As details about Charlie Kirk’s assassination emerge, several facts are becoming clear.
Kirk was allegedly murdered by a sexually confused young man with a trans-identifying partner; he had also submerged himself in the vile underworld of twisted digital porn, developing a taste for “furry porn” and other perversions. Tyler Robinson, according to published text messages, allegedly chose to kill Kirk because of Kirk’s opposition to LGBT ideology, which he referred to as “hate” that could not be “negotiated with.”
Indeed, Kirk’s assassination was gleefully praised by many on the progressive Left who appeared to agree wholeheartedly with Robinson’s motivations. In the wake of mass shootings by trans-identifying killers at a Minneapolis Catholic school in August, at Covenant Christian school in Tennessee, and the recent revelation that the attempted assassin of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh identifies as transgender, a pattern is becoming clear: there are LGBT extremists who believe their own rhetoric and are willing to kill.
It was only a matter of time before we were told in a mainstream publication that the real tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s death is that people might start to notice this pattern and recognize transgender ideology and rhetoric as a destabilizing and dangerous one.
On September 25, trans-identifying journalist Erin Reed, who is based out of Washington, D.C., made precisely that case in a puerile editorial in the Guardian, in which he comes close to blaming Kirk for his own murder and warns that it will serve as an opportunity for the “far right” to “consolidate power” against the LGBT movement.
Despite the fact that it was a conservative Christian commentator murdered by an LGBT extremist, Reed writes that in the wake of the killing, fear spread through the political Left – and that “[n]owhere was that fear more acute than in the transgender community.” I would argue that conservative Christians, who have seen their children gunned down in Christian schools by trans-identifying shooters and just witnessed one of their most prominent advocates shot in the throat while engaging those he disagreed with on campus, might just have felt that fear more acutely, but awareness – self or otherwise—is not Reed’s strong suit.
According to Reed, the “stage was already set for a crackdown” – and Charlie Kirk had been one of the most prominent voices calling for it:
Kirk had been one of the right’s loudest anti-LGBTQ+ crusaders, and his anti-trans rhetoric was reflected in the 2024 campaign as Trump and other Republicans leaned into hate-filled ads. Kirk’s record was clear: he called for Nuremberg trials of doctors who provide gender-affirming care, branded transgender people “abominations unto God,” urged men to “take care of” trans people “like they did in the ’50s and ’60s,” and railed against high schoolers coming out as gay or bisexual as part of some LGBTQ+ “agenda.” He championed “Don’t Say Gay” laws while blasting Disney as “degenerates … held hostage by their gay employees” for opposing them. If Republicans could pin his killing on a transgender person, they could elevate him as a martyr to justify the crackdown.
To say that this is an exercise in splicing quotes and lifting sentences out of context would be a wild understatement – Reed is trying to present Kirk as someone who advocated overt violence against those who identify as LGBT. He did nothing of the sort. But Reed’s words here are helpful in highlighting how the LGBT movement has accomplished its ends. Holding medical physicians accountable for mutilating the bodies of pubescent and pre-pubescent children? Violence. Publicly noticing that the public schools have become vehicles of LGBT indoctrination – which the LGBT movement publicly advocates for? Advocating violence.
In short: disagreeing with the LGBT movement? Violence.
Charlie Kirk famously treated the LGBT-identifying people who came to his campus events with great personal kindness, as this video highlights; but Reed insists on conflating the condemnation of behaviors with advocating violence against people. That, ironically, is precisely the sort of rhetoric that has radicalized some LGBT extremists: the idea that rejecting somebody’s identity claims is akin to genuine violence or even “genocide,” with the unspoken implication – apparently embraced by Tyler Robinson – that this “violence” must be met with real violence.
So what did this “crackdown” look like, according to Reed? In his own words:
The targeting of transgender people didn’t stop at rhetoric. Concrete policy followed almost immediately. House Republicans began advancing appropriations bills stuffed with anti-LGBTQ+ riders. The National Defense Authorization Act cleared the chamber with provisions banning Pride flags on military bases, blocking transgender bathroom access, and more. Additional spending bills carried the same playbook: a sweeping federal funding ban on transgender healthcare at any age that could threaten hospitals nationwide, restrictions on incarcerated trans people, a Pride flag ban, and even provisions undermining Washington D.C.’s protections for transgender care.
Let’s translate: According to Reed, the “crackdown” constituted removing LGBT flags on military bases (as if LGBT activists had a right to display their ideological banner on government property); preventing trans-identifying males from entering private female spaces; banning procedures that permanently sterilize minors before they are old enough to vote; protecting female inmates from being locked up with trans-identifying male criminals; and again, prohibiting their ideological banner from being flown on government property. That’s it. That’s the “crackdown.” His ominous conclusion:
For transgender people, Kirk’s killing has unleashed a new wave of anti-trans hate so intense that some are now making plans to leave the country altogether. Those of us who have tracked this movement for years can see the shift: the far right, led by Trump and his administration, has seized on the shooting as a rallying cry. Trans people did not shoot Charlie Kirk. Yet we are forced to bear the weight of the right’s reaction – turned into scapegoats for a tragedy that was never ours.
All of the issues cited by Reed were a matter of public debate prior to Kirk’s assassination; indeed, the 2024 presidential election was fought, in part, over some of these policies. Reed admits this. But he then uses Kirk’s death as a pretext for claiming that there is a widespread “crackdown.” It is Reed, in fact, who is using Kirk’s death to push an agenda, not the other way around. And by claiming that common sense policy is a violent “crackdown,” he is contributing to the very climate that resulted in the targeting of Charlie Kirk.
