On Hacker News and Charlie Kirk

Let's talk about what you said.

Kirk didn't need anyone's permission to found his movement and be controversial, he didn't waste himself worrying what many called him. He was a rebel and rebels don't care what society says. And it doesn't get any easier to deal with the insults and mislabels of others - you don't solve it by changing society, forcing them to speak correctly - you solve it by embodying not giving a shit what they think and being you anyway. In one sense, Kirk and trans people are united in their rebelliousness towards the mainstream.

I think you would have had a good conversation with him. One of the things I saw him do was point out that when you quote from the Bible, take care because you can always find another verse that contradicts. Which is the point he's advocating for in your second link (@patriottakes).

Maybe one of the points of the Bible itself being so self-contradictory was - we can't outsource our morality. Not even to God, entirely. We have to figure it out for ourselves to some extent.

And I think that by standing up for, talking about, and debating his beliefs, in a respectful way, that’s what he was doing, and encouraging.

Your first link deserves its full context. The first video is edited together cuts from from TPUSA Faith in September 2023 where Kirk introduces Riley Gaines (the full unedited video is: https://www.youtube.com/live/KMuBe8wE3K8?si=80ACNykxMdBx8XZV...). The full transcript is included below.

I invited you to watch that full introduction, and try to feel who he is, and answer the question, what is your heart-based read of Kirk as a person? Also, from that read do you feel he's someone who hates you? Who hates trans people?

It’s clear from context him calling William Thomas an abomination against God is a provocative, rebellious counter, from his cherished Bible, against what he sees as the coercive forced participation of a Mao-like cultural movement intent on rule, and corrupting America, “the trans Mafia”. He talks of watching the trans movement grow, and he is okay with several phases of it: “tolerate trans people” “okay”, “accept”, “okay” - but when it gets to celebrate and participate, he balks. Why would someone insist on violating his boundaries against what he wants to do? You can relate.

  Thank you, everybody. Please take a seat. Thank you. What a great turnout tonight—welcome to the fall, everybody.

  This is excellent. We have a very special guest tonight, so I’m not going to spend too much time introducing. But first, I just want to say it is so encouraging and heartwarming to see this event grow and grow and grow. We’ve taken this all across the country. We’ve done this in Virginia, we’ve done Freedom Night in America in Albuquerque. We now have an amazing community of local pastors that we meet with before these events, where we are growing the movement to talk about the church taking a stand for biblical values, taking a stand against tyranny.

  I have a couple of verses I want to share, but I’m going to just get right to the thing that’s on my heart. And I think we can all agree—and Luke, I hope I’m not talking out of turn—if they try to lock us down again, we are not going to comply with the government. We’re not going to do the masks, we’re not going to shut down the churches, we are not going to comply. Period.

  Okay, I got that off my chest. Am I good to say that, Luke? Say it again: Dream City Church will not comply. If they try to shut down this church—right. And if this is not your church home, then this probably should become your church home, because how many churches in the valley would say that boldly and clearly? I love the Barnetts. You guys are led so well here.

  So there’s this movement. I’ve been doing this for 11 years, speaking on college campuses. I’ve given over 2,000 speeches in the last 11 years—literally in every corner of the country. About five or six years ago, you started to see this movement that at first seemed on the fringe. It wasn’t anything necessarily new. 

  Many of you remember growing up, this idea of men cross-dressing—I used to call it transvestite. It was kind of on the fringes; it wasn’t really something we talked about a lot. But as Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, things happen gradually and then suddenly. It’s like we woke up in a different country.

  One of the themes that we talk about here a lot is that you are living through a cultural revolution—the same that Mao did in China—where they’re trying to actually re-found the country. They look at themselves as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay, and George Washington. They’re trying to re-found the country into something new, something weird, something not ordinary, something different. And it’s hard to always notice that when you’re living through it, right? Sometimes you don’t notice it because it’s so confusing. I’m sure some of you sometimes look at your TV and say: what country am I living in?

 Not— I mean, 600 years in federal prison for a former president—all of that. But the one issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law, and dare I say, a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now. [Applause]

  Some of you—and I was guilty of this for years—I used to believe in this “live and let live” thing. I had strong beliefs of what God’s design was, but I said, hey, if it’s not bothering me, then I’m not going to talk much about it. And I’m sure some of you probably said something similar. But it was never about that. It was not about “live and let live.” It was: live and let us rule.

  What first went from, “Well, we have to tolerate, okay.” Then, “You must accept, okay.” Then, “You must celebrate” I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that. And then, “You must participate.” And if you can’t participate, your kids must participate.

  This used to be just kind of on the fringes. And those of us that do this for a living, we started to speak out more and more—especially three or four years ago. But I was told by the people in charge: “Oh, this is not—it’s just a little thing here, a little thing there.” And then, next thing you know, a story that shocked the world—those of us that pay attention—was all of a sudden when we saw a biological man win an NCAA championship in female athletics and swimming.

  The people that told us this was on the fringes, this was isolated—you see an institution destroyed in front of our very eyes. The very same people, by the way, that always are lecturing us about the “war on women,” #MeToo, were perfectly fine with a deranged, neurotic man becoming an NCAA champion.

