DALLAS — A Texas man was arrested last week on a federal charge after authorities said he called and threatened the life of a doctor in Boston who provides care to gender nonconforming children, according to court documents.
Matthew Jordan Lindner, 38, faces a charge of transmitting an interstate threat, according to an affidavit filed Friday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. Lindner is from the Kendall County town of Comfort, about 90 miles southwest of Austin.
According to the affidavit, Lindner left a voicemail for a doctor affiliated with the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center. The Boston-based center is part of the Fenway Institute, a research body which addresses and advocates for the healthcare needs of LGBTQ people.
In the Aug. 31 voicemail, Lindner told the unidentified physician there were “a group of people on the way to handle” them, authorities said.
“You sick m------------, you’re all going to burn,” Lindner said in the voicemail. “You signed your own warrant, lady. Castrating our children. You’ve woken up enough people. And upset enough of us.”
“Sleep well, you f------ c---,” Lindner concluded the voicemail, according to the affidavit. The voicemail lasted 41 seconds, according to the affidavit.
Over the course of eight minutes, Lindner also called different numbers associated with the doctor, including one belonging to the doctor’s former medical practice and two numbers associated with a Rhode Island university where the doctor belongs to the faculty.
Lindner was arrested Friday, according to court documents. It’s not clear whether he has obtained a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
The alleged threat was one of several made in the wake of what the Department of Justice described as “inaccurate information” shared on social media about another Boston entity that provides care for transgender and nonbinary children. Around that time, several right-wing social media influencers accused Boston Children’s Hospital of performing surgeries on the genitals of gender nonconforming patients under 18, The Washington Post reported. The hospital has said their doctors don’t undertake such surgeries on minors, according to the affidavit.
The unidentified doctor who was the target of Lindner’s alleged threat advocates the use of gender-affirming care for children, including the use of puberty blockers or hormones to delay puberty in children questioning their gender identity, according to the affidavit. Such care is supported by leading medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In 2021, UT Southwestern announced significant changes to its Genecis program, which provides care for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, citing political controversy and media attention in its decision to stop providing certain medical treatments for new adolescent patients. That decision prompted Ximena Lopez, the doctor who ran Genecis, to sue Children’s Medical Center Dallas, which ran the program with UT Southwestern. A judge has ruled that Lopez may continue to provide gender-affirming care to youth while the case is being litigated. It’s scheduled to go to trial in April 2023.
According to the affidavit, authorities were able to link the number used to make the alleged threat to Lindner through AT&T records. Lindner’s Comfort address was associated with the number, as was his email address and his business, Lindner Ammo LLC, a federal firearm licensee.
Lindner was further linked to the call by posting a video to his Facebook account where he talked about an upcoming marksmanship competition. A FBI agent concluded the person in the video was the same person who made the threat by comparing the voice in the video to the threatening voicemail, according to federal authorities.
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(The Dallas Morning News staff writer Marin Wolf contributed to this article.)
