Social media erupts with allegations that Iowa shooter may have identified as LGBT
Allegations emerged on social media that the teenage gunman who shot multiple people at a high school in Iowa on Thursday had an online footprint rife with LGBT symbolism that suggests he may have been struggling with his sexuality or gender identity.
Dylan Butler, 17, killed a sixth-grade student and injured five other people at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday before turning the gun on himself, according to law enforcement.
One of the injured was principal Dan Marburger, who is in stable condition, according to local KCCI.
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Butler used a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun to carry out the attack, according to Mitch Mortvedt with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation.
Chaya Raichik, who runs the influential conservative Libs of TikTok account on X, posted screenshots in the wake of the shooting that suggested Butler used a rainbow LGBT flag in the bio of his TikTok and Instagram accounts. She noted the social media posts have already been taken down.
Shortly before the shooting rampage, Butler posted a photo to his TikTok of himself in a bathroom stall with a duffel bag on the floor. "Now we wait," he wrote.
Butler's alleged accounts also used "he/they" pronouns, and his TikTok account included a photo using trans flags and the hashtag "genderfluid," as well as a video of Butler pretending to shoot someone and a screenshot of graffiti that reads: "Love your trans kids."
A Reddit account believed to have belonged to Butler posted in a forum about transgenderism and claimed he was reticent to transition because he didn't "want to look ugly," according to Reduxx.
Law enforcement is looking into the posts Butler made on both his social media accounts, according to The Associated Press.
As left-leaning websites and NBC News have painted conservatives as attempting to seize on the shooter's potential LGBT identity for political points, Raichik suggested that mainstream media was trying to shift the narrative to make Butler out to be the victim because he was reportedly bullied.
Raichik tweeted on Friday that mainstream journalists were already reaching out to her to suggest that she was demonizing the LBGT community by posting about Butler's alleged social media. She tweeted a screenshot of a direct message she received from an NBC reporter who implied she was "stoking fear, hatred and potential violence against a marginalized group of people" by disseminating the information.
"Wait, am I reading this right?! NBC is more concerned that your posting facts might somehow inspire 'potential violence'…than they are about the ACTUAL violence?" Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential campaign, responded to the screenshot.
NBC News quoted Gillian Branstter, a communications strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, who accused conservatives of "scapegoating," calling it a "very dangerous and old tactic for justifying the extreme marginalization of a specific group."
"They're very eager for other people to be as obsessed with trans people as they are, and this overlaps with their need to blame mass shootings on anything that's not shaped like a gun," Branstter was quoted as saying.
Sources who spoke to The Associated Press claimed that Butler was relentlessly bullied by other students since elementary school and that the "last straw" for him was the fact that the bullying had spilled over to affect his younger sister.
"He was hurting," classmate Yesenia Roeder Hall told the AP. "He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment. Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No. God, no."
Raichik predicted that framing the Iowa shooting as a response to bullying would lead to a push for draconian hate speech laws.
"We're going to see a massive campaign for hate speech laws as the media coordinates to frame the Iowa shooting as a result of bullying LGBTQ people," Raichik wrote. "There's' going to be a lot of rhetoric around clamping down on 'hate speech,' which basically means any speech that criticizes the LGBTQ movement in the slightest, including; misgendering, opposing se*x change surgeries for kids, and stating scientific and biological facts."