  But it didn’t stop there. We started to see this in schools and curriculum, pronoun usage. And I do not exaggerate to say this is now the new state-run religion of the United States federal government. Where they have two LGBTQ “alphabet mafia” flags at the White House. Where they have trans people taking off their clothes—not an exaggeration—on the White House lawn. Where the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, comes out and says that biological men can give birth and lactate if they take the right drugs. In fact, the Biden regime says they’re “birthing people,” they are not women.

  In fact, if you ever want to just see somebody short-circuit, we have to thank the legendary Matt Walsh—who I will get here one night, I will get that done, we will. I will. And I’m not one to cheaply give out comments, but he’s done hero’s work. He’s really special. Where he just asked the simple question that just breaks the matrix of the trans lobby: “What is a woman?”

  Well, tonight we have a woman speaking to us. And it’s actually the first woman ever at Freedom Night in America. That’s not intentional—it just so happened this way. This young lady had a national championship robbed from her. She’s been lied about. She has been held hostage by left-wing activists at Turning Point USA campus events. And she’s now one of the most important cultural warriors and figures on the landscape right now, arguing for really simple stuff—stuff that people would have rolled their eyes at ten years ago and said, “Okay, why are you saying this, it’s normal.” Now, it’s considered radical.

  We are in a church, and so it’s important to remember Deuteronomy 22:5: A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. You hear that, William Thomas? You’re an abomination to God.

  So, God created in His own image—in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. Distinctions keep us free. Men and women are not the same, and that’s a beautiful thing. Tonight, we have one of the most powerful young women in America, fighting the transgender mafia.

  Join me in welcoming Riley Gaines, everybody.

Joy, of course not, but that isn't required for something to not be vitriolic or angry. Kindness — for sufficiently devout Christians, like Kirk by all accounts appeared to be? Yes, they absolutely, sincerely believe this is the kind thing to do, as sincerely as they believe everything else. I've spoken to some. I have some in my extended family.

Kirk had a prior disagreement with Lia Thomas specifically, which was specifically because of the compassion he felt for Riley Gaines having to compete against her. Under the circumstances, he delivers the speech rather calmly.

Per the other clip, Kirk sincerely believes that the way to express kindness is to tell people the truth. For someone who sincerely believes in God, and in an afterlife, and that people will be judged in the afterlife for their "sins", and that the standard of judgment includes this sort of thing, of course this would be an expression of kindness. In the devout Christian mindset, this is the main way to steer people onto "the narrow way" and empower them to get into Heaven.

Yes, the New Testament talks about accepting Jesus being the only thing you need. But the generic, mainstream Christian understanding — as far as I can tell, anyway — is that accepting Jesus either entails, or naturally results in, repenting of sin, atoning for it, trying to avoid it in the future, etc.

None of this is inconsistent and none of it exposes a desire for cruelty. It exposes a desire for things that perhaps are cruel in your (and my) mindset, but not in his. Almost by definition, the transgender condition is one of gender dysphoria: one in which mind and body disagree. Evidently, Kirk believed as a matter of faith that it is the mind which should be made to conform to the evidence of the body, rather than the other way around.

But Kirk also clearly distinguished his faith from his politics on many occasions, and made clear on many occasions that he is fine, legally speaking, with adults altering the body. He also worked with (e.g. Chloe Cole) and befriended (e.g. Buck Angel) trans people.

> Strange that people like him often quote the Old Testament (you know, the part where God committed multiple genocides) and rarely the New Testament.

"People like him" quote the four Gospel books all the time. They especially plaster John 3:16 everywhere. Even the most psychotic caricature of a fulminating preacher you can imagine, forewarning of the Apocalypse, is citing the New Testament (since Revelation is canonically the last book thereof).

> He even quotes it to contradict the message of the new one

First off, neither Testament can be said to have a single message, so to speak of "the message" is incoherent. But to the extent that the New Testament is ever said to have a message, it's about redemption through faith. Kirk clearly espoused that belief all the time; he said that he (and other TPUSA staff) would "pray for" people whose actions he disapproved of. He never yelled at them, never put hatred in his voice. All evidence suggests he sincerely believed everyone could be redeemed, if only in the afterlife.

The tweet completely misrepresents the point of the exchange shown in the clip. As Kirk points out in the clip, the "love thy neighbour" bit appears twice in Leviticus, which is part of the Old Testament, and Ms. Rachel also references Deuteronomy 6:3-5:

> Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

(via https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%206...)

So this is not about "the message of the new one" at all. The key point of Kirk's response is that "love thy neighbour" does not, in his view, mean to accept and endorse the sin of others; it means to support them while trying to steer them away from sin. Christianity extended the existing canon of contemporary religious belief; it did not obsolete that canon. The Bible describes a Jesus who told people to be compassionate and kind, but who did not tell people "by the way, my Father completely changed His mind about what is or is not acceptable conduct for humanity; never mind the Decalogue any more". (In fact, the Decalogue is reaffirmed in Matthew and in Romans.)

> It's also interesting to see the reactions to Kirk's murder. Of course they try for the death penalty for the murderer but God said:

As already established, per the Bible, God also prescribed stoning for offenses much less severe than political assassination. Capital punishment need not come from a place of vengeance. Modern methods of execution are far more humane.

Capital punishment has occurred per statute within the last decade in 16 states and is legal in 11 more, per Wikipedia. Per recent polling, a majority of Americans, including nearly half of Democrats, support capital punishment (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/02/most-america...). The support seems to be based more in a sense of justice or fairness, rather than deterrence.