When readers asked Snopes, the popular urban legend–dispelling website, to look at a claim about Charlie Kirk’s take on stoning gays, the site’s headline (9/16/25) was definitive: “Charlie Kirk Didn’t Say Gay People Should Be Stoned to Death.”
The claim originated when a clip from Kirk’s podcast was circulated in which the right-wing organizer criticized children’s musical performer Ms. Rachel for supporting Pride month. Ms. Rachel had explained her support by quoting Matthew 22 from the Bible—which, Ms. Rachel correctly summarized, says that when questioned about the “greatest commandment,” Jesus replied that it is “to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
The clip showed Kirk, opening in mid-sentence, saying:
…is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death, just saying. So, Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.
Snopes‘s Nur Ibrahim reprints this quote and writes:
The above clip does not show the full context of Kirk’s comments. Kirk did not directly advocate for stoning gay people to death. We searched through footage and clips of him discussing LGBTQ+ issues and did not find evidence of him stating outright that gay people should be stoned to death; rather, he quoted the Bible as part of an argument about how others selectively choose quotations. As such, we rate this claim as false.
It then offers that “full context” from the show, quoting Kirk at length:
She’s not totally wrong…. The first part is Deuteronomy 6:3–5. The second part is Leviticus 19. So you love God, so you must love his law. How do you love somebody? You love them by telling them the truth, not by confirming or affirming their sin. And it says, by the way, Ms. Rachel, might want to crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser reference—part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just saying. So, Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters. Now, so how do you best love somebody? You love them by telling them the truth. Don’t be cruel…. I would love for Ms. Rachel to respond to this: Is pride a Christian value? She thinks it is. Happy Pride Month everybody!… In fact the Scriptures tell us the opposite. “Pride goeth before the fall.”
Snopes concludes its analysis:
Kirk was not saying that gay people should be stoned to death; rather, he was quoting the Bible in an effort to show how Ms. Rachel was being selective in her interpretation of the Scripture. However, we should note that in the same comment, Kirk called the section about stoning, “The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
Reuters (9/13/25) noted that some of the people on a website doxxing “Charlie’s Murderers” were “critical of the far-right figure while explicitly denouncing violence.”
Well, gee, why should you note that, Snopes? Ibrahim doesn’t explain.
Set aside Kirk’s own straw man argument that pretends Ms. Rachel quotes Leviticus rather than Matthew. It is true, as Ibrahim writes, that Kirk did not “directly advocate for stoning gay people to death.” And yet the straightforward way to read a self-professed Christian—and biblical literalist—characterizing a chapter of the Bible as “affirm[ing] God’s perfect law” is as an endorsement of the laws in that chapter—in this case, condoning the stoning to death of non-celibate gay people.
Snopes offers no reason for us to doubt Kirk’s sincerity about his belief in the scripture he quoted—whether or not he was trying (speciously) to paint Ms. Rachel as cherry picking—and therefore no justification for its definitive “false” rating. At a time when intense state and right-wing cultural pressure (Al Jazeera, 9/13/25; CBS, 9/16/25; Reuters, 9/13/25, 9/16/25) seeks to sanitize and censor accurate recountings of Kirk’s beliefs, it is all the more important for those claiming to set the record straight not to bend over backwards to accommodate that pressure.
ACTION ALERT: Please ask Snopes to reevaluate its finding that Charlie Kirk was not endorsing the stoning of gays when he called the practice “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
CONTACT: You can contact Snopes here.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
Good points. From what I’ve seen in recent years, Snopes is mostly a tool–a tool for the Rich & Powerful. It nearly always takes the side of the Establishment, Status Quo & whatever Big GovCorp claim.
Self-proclaimed ‘fact-check’ sites should be viewed with extreme caution & skepticism..just like one should view Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Chem/Ag, Big Pharma, Big MIC/War-Machine, Big Banks, Wall St, Big Tech, etc claims with extreme skepticism.
