Dishonest youth crisis hotline lures gay youth, abuses them,
and refers them to Exodus.
Imagine trapping someone during a moment of vulnerability and then serving a dose of carefully disguised verbal abuse designed to increase the vulnerability. Once that's been accomplished you refer the individual to an unethical salesman selling some kind of 'snake oil'.
That's exactly what Pastor Mike Macintosh is doing to troubled gay youth looking for someone they can trust. Macintosh operates the dishonest National Youth Crisis Hotline, 1-800-HIT-HOME.
"When teenager Jeffrey Faircloth wanted a safe place to talk about his growing awareness that he might be gay, he called the National Youth Crisis Hotline - popularized as 1-800-HIT-HOME.
What he heard didn't surprise him. "I'd grown up in a very fundamentalist Christian family, so I wasn't surprised that the woman I talked to said she didn't know any gay people, but she knew they were sinners. She said she would give me the number of a group called Exodus that would help me change. I already knew the religious view, so I wasn't interested."
Years later Jeffrey was reminded of that phone call when he learned a group of Exodus so-called 'ex-gays' sponsored by Focus on the Family would be appearing in Houston. So he called again.
This time, Faircloth, now 20, was shocked and angry after the call. "I told the man who answered what I wanted and that I was gay, but it wasn?t a problem. He insisted on quoting Bible verses to me, so I quoted some right back," He said.
At the end of the conversation, after an hour of dueling with Bible verses, Faircloth asked the hotline volunteer, "How would you feel if some lonely kid in the middle of Nebraska, who had never heard anything except that he is a sinner killed himself after talking to you?"
He was shocked at the man's answer: "Sometimes the devil makes things happen."
Faircloth said, "I didn't know if my experience was unique, so different friends of mine from HATCH called the hotline at different times. We found that they always said the same sort of things. They quoted Bible verses about homosexuality and suggested Exodus."
Faircloth said he is concerned about the hotline because it masquerades as a legitimate service, "One of the reasons I was so shocked about this is that they are listed in the phone book under alternate emergency numbers. Because of that and because of the name, I thought they were a government service."
The "National Youth Crisis Hotline" has deceptively worked its way into the directories of a number of legitimate organizations and telephone directories. The Houston Voice reports that some of the organizations have dropped the listing since this operation has been exposed. The Rainbow Alliance contacted one of the organization, the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, and received the following response.
"Thank you for promptly bringing this matter to our attention. The link was removed immediately. We vet all of the resources we list on our website and understand that programs change. We also recognize that unfortunately as a small organization, with no communications staff that tracking updates and program changes are not always at the top of our daily task lists. We greatly appreciate it when constituents and other community partners can bring necessary updates to our attention.
We in no way support EXODUS or any related organizations, that "teach reparative therapy". We believe that this type of judgmental, aggressive and plain wrong approach is completely harmful to youth. Particularly because most youth, regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression are merely seeking a welcoming, accepting peer or adult who will empower them to try and understand who they are without getting hateful messages delivered under the guise of service provision.
We maintain a comprehensive referral database and additional resources and programs that seek to address the comprehensive emotional and physical health, well-being and safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or questioning youth.
We are proud to say that last year we celebrated our 10 year anniversary working with a wide range of community-based organization across the country to address the unique needs of this population.
The field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (lgbtq) youth service provision has grown exponentially in those ten years. In the next ten years, we can only hope that "progress" will mean that those who still carry messages of hate and non-acceptance will be drowned out by those who support us, our community partners, other lgbtq youth service providers and most importantly, lgbtq youth themselves.
If you would like to contact Horizon Christian Fellowship and tell them what you think about their abusive scam, please do so.
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