Conservatives declare war on LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline & call it pedophilia

Conservatives have spent the last couple months calling everyone who disagrees with them a pedophile, and now they’re setting their sights on the Trevor Project, an organization that runs a hotline and other resources to fight LGBTQ youth suicide.

Colin Wright, an editor of the anti-LGBTQ website Quillette, shared a comic from the Trevor Project that explained how teens could erase browser history and escape the site quickly so that they could get help even if they are worried about being outed to their parents.

Related: Calls to The Trevor Project suicide hotline are up since Trump elected president

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Wright didn’t seem able to understand how something like this could help young people and instead said that the point of the feature is to “keep parents in the dark.”

Others on the right equated the Trevor Project with pedophilia, implying that an organization reaching out to LGBTQ teens in crisis is the same as a child sex abuser having sexually charged conversations with minors, as if any conversation involving LGBTQ identities is inherently pornographic.

“Why is the Trevor Project encouraging children to keep secrets from their parents?” the far-right organization Moms for Liberty responded to Wright’s tweet.

Why is the @TrevorProject encouraging children to keep secrets from their parents? https://t.co/86SqFIR8g9

— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) April 27, 2022

“Leftwing activists are predatory groomers,” conservative pundit Lauren Chen tweeted. “If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.”

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Leftwing activists are predatory groomers.

If you sit around designing and promoting ways to get in touch with kids so you can discuss sexuality and keep it from their parents, you are a groomer.

Period. Full stop. https://t.co/HIoVIyL9jB

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) April 27, 2022

“They’re trying to break your children,” said conservative podcaster Jesse Kelly.

They’re trying to break your children. https://t.co/IkJXIop6Gt

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) April 27, 2022

The anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok called the Trevor Project a “grooming organization” in a now-deleted tweet.

The Trevor Project works to prevent LGBTQ kids from committing suicide, that's it. It's actually a matter of public safety to have this person's identity known if she's going to be this hateful and dishonest pic.twitter.com/suqgTBwWje

— Mother 🌻 🦂 (@punishedmother) April 20, 2022

James Lindsay, the professor who is best known for getting a fake academic paper published in 2017, claimed that it’s “only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project.”

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Only a matter of time until solid evidence of serious wrongdoing emerges regarding the Trevor Project. They don't mobilize to protect anything unless there's something really bad going on there that they don't want anyone to find out. Mark my words.

— James Lindsay, champion manspreader (@ConceptualJames) April 28, 2022

He then said it’s the “Groomer Project posing as suicide prevention.”

Groomer Project posing as suicide prevention

— James Lindsay, champion manspreader (@ConceptualJames) April 28, 2022

As many people pointed out, having an “escape” feature is fairly standard for crisis hotlines and web services since the people who turn to crisis hotlines often don’t have support from the people around them.

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