After two students and two teachers were killed in a school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, last week, countless articles were written about what may have motivated the shooter. Almost immediately, the right seized on confusing and inarticulate language used in some of those articles to falsely assert that the suspected shooter was gay and/or transgender.
For instance, when the Daily Mail reported that that father of the alleged shooter claimed his son was "bullied for being gay," far-right anti-LGBTQ activists spun the news as proof that the shooter was gay despite the fact that the article made clear that he was actually "bullied by classmates who called him gay."
Furthermore, when CNN reported that the shooter had allegedly "expressed frustration with the acceptance of transgender people," those same activists spun it to insist that the shooter was angry about the lack of acceptance of transgender people. Even after it was reported that there is no evidence that the alleged shooter was transgender and CNN even corrected its poor phrasing to clearly state that the alleged shooter had reportedly "expressed frustration that transgender people were being accepted in society," far-right activists like Gordon Klingenschmitt are still misrepresenting the facts.
Today, Klingenschmitt sent out an email titled "School Shooter wanted Transgenderism for Kids" to supporters of his Pray In Jesus Name organization.
The FBI had found evidence linked to the alleged Apalachee High School shooter that could explain his motivation, reports CNN. The alleged shooter is a boy who dresses and looks like a girl.
The FBI report cited documents claiming that a Discord account was identified last year by the FBI as belonging to Colt Gray. According to CNN's summary of the posts, the account owner said that he was planning an attack on an elementary school and expressed frustration with the [lack of] acceptance of transgender people.
A Discord account that the FBI had linked to school shooting suspect Colt Gray last year referenced plans for a future mass shooting and shared screenshots of firearms, according to documents obtained by CNN.
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The account referenced Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter, and in separate posts shared a desire to target an elementary school and expressed frustration with the [lack of] acceptance of transgender people.
Klingenschmitt concluded his email by declaring that "LGBT recruiters" are turning kids "into stone-cold killers" and urged activists to sign a petition calling on Congress "to protect kids from transgender recruiters."
Dr. Chaps' comment: Transgenderism progresses in 4 stages: Self-doubt Self-hatred, Self-cutting, and Self-Murder (or in this case, other-murder). If the gospel doesn't reach more kids fast, the LGBT recruiters will turn them into stone-cold killers, with more than half of transgenders attempting suicide already.
Klingenschmitt is a longtime religious-right activist who, in 2007, was kicked out of the Navy for disobeying orders to stop appearing at political events in his military uniform. In 2014, he won a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives despite his long history of saying truly outrageous things, such as bragging of once having rid of woman of the “foul spirit of lesbianism” through an exorcism, warning that the FCC was allowing demonic spirits to “molest and visually rape your children,” and asserting that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy should never have been repealed since gay soldiers cannot serve effectively in combat because they are constantly “taking breaks on the combat field to change diapers all because their treacherous sin causes them to lose control of their bowels.”
Klingenschmitt’s views were so radical that his election made national news, and—predictably—his term in office was repeatedly marked by controversy, as he was at one point stripped of a committee assignment after saying that a brutal attack on a pregnant woman in Colorado was the result of “the curse of God upon America” for allowing legal abortion.
While Klingenschmitt was out of office after just one term, he continues to use his "Pray In Jesus Name" program to say outrageous things, often accusing transgender people of being under "demonic influence" and "full of the devil."
