by zahlman | 2025-09-17 17:07:04+00:00
> Sure, calling others a abomination to God is full of joy and kindness.

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.