‘You Are Wickedness’: MAGA Leaders Tie Faith, Politics, and Hostility After Kirk’s Death

When Matt Hailay, 30, first suggested to his husband that the two of them go to Pat O’s Bunkhouse Saloon, a popular LGBTQ+ bar in Melrose on Sunday, his husband hesitated. 

Just days earlier Phoenix police arrested a man for allegedly threatening to “shoot up” a different local LGBTQ+ haunt, Cruisin’ 7th, citing Charlie Kirk’s assassination as his motivation. And that afternoon, a mere 20 minute drive away, more than 200,000 of Kirk’s supporters gathered at and around State Farm Stadium to mourn their slain icon. 

“It is scary when we’re thinking about going somewhere locally,” said Hailay. “We are a purple state. Who is and isn’t safe to be around isn't always clear.”

Hailay managed to convince his husband and the two went out for a few drinks, saying that they needed to not be afraid to leave their homes: “We’ve got to just, like, keep our community up and going.”

After a parade of the most powerful figures in the Republican party and conservative media made it clear that political life in America will not be the same as it was after Kirk's violent killing, the question hanging over LGBTQ+ communities in Arizona is what they should prepare for.  

Although most of the speeches recited at the packed State Farm Stadium during the five-hour long memorial did not directly talk about LGBTQ+ issues, the lead up to the event took a darker tone placing the blame for Kirk’s death at the feet of queer people and their community:

The Heritage Foundation released a report that falsely said Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter, was transgender. Other reports focused on Robinson’s alleged relationship with his transgender roommate. Representatives called on transgender people to be “institutionalized.” The site DropSite reported the FBI was preparing to label transgender people violent enemies of the state. And President Donald J. Trump said transgender people were more dangerous than Al Qaeda. 

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Trump continued that line of aggressive language on Sunday late in his sprawling speech at the stadium—one in which he promised that God would be coming back to America, and directly referenced LGBTQ+ issues.

“Some of the very people who called you a hater for using the wrong pronoun were filled with glee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children,” Trump said. 

“You Are Wickedness”

In death, Kirk has become a martyr for the far-right movement, and has been normalized in the pages of many newspapers which have whitewashed his record of making nakedly racist and homophobic statements. And if the politically stage-managed memorial Sunday—which was part religious service, part political fundraiser, and part call to action by the Trump administration—was any indication of the party’s future, it’s that MAGA leaders are weaving a fire-and-brimstone brand of Christianity into politics that is uniquely hostile to LGBTQ+ people. 

It’s not a completely new direction for Kirk’s organization, which did not have a favorable view of transgender issues or gay rights before he was murdered on Sept. 10 at a college campus in Utah. 

In a speech, Kirk referred to transgender people as a "throbbing middle finger to God" and in another instance said that being trans is a "delusion."

"Cis is a slur. 'Sex assigned at birth' is a logical fallacy. Gender Affirming Care is child mutilation,” Kirk said. “Minor Attracted Persons are pedophiles. Trans is a mental delusion. Reclaim the language they stole from us."

In an online back-and-forth over Pride Month, Kirk hinted at stoning as an answer to homosexuality by referring to Bible verse. 

Karli Carnley, 20, was one of the hundreds of thousands of Kirk and Trump supporters who made the pilgrimage to Glendale to pay their respects to Kirk. Carnley, who drove overnight from San Diego with her aunt and arrived at the stadium at 4:30 a.m. to wait in line, said that she’s been furious about Kirk’s assasiantion. 

“No one seems like they can talk to each other anymore without having a massive fight,” she said, while looking for water in the massive crowd.

Carnley, who has a friend in her life who transitioned from male to female, said she thinks most people misunderstand Kirk's position on the issue: “I can understand how some people think he’s transphobic,” Carnley added. “But he really just thinks they are lost souls.”

Inside the stadium there was no ambiguity about where the MAGA architects were leading the party in a post-assasination world. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, likened Kirk supporters to  “the storm.” He delivered an apocalyptic speech directed at what he characterized as the country’s enemies.

“You are wickedness. You are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing,” the chief advisor said. “You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

Out of Many, One

The combative language from speakers is why Leo Mountbatten, Hailay’s husband, thought Kirk was divisive and not in line with what he says he believes America stands for: “e pluribus unum,” the Latin phrase that was the U.S.’s official motto meaning “out of many, one,” until lawmakers changed it to “In God We Trust” in 1956. 

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“If he were to focus on that, more than ‘this is different from us,’ I think he’d be alive today,” he said from the patio at Pat O’s. “And I truly believe the way forward from this horrific tragedy is that we focus on forming one people from many people.” 

Mountbatten was a Republican who voted for President George W. Bush twice until he became a Democrat in 2008 and voted for President Barack Obama. He said he sympathizes with the wife and children Kirk leaves behind and grieves their loss. 

“As a husband and a father I feel that I’m sorry that that happened to him,” he said. “But at the same time being a husband and father is not a pass for being a horrible person.”