From the Archive: Charlie on Morality, the Separation of Church and State, and Strong Pastors
Charlie Kirk dismantles the separation of church and state myth, arguing the nation was founded by Bible-believers requiring government to curb sin. He urges pastors to defy the Johnson Amendment and speak against CRT, wokeism, and Disney's alleged gay agenda, citing Columbia University's segregated ceremonies and United Airlines' diversity mandates as proof of systemic corruption. Kirk condemns transgender athletes like Leah Thomas for cheating women's sports while calling on churches to prioritize biblical truth over business models, asserting that without divine standards, morality collapses into mere opinion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fighting Evil and Proclaiming Truth00:14:42
My name is Charlie Kirk.
I run the largest pro American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.
College is a scam, everybody.
You got to stop sending your kids to college.
You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
Go find out how your church can get involved.
Sign up and become an activist.
I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
Most important decision I ever made in my life.
And I encourage you to do the same.
Here I am.
Lord, use me.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
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I'm still amazed that you're 28 years old and you've made such an impact.
It's all the Lord.
It's all the Lord.
I'll tell you what, we're just vessels for what He wants us to do.
I'll tell you what.
Well, just earlier, you were spending some time with Ron and I, and we just said, We thank God for you.
That the Lord has put his hand on you and raised you up.
And we're really, really grateful.
Thank you.
And I just want to say this before we get started.
I have an opportunity to travel to a lot of churches and speak with a lot of pastors.
You are so blessed at this church to have the pastors that you have.
Pastor Wes and Pastor Ron, you are being led so well.
And we'll get into this during the conversation, but it's easy to back off, it's easy to stay quiet.
We're commanded to do the tough stuff.
And this church is taking some incredibly courageous and biblical stands.
And you're being led very well here, I have to tell you.
You really are.
Well, I wanted to jump in before we jump into the weeds.
There's some people here, believe it or not, because not everybody has access to all the awesome videos and content that you're producing.
But who is Charlie Kirk?
Who are you?
And how in the world did you get to the point where you're at at 28 years old?
Depends who you ask, I guess.
A couple different answers to that.
First of all, I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade, most important decision I made in my life.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, so in the state of Illinois.
Now, you're going to have to now hear my Illinois deal.
You guys all know this.
You see, in Illinois, we have term limits, a little different than most states one term in office, one term in jail.
See?
You guys get it.
They get it in Missouri.
I'll tell you what.
All right, how about?
See, when we ask for our governor's cell number, We, um, Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.
Started this whole effort to try to save America and save Western civilization when I was 18 years old.
I wanted to get into West Point, didn't get in.
It was the best thing that never happened to me.
God has a plan for all of us.
And I thought I knew what I was doing, and I didn't.
And so I started this effort with no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing when I was 18 years old in the suburbs of Chicago.
And I felt a need, a deep urge that the people of this nation needed to wake up, especially students and young people.
I felt that we were given this incredible constitutional republic and we were making decisions, self inflicted decisions, to turn this country away from righteousness and towards decay and despair.
And again, it was a clumsy first couple of years starting at Turning Point USA.
It's amazing support along the way.
The Lord really had his hand on this organization and has had his hand on this organization all along.
And 10 years later, we are now the nation's premier organization for young people.
Pursuing and defending American values on high school and college campuses across the country.
And You know, a little bit, I do three podcasts a day, a couple hours of radio a day.
I traveled 330 days last year all across the country.
I've been over all 50 states twice over.
I have difficulty sitting still.
So, this is like my third or fourth event today.
I love it.
I'm the most blessed person on the planet because I get to do what I love and know it makes a difference.
I really am incredibly blessed in what I get to do.
And what kind of brings us here was an unexpected detour that has now turned into one of the great blessings in my life.
I was a Christian my whole life.
I don't have one of those stories where you say, you know, I walked away from the Lord, I came back.
That's actually not my journey.
I know some of you can resonate more with me, and you'll hear everyone's testimony different.
I never doubted God.
I never had one of those things where I looked up to God and said, Are you actually there?
That was never my story.
At certain times in my life, I had more enthusiasm and energy than others.
I think we can all sympathize with that.
But I was always told something growing up that, Charlie, that politics thing is fine, but you better not bring it towards the church.
You keep those two things separate.
And I was fine.
I was like, okay, no problem.
I grew up in a Bible believing, Bible based church in the suburbs of Chicago where it was expositional, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, deep into the Word.
I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
I'm unafraid to espouse that on college campuses, high school campuses, podcasts, and radio.
And I was doing that for the first eight years of Turning Point USA, but I was always told, hey, there's got to be this dividing line.
Don't cross that line.
And then my life really changed, and my premise was challenged.
When a pastor in California spoke at an event right before me, my now pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy, and he talked about how the two are actually never supposed to be separate.
That these are questions of morality, of truth, about what is good, what is true, what is beautiful.
Like Philippians 4 8, that says, whatever is right, whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is praiseworthy, think on these things.
That's Paul writing.
