Talk about putting words into someone’s mouth! Recently, the pro-homosexual newsource The Advocate published this headline, “Right-wing influencers seem happy that Iowa school shooter might be LGBTQ+.”
Following a tragic Thursday morning Iowa shooting at Perry High School in the town of Perry, where one child was killed, multiple people were seriously injured, and the suspected shooter died of a presumed self-inflicted wound, right-wing extremists and influencers have centered on the shooter’s speculated LGBTQ+ identity based on a Pride flag emoji on a since- disabled TikTok profile.
The Perry Police Department responded to the active shooter event, and upon arrival, they found students and faculty either sheltering in place or fleeing the school, Mortvedt reported. Inside, multiple victims with gunshot wounds were discovered. The shooter, identified as 17-year-old Dylan Butler, a student at Perry High School, was found with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mortvedt mentioned that Butler was armed with a shotgun and a handgun and had made several social media posts around the time of the shooting.
Mortvedt confirmed that there were six victims in the shooting: one deceased sixth-grade student from Perry Middle School and five others injured, including four students and a school administrator.
While law enforcement has not commented about the alleged shooter’s gender identity or sexual orientation, social media users focused on the appearance of a Pride flag on an account allegedly linked to the shooter, and it led to a narrative amplified by right-wing influencers online. That account is no longer available, but screen grabs of its content have circulated widely on social media.
” I guess to some I may be considered a ‘right-winger’, but I’m not happy about the loss of life of these children”, said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, centrally based out of Harrison, Arkansas. “Mainstream Media will say anything when a tragedy doesn’t fit the mold of a single, heterosexual White male being the cause of said tragedy. How could anyone think that someone could be happy about the loss of life of these young children? Mainstream Media knows that we, supposed ‘right-wingers’ find nothing to be happy about when tragedy like this happens, but they’ll say things such as this because it fits into what we believe, and that is that homosexuals are mentally ill. Instead of reporting the truth that a mentally ill child shot up a school, Mainstream Media twists the truth around to make ‘right-wingers’ look like horrible people that when instances like this happen, it makes us happy. I know many what you call ‘right-wingers’, and I don’t know a single one that would find happiness in a mentally ill, sexually confused child killing another child. We need to address homosexuality for what it is, and that is, a mental illness.”