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Riley Gaines tells online LGBTQ newspaper to ‘lawyer up’ following wild library incident, bomb threat

August 25, 2023 | | Print Article

Champion swimmer and women’s advocate Riley Gaines told an online LGBTQ newspaper to “lawyer up” after the outlet claimed the athlete’s “anti-trans harassment on social media” was “linked” to a bomb threat made against a California library on Monday.

“This is libel & character assassination,” Gaines told Pink News on Thursday. “You are the only one inciting violence & outrage by this post, but I understand that’s the goal. Did you not learn anything from the last time you were sued?”

“Don’t worry about changing the article, it’s already been screenshotted,” Gaines added. “Lawyer up.”

It all began with a meeting hosted at the Mary L. Stephens public library in Davis, California, by the Yolo country chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative advocacy group committed to “fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

A librarian shut the crowded meeting down just a few minutes into the presentation, “after the first speaker referred to transgender athletes playing in women’s sports as male,” Students First California co-founder Jonathan Zachreson reported on X.

“Earlier, the librarian suggested it was against state law to misgender someone or a group of people,” Zachreson continued. “That was his basis for kicking them out of the public library, making it impossible to talk about the problem of biological males competing in female sports.”

“Note, the library allowed the transactivists to harass and interrupt the organizers and speakers, but the moment @SophiaSLorey supposedly ‘misgenders’ a hypothetical person, he shuts the program down,” he pointed out in a later post.

“I guess they don’t #LetWomenSpeak in Davis, CA,” Zachreson concluded.

The California Family Council account also posted video of the surreal scene — a post that Gaines re-posted.

“This is ridiculous, but not shocking….a female athlete silenced for calling a spade a spade,” Gaines remarked. “They won’t even engage in a civil conversation. Props to this gal for sticking her ground.”

“Do we know the librarian’s name and/or phone number?” Gaines asked her X followers. “We need silent majority to do its thing.”

In follow-up posts, Gaines urged her followers to call the library in protest of the librarian’s actions, adding that they should “leave a Google review as well.”

In doing that, Gaines stoked “outrage” among “anti-trans activists” who then, Pink News suggested, made “the threatening phone call” to the library.

And Pink News wasn’t the only one desperate to blame Gaines for the bomb threat, which authorities later “deemed fake,” according to CBS News.

Pink News cited in its article Media Matters’ LGTBQ reporter Ari Drennen, who also tried to make those dots connect.

“A library asked a group repeatedly misgendering trans athletes to leave. At 9am the next day, Riley Gaines shared the librarian’s name and phone number with her 700,000 followers,” Drennen posted on X. “The library received its 1st bomb threat by 3pm.”

Drennen also tried to blame the popular Libs of TikTok for two bomb threats in Tulsa.

“This is part of a predictable and troubling pattern,” Drennen said, “a Tulsa elementary school received two bomb threats yesterday after a post by Libs of TikTok.”

Melissa Fine
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