And tonight we're going to think about these things.
We're going to live out Philippians 4 8 tonight.
We're going to think about the things that are true and praiseworthy and what things are not true and praiseworthy.
And he really challenged me because I was under this assumption that America might have had some Christian roots at one point, but it basically was always a secular nation.
And I didn't believe it as bluntly as that, but I definitely had some of those talking points beat into me, all the while being a Christian and being a constitutionalist.
And I couldn't have been more wrong.
The deeper I dove into our nation's history, I realized that 55 out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible believing, church attending Christians.
I realized that the Constitution is a divinely inspired document that espouses biblical principles of consent to the governed and separation of powers and the independent judiciary.
I realized how exceptional America was from the beginning because of the problem America sought to solve.
And then I realized that it was the church that didn't just inspire, it was the church that was the reason why America was founded in the first place.
And so that rocked my world.
I grew up in a world where you didn't say that at church, where you get kind of uncomfortable, you start sitting around, like, what is the pastor saying if they're doing that, right?
And I really went into a time of prayer and reflection and eventually repentance.
Because I asked God for forgiveness why I didn't actually push this forward the first eight years at Turning Point USA of everything I was doing.
All the while, I was never turning my back on the Lord, but I was trying to be like, oh, that's not the place, not the time, place, or manner.
And then 2020 hit.
We locked down the church.
We decided it was non essential, one of the worst mistakes our civilization ever made.
And we'll get into that tonight, trust me, in detail.
And I started to speak at more churches across the country.
And pastors were asking me for advice, me for advice, on how to talk about CRT.
Asked me, what is this wokeism thing, Charlie?
Should we ever comment on this stuff?
And I found that more and more pastors were desiring to speak righteousness into their community and into their congregation.
And so you asked, who is Charlie Kirk?
First and foremost, a Christian, saved by Jesus Christ.
My husband, amazing wife, got married just about a year ago, which I, when you meet my wife, you'll realize I'm the luckiest person.
I totally outkicked my coverage.
I, way under, under, under, well, let's just say I'm not qualified for that whole deal when you meet my wife.
She's amazing.
And I'm a patriot, unapologetic.
I love my country.
But I want to make sure that this is very clear.
Look, we as Christians, we believe in hierarchies, hierarchies of order, hierarchies of beauty, hierarchies.
The most important thing in my life is Jesus Christ.
That will never change.
And this is a very important thing.
The church should never get that hierarchy mixed up.
And we'll talk about tonight how to properly communicate that, where it comes involved in the church.
But if you remain silent on the issues of patriotism and civic engagement, oh, that doesn't matter.
Well, then we're all going to have to open prison ministries, everybody, because we'll be sharing the gospel from somewhere that is not as nice as this room right now.
That's not an exaggeration.
We can go through examples of that.
So that's who I am, and that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
We like the story.
So, just to clarify then, so you have Turning Point that is focused mostly for like colleges and high schools.
But then a couple years ago or however long ago, this faith kind of lag, right?
To where you're focused in mobilizing churches.
So, give us some hope.
Like, are you seeing the church begin to wake up and not be afraid to speak into these issues?
I am.
And so, yeah, look, all the different components of Turning Point USA seek to accomplish the same thing in different ways.
We want to set the captives free.
God does not want his people to live under tyranny.
He doesn't want people to live under tyranny eternally or here on earth.
It's not his wish for his people.
It's why he delivered people from Egypt.
It's why he delivered his chosen people every single time from slavery and serfdom.
It's why he sent his son, Jesus Christ.
He wants us to be free.
That's why I'm living, that's why I'm wearing the shirt right now live free.
It's God's wish for you to live free free from sin, free from bondage, free from guilt.
And yes, free from authoritarianism and petty tyranny that tells you what to do with your life when it gets in complete contradiction with your values.
God's wish for his people is for you to live free.
And so, yeah, to answer your question, at Turning Point USA, we started as high school and college campuses.
That is growing like you wouldn't believe.
More and more young people are attending our events.
They're starting chapters all around this quest for liberty, which is harmonic, by the way.
It is completely alongside and parallel with what we're doing here tonight.
We're trying to talk about liberty, and we're going to talk about it through a strictly biblical lens.
But it's the same sort of thing when a college kid shows up at one of my events, either at the University of Arkansas, which we just did a couple nights ago, or Auburn, where we just did an event a couple nights ago.
And these kids are searching, they're looking.
They're looking to see it.
Is there a natural law out there?
Is there any sort of rhythm to the cosmos?
Because they've been told there isn't.
They've been told that there is no God and there is no meaning, there is no love, there is no beauty.
So, all of us tonight have two things in common.
Every single person here tonight agrees with these two things there is a God and you are not Him.
Now, the importance of those two things is that the predominant view on most college campuses is that they believe there is no God and if there was one, I would be Him.
Very dangerous things happen at that moment.
So, we started this program, TPUSA Face, back in August.
And look, I'm an entrepreneur.
If something doesn't work, I'm not going to keep on doing it.
