Catholic website writer threatened to “slaughter” LGBTQ+ people. He got arrested.

A Maryland man who wrote for CatholicVote’s website has been arrested after leaving a voicemail for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in which he threatened to “slaughter” members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Adam Michael Nettina, 34, reportedly left the voicemail for the D.C.-based LGBTQ+ rights organization on March 28, a day after the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. In the message, Nettina seemed to reference the Nashville shooter, Audrey Hale, who police say was transgender.

Related:

Analyst calls out conservatives blaming Nashville shooting on trans people

“Pronouns do not kill children.”

“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 HRC 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.”

After the HRC reported the voicemail to authorities, police were able to trace the number used to make the call to Nettina, whose social media also indicated that he owns an AKM semiautomatic rifle. Nettina was arrested last Friday evening and is being detained ahead of an April 7 hearing. He could face up to five years in federal prison.

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Following Nettina’s arrest, 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 articles since 2016. Following the deadly massacre at Orlando LGBTQ+ nightclub Pulse in 2016, Nettina published a piece entitled, “We Have Nothing to Apologize For.”

More recently, on March 30 he wrote about the resignation of Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ (D) press secretary. That piece included a section on the growth of “trans radicalization.”

Both articles have been removed from CatholicVote’s site, and the organization released a statement on Tuesday saying that it was “deeply saddened to learn of this troubling incident.”

“We have zero tolerance for threats of violence from any employee or independent contractor,” the statement said. “We have terminated this individual’s independent contractor agreement and the few articles that he produced have been removed from our website.”

Since the March 27 shooting, which left three children and three adults dead, conservative commentators and Republican politicians have used the shooter’s possible gender identity to further stoke animus against the transgender community. But, as The Washington Post notes, mass killings are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, while studies have shown that trans people are far more likely to be the victims of violence.

“The LGBTQ+ community is under attack in statehouses across the country and on social media platforms. This violent, hateful rhetoric leads to stigma, and stigma leads to physical violence,” HRC spokesperson Elizabeth Bibi said in a statement following Nettina’s arrest. “As we see radical politicians sow hate and fear with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, we have seen the physical threats to our community multiply — from armed men at Pride parades, to threats of violence against local drag shows at libraries, to bomb threats at children’s hospitals, to the continued rise in fatal violence against members of our community, especially Black transgender women.”