In a case of the bizarre, a woman in Utah recently called her local LGBTQ community center asking them to do something to stop her gay neighbor from bothering her.
Jackson Whitt, who works at the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City, posted a video to TikTok in which he played the women’s voicemail.
“So I work for a queer resource center, and we get like a lot of crazy calls,” Whitt says. “But this is my favorite voicemail we’ve gotten so far.”
In her message, the woman, after stating her name, says, “I’m having problems with a gay person that I’ve known for a while, and he is bothering me and I would like to report him to you… And I know that you can help me so that he will not bother me any longer.”
After the voicemail ends, Whitt, laughing, exclaims: “She called us like we were gay animal control to come remove the bothersome homosexual from her neighborhood!”
He also pointed to a pause before the woman said “gay person,” implying she almost uttered an anti-gay slur.
@jacksonwhitt In her defence, I’m usually havung problems with gay person too 🏳️🌈 #lgbt #lgbtq #queer #queercomedy #gaytiktok #gayboy #gaybear
In a follow-up video, Whitt said the woman called the Pride Center a second time before he could call her back, and when he spoke to her, she told him the gay man in question has lived across the street from her for years.
“He’s evil. He’s wicked. He’s Satanic,” Whitt says, quoting the woman. “And he has been harassing her, but she can’t prove it.”
According to Whitt, the woman said the gay man has “energy machines in his house that shoot electrical pulses” through his window into her window to harm her.
She also claimed the gay man had gotten his next-door neighbor one of those machines, too.
“‘I felt two of them hit me straight in the chest just the other day,'” Whitt said quoting the caller. “She’s getting shot by gay lasers through her living room window!”
Whitt claimed he told her the Pride Center doesn’t handle personal disputes and asked if she had tried talking to law enforcement authorities.
“She goes, ‘That’s a laugh. They’ll never do anything,'” Whitt recounted. ‘And for the first time in this conversation, I was like, ‘Yeah, right girl?'”
@jacksonwhitt Replying to @Michelle #greenscreen watch out for those gay lasers 🏳️🌈 #bewhououare #pride #gay #queer #lgbt #lgbtq
The woman claimed to have talked to Mormon leaders at her place of worship, who also failed to act.
She then asked Whitt to speak to “Pastor Jimi,” the gay man’s pastor, because he “knows all about these machines.”
Whitt looked up the pastor and sent him a message expressing concern for the woman’s mental health, asking if he knew the woman or whether they should contact someone to do a wellness check for her own safety. He didn’t receive a call back.
“Pastor Jimi works in one of those churches where they wear flip flops and everyone’s carrying an acoustic guitar, and some of them are wearing crystals as deodorant,” Whitt joked. “And you know what? Pastor Jimi never even bothered to email me back. Pastor Jimi, that is not very ‘man of the cloth’ of you. And when I say ‘the cloth,’ I mean a Tommy Bahama button-down.”
Whitt later posted a third video, in which Pastor Jimi — whose real name is Jimi Pitts, the missions and outreach pastor at the Washington Heights Church in Ogden, Utah — visited the Utah Pride Center, bringing three boxes of cinnamon rolls and other pastries to the people who work at the community center.
Pitts said he had been unable to return Whitt’s voicemail because he had been doing mission work in Kenya. He and Whitt exchanged information, and he said he was sorry that the woman had been harassing the center. Pitts said he’d talk to the female caller and see what he could do to help her.
Whitt then lets Pitts plug his church as the video ends.
“I’m the outreach pastor and missions pastor. So I do all the community events, and get to know people, get to know you–“
“–And pastries!” interjects Whitt.
“And pastries. I bring pastries everywhere,” quips Pitts. “It doesn’t get better than that.”
@jacksonwhitt Replying to @Alix Curtain Pastor Jimi 🙏🏻🙌🏻 #gay #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #pride #pastorjimi
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