There's been plenty of projects in the 10 years of this that I was like, whoa, that doesn't work.
Shut that down, right?
That's not, doesn't work.
I've been blown away since August.
We now have a field team across the country that's working with pastors, working with churches.
And the success, the momentum, the curiosity, the interest of churches that otherwise would have been on the sidelines, they don't want to say, hey, I want to do that biblical citizenship class.
Or they might reach out to us and say, Hey, Charlie, do you have a pastor summit coming up, which we do, coming in August, where we're going to have pastors from all across the country come to our summit and hopefully empower them and equip them with the information and just encouragement in general to keep on speaking out on this.
But I'll tell you, there are so many churches that are now speaking openly about these issues and about what's happening here.
And I feel just, we're calling this entire calendar year the rise of the citizen.
We are seeing regular, normal, everyday people that otherwise would have just been either complacent.
Or they would have been apathetic.
They're starting to break out of their mold and they're starting to challenge authority and tyranny and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
And it all starts with the church.
Now, I'm sure there's several pastors in the room or viewing online, and I just want to stay here for a little bit longer.
This idea of the separation of church and state.
We found ourselves on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a few weeks ago for influencing, dare to influencing the school board elections, which, by the way, are Tuesday, if I didn't mention that earlier.
Tuesday, we're all voting in St. Louis County and St. Charles County.
But you've got a few examples out there of, I know from Jack Hibbs Church, Rob McCoy's Church, of really this idea of having our 501 revoked or all of this stuff.
Just speak into that just a little bit more.
Yeah, let's first start on this line separation of church and state.
It's okay if you believe that's in the Constitution.
I did too.
And then I read the Constitution and my head was spinning.
I realized it's not in here.
So then I read the Federalist Papers, not in there either.
Read the Declaration of Independence, not there either.
It's like, where did this thing come from?
So the separation of church and state was referenced once by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Convention, taken out of context, then re referenced in a Supreme Court decision in the 1960s.
I think it was either the Warren or the Burger Court.
That said, there must be this wall between the church and the state.
So let's just take that at face value for a second.
Let's pretend it is right, it is the law of the land.
Okay, let's pretend that is what governs us.
Well, then hold on, let's keep the state out of the church.
Wait, hold on.
Why is it that they can tell the church when they could do Easter or not?
Keeping State Out of Church00:04:28
Why is it they could tell the church whether or not you need to wear a mask when you go to worship?
Why were they able to shut down hundreds of thousands of churches across the country?
I thought they were separate.
No, no, no.
They always meant the separation to be a one way separation.
They always meant that the state could do whatever they want to the church, but the church better not question the state.
It was an unconstitutional, immoral, and I believe a tactic of the enemy to try to keep the church submissive.
And wrongly so.
And so the country was founded by churches being in the public square.
It was saved many times by churches in the public square in the 1820s, the 1860s, the 1950s, the 1980s.
And so there is this fear that the church must remain completely and totally silent.
So there's a spectrum, right?
So you could be as cavalier as Jack Kibbs and Rob McCoy.
So Jack Kibbs, God bless him, he will endorse candidates from on stage, he will record it, and then mail the recordings to the Internal Revenue Service asking them whether or not they want to make a judgment against his church.
Now, that's a 10, okay?
I'm not even recommending it.
I'm just letting you know the spectrum out there, okay?
Now, you could kind of do a middle ground where the pastor says, These are my personal opinions, not that of the church, and we're going to tell you what the Bible says.
It's perfectly fine under the IRS code to do that, by the way.
That is safe harbor no matter what.
Or you could just even do something even more vanilla and say, I'm just going to tell you word for word what the word of God says about the 10 biggest issues happening.
I'm not even going to mention the election.
That is 100% safe harbor, okay, no matter what.
So there really is no legal excuse as to why to not do it.
We must understand the enforcement mechanism is the Johnson Amendment, what was put forward by Lyndon Baines Johnson to try to shut up a pastor he didn't like in Houston, Texas, for the sole purpose of trying to make the church uninterested and not involved in this.
But let's play this out for just a second.
I think it's important to just take the threat at face value.
So let's say that the church were to lose its tax exempt status.
The question is would that momentary earthly penalty?
Be worth pursuing righteousness?
Of course it is.
So, the question is, you're afraid of losing a government certificate because you'll only say what is true if the government certificate will remain intact.
That's a bad reason to do anything, by the way.
Now, I'm not saying be imprudent.
You don't have to be the one who's leading the charge.
And by the way, by doing so, he's also creating space for other churches to be able to do a little bit less to use that as a reference point.
And he does it publicly and enthusiastically.
He says, Charlie, they could take away my tax exempt status tomorrow.
We'll just open up an LLC.
We'll keep the books open to our congregation.
We have backup plans for all this stuff.
Now, I'm not saying that's what you should do.
I'm not.
You have real estate stewards of buildings, legacy gifts.
I get all that stuff.
But I think there needs to be a question of are you preserving a business model or are you trying to pursue righteousness?
