Transgender Ideology Is Motivating Violence: It’s High Time the FBI Designate It as Such

An increasing number of alleged murderers, mass shooters, and violent offenders have apparently tried to silence Christians or critics of transgender ideology, acting on the assumption that those who disagree with transgender claims represent a violent threat.

The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk only underscores this unnerving trend, and makes the case for the FBI to formally characterize the threat of transgender ideology violent extremism.

The Oversight Project and The Heritage Foundation formally called on the FBI Thursday to use its authority under 18 U.S. Code § 2331 to designate this threat, and I wholeheartedly agree. The FBI declined to comment on the subject when approached Friday.

That statute defines domestic terrorism as activities on U.S. soil that “involve acts dangerous to human life” that violate federal or state criminal laws that “appear to be intended” to intimidate or coerce civilians, influence government policy, or affect government conduct via mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Current domestic violent extremism categories include: racially/ethnically motivated violent extremism; anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism; animal rights/environmental violent extremism; abortion-related violent extremism; and nihilistic violent extremism.

The Oversight Project and Heritage recommend categorizing transgender ideology violent extremism as typically targeting “Christian and religious groups;” featuring “mental illness, self-harm, suicidal tendencies, and lack of respect for genetic human realities, amplified by online radicalization;” and boosted by “echo chambers that promote violence against critics.”

Most people who identify as transgender likely do not pose a threat to their fellow Americans, but a growing list of attackers either identified as transgender or appear to be motivated by transgender ideology.

Transgender-Motivated Violence and Threats

Last weekend, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox confirmed reports that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who has been charged with Charlie Kirk’s murder, was living with a boyfriend who identifies as transgender. Robinson reportedly confessed to his boyfriend that he committed the murder.

Authorities reportedly confirmed that 23-year-old Robin Westman, a male born Robert Westman, opened fire at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis last month, killing two children and injuring 17 others.

Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, reportedly identified as male. She shot and killed three children and three adults on March 27, 2023, at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school in Nashville, Tennessee. Police fatally shot her during the attack.

According to a court document obtained by The Daily Signal, the man who tried to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022 identifies as a woman. Nicholas Roske, who was 29 when he pleaded guilty in April, identifies as Sophie Roske in a court document.

On May 7, 2019, then-16-year-old Maya “Alec” McKinney and her 19-year-old fellow student, Devon Erickson, opened fire at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, killing one and injuring eight. Both have been sentenced to life in prison. McKinney, a female, identifies as male.

On Sept. 20, 2018, 26-year-old Snochia Moseley shot and killed four people at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland, before killing herself. A close friend of Moseley’s told The Washington Post the perpetrator identified as transgender.

In June 2024, a judge sentenced Jason Lee Willie, a man who identifies as a woman and goes by Alexia, to one year in prison after he pleaded guilty to threatening to injure people across state lines. Willie, a resident of Nashville, Illinois, confessed to threatening to rape girls in girls’ restrooms, carry out a mass shooting at schools, and bomb churches.

Hatred Toward Christians

Many of these offenders targeted Christians or threatened them because of their faith.

The transgender movement encourages a victimization narrative that may play a role in radicalizing these people.

The Human Rights Campaign, the premier transgender activist group, has described the deaths of people identifying as transgender as an “epidemic.” However, Brad Palumbo at Quillette crunched the numbers and concluded that the “Human Rights Campaign’s own data suggest trans Americans suffer a homicide risk that’s actually less than the U.S. average.”

This claim represents the fountainhead of a constant stream of hyperbolic transgender rhetoric. For instance, MSNBC columnist Katelyn Burns once described a move to restrict the Frankensteinian treatments of “gender-affirming care” as an act of genocide.

Supporters of “gender-affirming care” maintain—with a straight face—that people with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite one’s sex) cannot prevent themselves from committing suicide if they do not receive these interventions. Yet, at the Supreme Court, the lawyer arguing for “gender-affirming care” admitted there is “no evidence” these interventions reduce suicide.

Online influencers who identify as transgender have amassed huge followings, and members of their audiences may find themselves bombarded with hyperbolic rhetoric about the “hate” of those who dare to disagree with their preferred pronouns. In fact, the influential Southern Poverty Law Center repeatedly compares conservative Christians who disagree with transgender orthodoxy to the KKK.

If you legitimately believed that there is an “epidemic” of murder against people like you, that opposition to your agenda is a form of “genocide,” and that Christians’ disagreement with transgender identity is fueling this, you might be tempted to lash out.

The FBI should designate Transgender Ideology Violent Extremism and try to prevent further attacks. The transgender movement also needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and start cooling down the doomsday rhetoric.

Most Christians who disagree with transgender identity do so not because they hate anyone, but because they follow the Bible and basic biology, which show that human beings are male and female and cannot change their sex merely by saying so.

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