When there are literally Tens if not Hundreds of $Billions at stake, we know from decades of experience not to trust those rapacious demons running Big GovCorp and their many Media-shills.
Thanks for your good work, FAIR.
Kirk was definitely Homophobic.
I don’t buy the analysis that suggests his statements about stoning Gay People to Death as “correcting” another person’s misstatement.
I’m a Gay Man married to another Gay Man and I’m a retired Emergency Physician. I’ve saved many lives in the Emergency Department. And I never asked about whether they were Straight or Gay or Bi.
Somehow it never occurred to me to quote the Old Testament instructions to stone gay people to death for any reason…
Damn–the man was a hateful bigot!
Yes, Kirk appealed to the very worst aspects, instincts & fears of humanity.
He was similar to the Rump, along with too many others granted power & wealth and (therefore) a loud ‘bully’ pulpit.
We can say that his murder was wrong, while not whitewashing his vile words & deeds.
While Kirk lived, he was allowed incredible freedom of speech–Far more than what the vast majority of the rest of us get. Helps when you say things the ultra-wealthy like and are happy to pay for platforms & megaphones.
Snopes is apparently willfully subtle-resistant. The guy knew how and when to be careful in spite of himself.
Yep, similar to the Rump..he’s usually careful how he phrases absurd &/or bad things. “people say..” or “you hear..” etc.
A coward’s way of implying horrible things sans responsibility.
Snopes and others need to account for such cowardly framing.
I posted the following at Snopes’ website:
Snopes said Charlie Kirk did not declare that gay people should be stoned. Kirk’s framing of “God’s perfect law” absolutely contains that implication — literally and figuratively.
I requested that Snopes correct the entry.
Hi, I’m a Jewish person here who reads Hebrew. Christians know very little about Jewish Law. In fact, many Churches believe that G-d’s Law was done away with by the acts of Jesus (FALSE). The only thing “holy” about the Christian Bible is its many mistranslations.
THERE IS NO WHERE IN THE TANAKH WHERE IT SAYS GAY MEN ARE TO BE STONED TO DEATH. ALSO, THE TANAKH SAYS NOTHING ABOUT LESBIANISM.
Ms. Racheal (whoever that is) was quoting from the “NT” not the Tanakh. That’s how little Kirk knows about his “bible”
The Law was never meant for Gentiles, it is only for the descendants of Israel.
Charlie Kirk said G-d’s Law is perfect. It is! However, the Law says to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”. So why does Kirk go to Church on Sunday?
The Christian bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.” How then could G-d order the killing of men, women, and children? Because it’s a mistranslation of the Hebrew. The actual commandment is, “You shall do no murder”. That is a whole different story.
Media Bias Fact Check says this about Snopes:
“Overall, we rate Snopes as Left-Center biased based on news story selection that slightly favors a liberal perspective. We also rate them as High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing for fact checks and for abiding by the guidelines of the IFCN (International Fact Checking Network¹.)
1. IFCN signatories and funders include; Poynter Institute, PolitiFact, Media Bias Fact Check, Snopes, Reuters, AllSides, Investigative Reporter, FactCheck Org, Nieman Foundation For Journalism, Knight Foundation, Pew Research Center.
Below is my opinion but not in isolation. There is a growing body of philosophers, physicists, computer engineers, medical doctors, and neuroscientists who have made similar claims, oh but for time’s sake I crunched it down some….take what you read next with a bag of salt.