That's an interesting question, right?
And every church board needs to pray on that and fast on that and reflect on that.
But understand the spirit of fear is not what Jesus has given us.
And so if we are operating every decision under the spirit of fear, Well, they might send a letter and they might do this.
You're right.
All of that, we live under a regime that kicks down doors of journalists they don't like.
We live under a regime that calls moms and dads that show up to school board meetings domestic terrorists.
So, look, the freight train's coming, everybody.
And I call some of these people, it's kind of like wildebeest Christians.
It's like they're walking around and they're like, well, we didn't get eaten today.
And it's like, at least it's not us.
Look, we know what's happening here, right?
It's coming very quickly.
And the only thing that could stop it is courageous and passionate Christians proclaiming truth from the bottom up.
If you feel like you're losing your civilization or losing your country, you're right.
It is going in the wrong direction.
I see some a lot of positives.
We can get into those.
But the only solution is you, the only solution is the church.
They know that.
That's why they've done everything they possibly can to try to make you afraid, silent, and submissive.
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Human Nature and Sinful Power00:07:58
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I really want us to turn this issue into an issue of prayer.
You know, we have several prayer meetings a week here, and we're praying just for the pulpits of our city to be bold, to be bold and courageous.
Okay, I don't know what direction you want to go.
I have several.
Go ahead.
So politics is also seemingly incredibly moral issues in the day.
So if we don't speak up for the sake of the standard of morality, then it seems as if the political land is trying to establish what morality is for us.
So we have to engage these waters.
And is that an exaggeration?
No, and so this is an open question, and this is fine, and you should ask yourself that question.
Does the Bible say anything about us caring about our government?
And the answer is, of course.
Jeremiah 29 7, the Lord is speaking to his people, where he's saying directly, You must demand the welfare, the shalom, of the city or the nation that you are in, because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
So let's ask ourselves the question Is that true?
Is your welfare tied to your nation's welfare?
Of course it is.
Pastors are being arrested in Canada for having church.
It's a real thing, it's happening right now.
If you don't have good government and you stop caring about your government, your welfare will be impacted.
That's the Lord speaking to his chosen people in Jeremiah 29 7.
It's about the narrative of the Old Testament.
Do we have any examples of people trying to influence secular government for God's chosen purpose?
Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, just to name a few.
In fact, we have a pattern.
We have more than one person.
That fasted and prayed for the nation that they were in, Daniel being one of the most vivid examples of that.
So the question is, what is politics?
We have an association with something that is messy.
Well, everything that human beings touch is messy, the church included.
We are fallen beings, predisposed to sin.
Everything we touch will be messed up in one way, shape, or the other, including politics.
The question is, should we try to pursue a better politics, a better form of government?
So some Christians say, Charlie, all forms of governments are the same.
How unwise to say such a thing.
To say that our form of government is the same as North Korea's, the same as China's, the same as Iran.
Do you know the history of humanity?
More people live under the reign of the few than of the many.
We have a brief opportunity where we, the many, get to rule the few.
The question is, which is biblical?
The answer is, of course, when the many rule the few.
We do not believe that leaders are anointed by birth by some sort of birthright.
We believe in the sovereignty of the individual.
We believe that the collective power that we put forward, as enumerated in Kings and in Leviticus, Is there only because of our consent?
That is a very difficult principle to enact into government.
And let me tell you why.
The Bible answers the most important question.
Because when you ask yourself, what kind of government are we forming?
Well, you have to ask yourself, what's the raw material I'm dealing with here?
Human beings.
Are human beings naturally good or naturally predisposed to sin?
This is why I get so enthusiastic when the church finally speaks up against this, and I get so upset when the church remains quiet.
If you're not willing to tell your congregation that human beings are predisposed to sin, Then stop being a pastor.
It takes like a hundred words to figure out human beings are predisposed to sin in the Bible.
Now, why does that matter?
Well, because in Federalist 51, Alexander Hamilton writes it beautifully.
Or is it James Madison?
I'm sorry.
In Federalist 51, one of the most important sentences that you should ask any Christian that says, We don't do that around here human nature never changes.
I'm paraphrasing.
If all men were angels, government would not be necessary.
And if angels governed men, none of this would need to happen.
The Constitution he's referencing.
He's making an indictment of human nature.
He's saying, we know what we're dealing with.
They're acknowledging the fall.
The fall's biblical.
We know it.
We know we are sinful creatures.
And yet, half the country believes that human beings are naturally good.
This is one of the most important questions in our society right now, by the way.
We believe human beings are naturally bad.
So, therefore, if you believe human beings are naturally sinful let's not use that word bad, let's just say sinful then what's the most important thing you can do?
Prevent the sinful people from having power over everybody.
That's logical, right?
Prevent the sinful people from having absolute power over everyone.
So, this is a great thought exercise to use a third grader or a fourth grader.
Highly rational, and it works.
What's the worst thing a human being can do?
And they'll say, Murder.
Say, That's bad.
What else?
And they'll go on stealing and all that.
