A California man who made violent anti-LGBTQ-related threats against dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster over its updated gender definitions has been sentenced to a year in prison.
FILE - A Merriam-Webster dictionary sits atop their citation files at the dictionary publisher's offices on Dec. 9, 2014, in Springfield, Mass. A California man who admitted to making violent anti-LGBTQ threats against dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster Inc. over its updated gender definitions was sentenced in a federal courtroom in Massachusetts on Thursday, April 13, 2023, to a year in prison.
In court documents, prosecutors said the Rossmoor, California, man has a history of making “threatening communications, nearly all of which were motivated by ... biases based upon race, gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation.” Hanson’s defense attorney, Marissa Elkins, asked that her client be sentenced to the time he has already served, citing his history of emotional and behavioral issues, including anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.Judge Mark Mastroianni in U.S District Court in Springfield acknowledged Hanson's medical history and said he had no intent or capacity to carry out his threats, but called his actions “disturbing and terrifying.
“It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda,” Hanson wrote, according to prosecutors. “There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.”
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