To be a skeptic one must fight the urge to come to conclusions while not letting one’s skepticism become toxic. Skeptical inquiry can devolve nto cynicism, pessimism, contrarianism, logical positivism, scholasticism, romanticism, and material-reductionist forms of Behaviorism/Behaviourism.*
* Strong opinion: behaviorism is a reductive school of thought within a reductive ontology (physicalism materialism), that has been thoroughly discredited of late. The Placebo Effect alone has arguably falsified materialist-reductionism since no one has ever identified, let alone falsified, the precise ‘material mechanism’ that causes the mind of a patient to be able to overcome known good medical cures and effective analgesics. There are many maps and models that were developed by behaviorists, none of which have stood the test of time. The territory cannot be pulled out of a map, rendering behaviorism as irrational at worst and illogical at best. Anyone so deluded and unable to see the logical problems in attempting to reduce the essence of complex mental phenomena to a limited map of ‘perceived’ behavioral observations, should go home and rethink their life. Behaviorism is technically a form of sophistry that some materialists have been wishing to be true for hundreds of years with not one shred of empirical evidence that can be demonstrated even in principle that would falsify materialism let alone behaviorism. For a more detailed explainer check out David Chalmers and “The Hard Problem of Consciousness.”
Maybe I am a bit daft here, but with all due respect what in the hell are you trying to say here? If you could maybe give a synopsis of your point and what you’re trying to get across. Maybe other readers are more educated than I am, but i think it would be helpful for the average person to have your opinion here stated more explicitly. Because I got a lot out of what you wrote while simultaneously getting nothing.
Charlie Kirk speaks approvingly of “God’s perfect law” when referring to the ancient (and obviously obsolete, barbaric) biblical passage urging the stoning of gays to death.
I guess Charlie never read Kent Ashcraft’s wonderfully ironic put-down of such literalist reading of the Tanakh / Torah, which went viral on the Internet in the early 2000s.
I featured this masterfully satirical piece at my immense collection of Spiritual Humor at http://www.Enlightened-Spirituality.org nearly twenty years ago. Here it is:
“GOD’S LAW”
[An old favorite, written by Kent Ashcraft in May 2000. He originally addressed it to conservative radio talk host “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger, who said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, she found that, according to Leviticus 18:22, homosexuality is an abomination and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. This piece then went around the Internet, re-addressed to President George W. Bush. We use this latter version, with one additional item from myself (#10).]
Dear President Bush,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from you and understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said: “in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man and a woman.” I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness–Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women for some reason take offense at this.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord–Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there “degrees” of abomination?
7. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
8. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
9. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton-polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
[And one more item, newly submitted:]
10. Very shortly after my recent marriage, I learned from Deuteronomy 22:13-21 that “a marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed.” Now, as a recent widower, my question is… do I get to keep her dowry and the wedding presents?
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.
Friends, I am a long-time fan of your work, especially after my granddaughter asked me, “How do you know what to believe online.” I recommended Snopes.
Charlie Kirk tried to persuade by debate, not physical violence. We should all mourn his senseless murder.
To misrepresent Ms. Rachel’s statement as from the Old Testament is sly at best, hypocritical maybe. There is a reason Christians recognize Christ’s teachings as a New Testament. However, being verbally sly is free speech, protected under the First Amendment.
I agree with FAIR. Characterizing a chapter of the Bible as “‘affirm[ing] God’s perfect law’ is an endorsement of the laws in that chapter. I’ve listened to (‘scuse the expression) one helluva lot of sermons. If I heard that phrase from a preacher, I would know what they were affirming, especially if followed immediately by, “…part of scripture is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just saying.”
I will continue to recommend Snopes, for nearly always keeping the record accurate, regardless of social hysteria. Nearly. Just saying.
Charlie Kirk was a devout Christian. As such, I deeply believe he had no desire to see anyone suffer. This whole argument goes back to Old Testament vs New Testament. He called it “God’s perfect law” (I believe) because everything God does is perfect and righteous and for a reason, even if we can’t understand it from our rather limited perspective. But Christ came and fulfilled the law, paying the price for all of us, for all time. In any case, it’s not our job or our right to judge others. That remains to God alone. Charlie WAS only pointing out the selective use of scripture to support a specific argument.
This joke of an article is enough evidence to prove that this website is greatly misnamed.
Anything but fair.