No, no, no.
The worst thing you could do is institute murder for everybody.
It's bad enough to murder one person, it's another thing to institutionalize it.
Now, even worse than this, one of the Ten Commandments exhibits this explicitly.
Now, we read this wrong because we don't go to the original Hebrew.
The original Hebrew we would say is, do not say the Lord's name in vain.
That's not what the Hebrew says.
It says, do not carry the Lord's name in vain.
What does that mean?
Do not do evil in the name of the Lord.
So do not do evil things while saying you are doing it in the name of God.
So it goes to another question Do human beings naturally want to be free?
I used to say yes, and I was wrong.
The Bible answers that question for us though.
When God delivered his chosen people out of Egypt, he didn't want them in serfdom, he didn't want them in slavery, and brought them to freedom.
Amazing miracles parted the Red Sea.
Moses does the incredible.
How do the people of Israel act?
Well, after a couple of chapters, despite the fact that quail was blown off course and manna came from heaven, the people of Israel started to complain.
And they said, Who's this Moses guy anyway?
And I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far off.
And they say, We want to go back to Egypt, slavery, because at least there we ate meat.
People don't want to be free.
Some people want to be free, specifically people that are born free and new by Jesus Christ.
We demand freedom more in our life because we're free eternally and spiritually, but most human beings don't desire freedom.
So, what you're living through in this system right now is so rare, it's so unique, it's so exceptional, and it's fragile.
Because right now, we're living through the Israelites in the wilderness desert.
Who's this guy in office?
Disney Movies and Children's Souls00:11:06
I want the stimulus check.
Who's this guy in office?
Just shut everyone down, make them wear a mask, and force the vaccine.
It's human nature, and we have to fight that.
In fact, it takes effort to fight that human nature.
If we just indulged in the flesh and indulge our human nature, we'd sit at home all day and do nothing.
It takes effort to do the other, and guess what?
It's only the Christian, it's only the Bible that will show the secular lost world how to fight that fleshly nature.
And I'm starting to see more and more Christians start to do that.
And when churches remain silent on that, just on the issue do you think human beings want to be free?
Do you believe that human beings are naturally good or bad?
That's it.
That's not a political sermon.
But informing your congregation correctly on that will create a better citizen no matter what.
And yet they remain silent on that.
Or maybe they haven't thought that deeply about it, but the proper answers to those questions will all of a sudden answer all your political questions correctly.
Yeah, I feel convicted.
I feel that we have to.
No, I really do.
I feel like we have to, as teachers, as Sunday school teachers, as moms and dads discipling our kids, we have to get in the game.
Let's talk about education for a second.
You know, we do have school board elections coming up on Tuesday, and you're spending time on high schools, because, you know, I get feedback from my friends like, no, no, no, no, this is exaggerated.
It's not that bad.
There is not perversion.
That's not happening.
But I think you have a different opinion.
What you're seeing in high school and even at the university level, I mean, this framework, this worldview has to start somewhere.
So, where is this happening?
So, that's a phenomenal question.
I have a slightly different take.
I think it's being underreported and so misunderstood.
So, let's start with one component of this.
And I'm going to take a little pivot from education and go to something that is in the open, that's universal, and that probably half this room, willingly or unwillingly, is subsidizing.
Okay?
And that's the Walt Disney Company.
Okay?
Let's just start there.
Easy now.
You're starting to step on us now.
Easy.
Let's start there.
If you are unaware of what's happening at Disney, we're gonna go through that.
Okay?
So that's a form of education, by the way.
Your children are learning values and morals and right and wrong more from watching Disney Plus than probably at school for the first five years of their life.
So, Disney's a $250 billion company.
Disney has benefited tremendously through corporate carve outs, loopholes.
They have, I think, 15 million families subscribed to Disney Plus.
And I'm sure some families in here, I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
I'm not.
We're all victims to getting Netflix subscriptions, all that.
I'm going to challenge you to stop doing that tonight.
I will.
We're going to walk through why.
So, Disney decided to come out against a very vanilla, Very mainstream bill in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis, God bless his courage, decided to seriously, decided to sign a piece of legislation that was wrongly labeled the Don't Say Gay bill.
Doesn't say that in the law at all.
Very simple piece of legislation that says basically that parents should be able to know their children's medical records and history, and that five, six, and seven, and eight year olds should not be taught about gay or lesbian sex in schools.
Okay?
Pretty simple.
I don't think this is something that should be wildly controversial.
In fact, I went a step further to say that all sexual matters should be left to the parents until at least 12 years old.
Okay?
So, very simple, right?
And the media lost their mind.
We expected that, right?
All these different groups lost their mind.
But then, out of nowhere, because Disney World is the number one employer in Florida, 68,000 employees, they thought they could flex their muscle.
So, I want you guys to play along here with a thought exercise.
I want you to imagine if Anheuser-Busch decided to try to kill a bill here in Missouri.
It's a big deal, right?
They have a lot of clout here.
That's the equivalent of what happens if Disney decides to speak out in Florida.
