Christian website writer threatened to slaughter LGBTQ+ people. He just pled guilty.

-

A former writer for a conservative political advocacy group’s website has pleaded guilty to making threats against the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

In a press release Wednesday, the Justice Department said that 34-year-old Adam Michael Nettina of West Friendship, Maryland, pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Baltimore to a federal crime for using a telephone to threaten the Washington, D.C.-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

According to court documents, the HRC, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization, received a threatening voicemail from Nettina on March 28. In his message, Nettina referenced the March 27 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, in which a 28-year-old shooter, who was reportedly transgender, killed six people, including three children. (The DOJ’s press release misidentifies the shooter as “a transgender woman.”) That shooter was a former student of the Christian school.

Get the Daily Brief

The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

In the wake of the shooting, conservative commentators and Republican politicians used the shooter’s possible gender identity to further stoke animus against the transgender community.

“You guys going to shoot up our schools now? Is that how it’s going to be? You just gonna kill little kids?” Nettina reportedly said in the voicemail. “Let me tell you something, we’re waiting, we’re waiting. And if you want a war, we’ll have a war. And we’ll f**king slaughter you back. We’ll cut your throats. We’ll put a bullet in your head. We’re not going to give a f**k. You started this bulls**t. You’re going to kill us? We’re going to kill you ten times more in full.”

According to the DOJ, Nettina admitted to leaving the voicemail and to targeting the HRC because of their actual and perceived gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. He also admitted to sending threatening messages in 2022 to a Virginia state delegate who advocated for the prevention of abuse of trans children and to a Maryland state delegate who supported the trans community.  

Nettina faces up to five years in prison for interstate communications with a threat to injure.

“Bias-motivated threats of violence terrorize entire communities and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “We will not stand by idly when the LGBTQI+ community faces bias-motivated threats of violence. The Justice Department will continue to investigate and prosecute individuals who commit unlawful acts of hate in our country.”

Luis Quesada, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, said the bureau would not tolerate acts of hate and remains committed to investigating civil rights violations. “The defendant in this case attempted to terrorize the LGBTQI+ community by calling in multiple threats of violence to a local advocacy group,” Quesada said.

“You have the right to your own opinions, but you don’t have the right to threaten the lives of those who disagree with you,” Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, said. “We’ll continue prosecuting these threats to the fullest extent of the law.”

Following Nettina’s arrest earlier this year, CBS affiliate WUSA9 reported that he had worked as an independent contractor for the conservative non-profit political advocacy group CatholicVote, where he published multiple anti-LGBTQ+ articles since 2016. Nettina’s articles have since been removed from the group’s website.



source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/08/christian-website-writer-threatened-to-slaughter-lgbtq-people-he-just-pled-guilty/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prosecutors decline to charge suspect identified in alleged anti-trans mass shooting

-
Image
Prosecutors in Chicago have failed to charge a suspect identified in photo lineups as the shooter who killed a trans woman and her mother in a home invasion in January . Three other victims were wounded, including two other trans women. The suspect, who remains unidentified because he hasn’t been charged, has two other pending cases in Cook County court, records reveal: a felony residential burglary count and a misdemeanor count of domestic battery. The 19-year-old suspect lives in the same apartment complex as the victims did, on Chicago’s South Side. The police report for the mass shooting details how two people “kicked in the front door and began shooting” at about 1:40 p.m. on January 23. Unique Banks, 20, and her mother Alexsandra Olmo, 43, were killed at the scene. Three other victims were hospitalized in critical condition. One witness told investigators they had seen two males running north from the courtyard building wearing green camouflage. The shooting took place o...
Read more

Census Bureau will start testing new LGBTQ+ questions on its yearly survey

-
Image
The U.S. Census Bureau, after nearly a year of pushing the Biden administration, will begin testing questions pertaining to LGBTQ+ identity on its American Community Survey (ACS). These questions would ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. The Bureau put out a Federal Register notice signifying that this is the last chance for the public to give comment on all pending ACS questions, including those pertaining to LGBTQ+ individuals. The deadline given for comment is May 30, with an online form provided for any feedback on these questions. The wording for these questions can be found on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website . After the Bureau’s deadline, it will be submitting the questions to the Office of Management and Budget, where they will await approval for testing in the summer. The ACS asks questions about demographic, socioeconomic, and housing-related topics annually. New questions must undergo a rigorous approval and testing p...
Read more

Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings

-
Image
Conservatives were already upset about Target over its LGBTQ+-inclusive Pride collection. But now they’re angry over fake AI-generated images that show the store selling “Satanic” clothing. The images show kids wearing clothes with inverted pentagrams and goat heads and a store display with a red, goat-headed mannequin. The images were created by Facebook user Dan Reese with the AI program Midjourney, Reuters reported . A Target spokesperson told the publication that it “has never sold” the pictured items, and the items aren’t available on the store’s website. Related Stories Brave gay man yells “Praise Satan” & throws Bible in fire at pastor’s book-burning The husbands kissed as congregants screamed in disgust. “That guy has balls of steel,” one commenter wrote under the video. A Facebook page called Christian Patriots posted the images and wrote , “Look at the faces on these children, I feel in my spirit, they even knew there was something satanic with making t...
Read more