I’d like to take a fine point to your Saturday, Sept. 13, editorial, taking issue with how you tried to set the tone of the editorial with your first paragraph.
In that paragraph, you quoted novelist Stephen King as posting to his X account regarding Charlie Kirk, “He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin,’” and then labeled the statement as false. While technically true, it far from paints an accurate picture of what Kirk was quoted as saying about stoning gays to death.
In a podcast episode entitled “Ms. Rachel’s Pride Month,” Kirk chided Christians who prioritized the scriptures about loving their neighbors as themselves, stating Leviticus 18 states that those who “lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just sayin’.”
Kirk went on to describe that scripture about stoning gay men as “God’s perfect law when it comes to such sexual matters.” I would say it’s a pencil-thin line between advocating for the stoning of gay people dead and God’s perfect law is the stoning of gay people dead.
Does this mean to say that Charlie Kirk deserved to be assassinated for that bit of free speech? Certainly not. But we don’t have to sanitize Kirk’s speech, as your editorial board did, and imply Kirk said nothing controversial about stoning gay people dead to decry the political violence that took Kirk’s life.
Autumn Sandeen
San Diego