So, the courage it takes to stand up against Disney is the same as standing up to Wall Street in New York or standing up to the oil companies in Texas.
You get the analogy, right?
It is a big employer.
But Disney, for whatever bizarre reason, run by this new CEO, Bob Chappick, Decided to play into the most insane allegations around this thing, dedicate $5 million to the Human Rights Campaign, which is nothing more than a hate group, and say they're gonna do everything they possibly can to repeal this bill.
And it went even further than that.
That's just the first step.
Wait till you hear Saga 2, 3, and 4 of this whole thing.
So Ron DeSantis doesn't care.
He's not in the mold of kind of these other weak knee politicians, signs it in the law, God bless him, and says, What are you gonna do?
Right?
Everyone already hates me on that side anyway, and kind of holds the line.
But then all of a sudden, you started to see Disney employee walkouts.
You saw all these sort of protests.
And so I watched a couple videos of these Disney employee walkouts.
So I'm gonna make a generalization and it's an open question.
And I want an answer to the question How many Disney employees that are protesting this have families?
Probably very few.
So you have the people creating the content protesting against this, that probably a lot of them don't have families.
You see them, they're late 20s, early 30s somethings.
They have a significant homosexual population of people that work for Disney Company.
They're in the arts, whatever.
That's not even a criticism, it's just a fact, okay?
And so they lose their mind because they believe the media narrative.
So then Disney realizes that they need to even compensate for this more.
So they have a Zoom call five days ago.
You might not have heard about this, where in the Zoom call, They said, with all their executives, they have a not so secret gay agenda that they're pushing forward at Walt Disney Company.
Here's a couple facts of what's happening at Disney.
By the end of this year, 50% of all of their movies will have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters.
And if there's romantic scenes involved, there'll be gay and lesbian kissing.
Now, what is with this weird and perverse obsession with corrupting children?
Answer They always want to try to break the bonds of children from their parents and from their country.
That's the answer.
They understand that if they can, and by the way, this is biblical.
What is the only one of the Ten Commandments that comes with a promise and involves your country?
Honor your mother and father so you might live long in the land of which you are in.
You want your country to live?
Make sure your children honor their parents.
Very simple.
So Disney understands if they can break that bond, if they can interrupt that flow of values, they're going to run the country.
Now, regardless of your politics tonight, I'm sure we have people all across the board.
I think it's fair to say.
That Disney Plus, a $250 billion company, espousing that they have a not so secret gay agenda, saying they want more like transgender Cinderellas or whatever, that's a step too far for all of us.
And I'm just kind of hitting the surface.
There are other things they're doing.
They're no longer going to be calling people in movies boys and girls, but they're going to have the proper pronouns.
They're no longer saying at Disney World, boys and girls welcome to Disney World.
They're going to say welcome the persons to Disney World.
They're not taking a stance on whether or not women can become pregnant.
They say they're birthing people at Walt Disney Company.
They're saying that anyone can become pregnant.
This is all things that Disney is doing.
And what's so amazing, and this is something I'm gonna be pushing this hard, right?
Because Disney, I believe, this is a great opportunity.
I haven't seen one like this in a long time, where they got rich being the family friendly company.
They got rich being the family friendly safe haven.
So now, if they wanna be kind of the safe haven for all of these incredibly controversial and, dare I say, like perverse ideology for five, six, and seven year olds, Then they're going to have to respond to when 75 to 80 million or 90 million people refuse to buy their products, go to their amusement parks, and their streaming services.
And so you asked about education.
So if anyone thinks it's not that big of a deal, just walk them through that Disney example I just did.
Okay?
Just walk them through that.
So, how bad is it in the education space?
Depends where you are.
Before you go, we got to make sure I heard what you said because you said something very powerful about Disney.
And it is a form of education that is absolutely establishing a narrative in our kids at a very young age.
I mean, just as parents, I got four kids, 14 down to seven.
And I'm just thinking, okay, how many times, you know, just for the sake of time, oh, man, you'll put this movie on on the tablet, put that on the tablet, put this DVD on in the car.
And we need to get convicted.
There needs to be, not, because I'm not, I don't rue haul around it so much in the cancel culture part, but we're going to cancel them because they're doing this.
What stung me was you said, no, no, no, this is about pushing back on what is seeking to educate my kids.
That's exactly right.
And so education comes from a Latin word, which means to lead forth.
And you want to lead your child forth to righteousness and to truth and to light.
And to Jesus, and just ask yourself the question is 50% of movies Disney publishing with lesbian and gay kissing scenes gonna be closer to getting your five or six or seven or eight year old closer to truth and righteousness?
I say no.
I think that's wrong.
I think there's something really perverted with that.
I also think the obsession of trying to push that on children is a whole different level that I can't quite explain.
And you're right, and I've said this for a while, and I'm glad you brought that up because I need to reinforce this more, which is because of the hyper technological society.
And less children playing outside than ever before, which I think is a tragedy.
We used to just go outside, I know, like 15 years ago when I was a kid.
