gave him power without accountability. While there’s only one victim referenced by the police, it’s possible there are more who haven’t spoken out yet. But the very same people who attend churches like his believe consensual same-sex relationships are harming society. They never seem to grasp how the most dangerous threats are right there in the church with them. Based on his Facebook posts, Shelton spent the past several years treating everyone who isn’t like him as the enemy. When will the people in his church realize they were being manipulated the whole time?

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