Right-wingers are falsely claiming that the two teenagers accused of lethally shooting three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, May 18 are transgender and dating. There is absolutely no evidence that the suspects — 17-year-old Cain Clark or 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez — are either trans or dating, PolitiFact reported.
Most notably, anti-LGBTQ+ Christian Nationalist David Barton told the Christian broadcast show Victory News yesterday, “There are also reports now that [the shooters] were transgender oriented and indoctrinated, and that’s a rejection of basic morality when you get to that point. So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing more and more of that group and that cadre and that profile engaged in active radical things.”
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Barton didn’t explain where these alleged “reports” came from. He is a Christian Nationalist and historic revisionist who thinks that HIV and AIDS are god-given consequences for living out one’s LGBTQ+ life.
However, one X account, @amuse, wrote that the shooters “identified as a transgender couple by classmates.” The account, which regularly spreads untrue statements, provided no source or evidence for its claim beyond a self-created image of a headline from the non-existent publication, AmuseXpress. The image included photos of two androgynous athletes holding medals.
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Fellow X user @NickSortor wrote on May 19that San Diego police were “refusing” to name the shooters, adding, “Why, you ask? BECAUSE IT WAS A TRANS COUPLE. California leftists are ACTIVELY COVERING UP trans vioIence.” Sortor provided no proof for his claim either, beyond reposting the same image of athletes used by @amuse.
Despite Sortor’s claims, San Diego police identified both suspects by name on May 19.
A TikToker named @cashu_nate also used the same image of the two athletes in a video whose caption was nearly identical to Sortor’s X post. Similar (but now-deleted) videos proclaiming the same transphobic falsehoods were posted by TikTok users @republican956 and @kevinbeggs4, PolitiFact reported.
Right-wingers have increasingly (and falsely) claimed that a majority of recent shootings are conducted by trans people. However, the truth is thatmass shooters are not disproportionately transgender— the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are conducted by cisgender men.
Contrary to right-wing claims, there is no connection between gender-affirming medications, trans-related mental health issues, and shootings.
The San Diego shooters killed a security guard at the center named Amin Abdullah. Because Abdullah returned fire at the shooters, the resulting delay allowed 140 children in the mosque’s school to hide from the attackers. The gunmen almost reached the kids, but were distracted by Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, two people whom they also killed, The Washington Post reported.
In a statement Monday, the Islamic Center called the three slain individuals “pillars of our community” and “men of courage, sacrifice and faith.” The shooting occurred on the first day of Dhu’l-Hijja, one of the Islamic calendar’s most sacred periods.
Police said the shooters left behind online statements that expressed hatred towards a wide range of people from different races. The shooting has occurred amid an Islamaphobic political climate in which numerous Republicans and Christian Nationalists have accused Muslims of trying to terrorize, defraud, and install so-called “Sharia law” in their communities.
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