I know, things have changed so quickly.
We just went, we had imaginations, and now these kids are staring at these screens all day long.
It's doing such damage to our children.
It really is.
It's so sad to see.
But look, the teacher, when it's not the teacher in school, when it's not you as the homeschooling, it's the teacher on the tablet.
And Disney has been bragging in their shareholder meetings that they are the leader in family centered programming.
They're making money off of you.
And now they think they have such a monopoly on this that they'll be able to push their incredibly controversial and, I believe, degenerative agenda on a seven, eight, and nine year old.
And I don't think we should really be shy about talking about divesting from it and doing that.
But yes, it is a form of education.
And there are other alternatives there are peer flicks, there are all sorts of different things you could do.
And I'm happy to go into the Daily Wire's coming out with a new child programming thing.
There are a lot of different ones.
Prager, you do some stuff.
With some children programming.
We're starting to get into it at Turning Point USA.
There's other alternatives to Disney.
And so, but the Disney thing aside, you asked how bad is it in education in general?
That's a universal one that impacts everybody.
Divesting from Guilt and Practice00:08:32
It's really bad in public schools across the country.
It's really bad in private schools, largely because of the accreditation agencies.
The National Association of Independent Schools has highly corrupted our private schools, including a lot of our Christian schools.
And what do I mean by bad?
I mean that they're being taught diversity, equity, inclusion from critical race theory, from CRT.
We are teaching five and six and seven and eight year olds that race matters, that skin color is important.
That creates little racists, is what it does.
It does not create people to care about the character.
Here's a couple universal principles that we as Christians believe, and we should be unafraid to talk about them in any setting whatsoever.
We care more about the invisible than the visible, and we care more about what you can change than you cannot change.
Those are two things we care about.
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So I care about things you can't see.
What are those?
When someone walks in the room, I care more about what I can't tell at a moment's notice.
I want to get to know the person, and you should too.
Not to, oh, I got them all figured out.
They're white, so they have privilege.
What a sloppy argument, by the way.
Like, really?
Like, that's it?
Like, your worth, like, your currency is that?
Like, no, I want to know about you.
Like, have you given your life to the Lord?
Like, what are you struggling with?
No, instead it's like, nope, got you totally profiled.
That's sloppy.
Something the enemy would do, actually.
The second thing is, we care more about things you can change and you can't change.
Do we care about how the things that happened prior that can't be changed or the story of, hey, I want to give my life to Christ?
That's the whole program of being a Christian, isn't it?
So the question is if we had someone that came in and they're like, hey, I need help, would we fixate endlessly on everything they've done wrong?
Like keep on reminding them every single week, you're a drug addict.
You're a drug addict.
You know you're a drug addict.
You know that you're a drug addict.
It's kind of depressing.
In fact, they'd walk away.
No, we tell them you have redemption.
You could break free of that sin.
In fact, our whole, the entire promise of Christianity, which is true by the way, is that you don't have to be who you were.
It's unbelievable, right?
And so, but instead, diversity, equity, inclusion, and all this stuff, it's built on a structure to hyper focus on the things you can't change.
It's like, okay, we're just going to talk endlessly on what your ancestors, who may or may not have been related to you, did.
And in fact, the way we even talk about the history is wrong, and we're going to make you feel guilty and ashamed.
So here's another good rule for life.
Any organization that makes you feel guilty after the speech is over should be abolished.
I want you to think about that.
Christianity is the opposite of making you feel guilty.
After a good sermon, you feel free, you feel redeemed.
Only Satan makes you feel guilty.
Jesus doesn't make you feel guilty.
And yet, the entire white privilege CRT regime is I have to go feel guilty for the rest of my life because I've had like unrealized racism.
Now, let me be very clear if you are a racist or have racial racist tendencies, you got work to do, you got a lot of apologizing to do.
But just the melanin content in your skin, your mere existence, does not mean you've been expressing.
You know, this white supremacist superstructure.
And so, this is all throughout our educational system.
It's all throughout our college, all throughout education.
And it's at direct odds with what we as Christians believe.
It says, neither slave nor Greek nor Jew.
We are all born one in Jesus Christ.
And so, this is really personal for me.
And the reason I think that, you know, God put me in this moment during all this stuff is I've been like super unafraid as a white Christian, which you're not supposed to, you know, talk about these issues, because I grew up in an America 10 years ago where none of this stuff was a big deal.
Where it's like no one talked about race all the time.
I went to a high school that was 53% Hispanic, where as white people in my school were like 18% of my school, and we had people from all different walks of life in all countries.
We got along with each other.
No one talked about race.
And if someone said something indelicate or immature, you handled it.
You're like, that's not cool, stop it.
And that was the end of that.
And it's kind of like immaturity, right?
What happens when you're 16 or 17?
But we had a culture 10 years ago that was built on the promise of Martin Luther King.
And now we're doing the opposite.
And I got to tell you, this is a virus, to use a term we're all very familiar with.
That is infecting every major institution in our country.
It's infiltrated a lot of churches, it's infiltrated the military, it's infiltrated corporate America, it's infiltrated Congress.
You can call it whatever you want CRT, diversity, equity, inclusion, wokeism, whatever it is.
It's wrong.
And so, what does it actually mean in practice, right?
So, let's take it out of the abstract and into practice, right?
So, some people will say, oh, it's just thought exercises, it's going through the philosophical muscles of you trying to realize how terrible a person you are.
Okay, let's talk about it in practice.
Here are four or five examples.
At Columbia University in New York City, they have black only graduation ceremonies.
Over 100 universities across the country have black only dormitories.
So we should ask ourselves the question didn't we fight to end segregation?
But according to Henry Rogers, otherwise known as Iber Mex Kendi, who's kind of like the archbishop of critical race theory, he says that we need segregation today to try to fix segregation from yesterday.
Here's a good universal principle, and I will fight on this till I die.
Segregation is evil.
I don't care who does it, segregation is evil.
I'll give you, I could keep on going with more examples.
There's a black only high school where white kids are not allowed to apply in the suburbs of Portland.
United Airlines has said they want 50% of all their new pilots to be black pilots, and they're going to elevate diversity over competency.
Now, I don't know about you, I'm all for anybody becoming a pilot, but I want to know that my pilot is hired based on the ability to land the plane, not the melanin content in the pilot's skin.
At State Street Capital Partners, which is one of the largest money management firms, you're only allowed to hire a white male through unanimous approval of the hiring committee.
I could go on and on and on.
So, those are real world implications, right?
So, this is not just textbooks, this is not just privilege walks, it's not just, oh, we need to make five year olds feel really bad or expand their horizons.
No, no, no.
This is what it looks like in practice.
In practice, it looks like we have black only dormitories.
In practice, it looks like in Columbia University, they have black only graduation ceremonies.
And so, that's where it's not just where it's leading, it's where it is.
And so, this is a direct result of this kind of educational regime that has been pushed forward to us.
But here's what gives me hope and where I just want to encourage you, right?
Is that this is deeply unpopular with the American people when they actually learn about it.
Most Americans do believe in this promise of valuing the invisible over the visible.
They believe in the promise of valuing what can change versus what cannot change.
And they believe that the people in charge who are pushing this are radically changing the country that they were raised in and the country they want for their children.
But here's the problem, and it goes to the trans issue, which we could talk about afterwards, because we haven't been controversial enough tonight, obviously, so we can get right into that.
Which is, it's an imbalance, and the imbalance involves a lot of you.
It certainly involved me for part of my life.
The imbalance is this 95% of the country believes that black only dormitories are insane, 95% of the country is afraid to talk about it.
Twitter Hypocrisy and True Freedom00:11:13
And this is why it's because the current people in charge have been incredibly effective.
In fact, they're masters at weaponizing name calling.
We've not gotten out of the second grade.
We haven't.
They will call you a name and you'll say, Where do I donate?
I'll put the yard in my sign.
Please stop harassing me.
It's a real thing.
And I'm not diminishing it because some of you are probably going to ask during QA, Charlie, I could lose my job if I speak out against this.
Of course you can.
That's absolutely true.
They control everything.
I'm not saying that you should get fired from your job.
I'm not telling you should put your family's meals in jeopardy, especially as uncertain as our economic circumstances are today.
But I am going to tell you, That if 5 million people value that over telling the truth, then that's how you get the country you have.
That's just how it is.
And so, and I could talk about the trans thing too.
Keep going, man.
All right, okay.
You're doing great.
You're doing great.
Okay.
There's only been one mishap, though, so far.
Did you catch it?
No.
So that I can put the yard in my sign, I think is what you said.
It's been a long week today, everybody, okay?
I caught that, though, just for the record.
So I'm a pretty sharp guy.
It's been a long month this week.
Boy, I've been everywhere.
So, but I do want to say, though, I am human, I promise.
I do believe we're in an early stage of testing for the church to be able to stand for truth.
Because standing for truth for a long time hasn't been costly.
And we're entering into a time of where it's going to be costly.
And it's a gift, actually.
It's a gift from the Lord to say, you know, if it's going to cost you, we have to understand that God meets us at that cost with a profound grace that touches the heart, it touches the mind to be courageous and bold.
Yeah, amen.
And so there's one other issue I want to explore with you guys on that topic of courage, which ties into something that's involving me, and then we can get to some QA, if that's okay.
And this is something where the church should be just front and center.
I mean, this is something where the church should be the most vocal.
Not a lot of mystery in the scriptures around this topic.
I know it's a question that has a lot of you scratching your head at times, that even the top level of our government can't even answer.
What is a woman?
Where a woman, at least I think she's a woman who wants to go on the US Supreme Court, was asked by Senator Marshall Blackburn, What is a woman?
And she said, I can't answer that.
I'm not a biologist.
Now, look, I'm not a veterinarian.
I know a cat when I see one.
I'm not a meteorologist.
I know when it's raining.
I'm not a biologist.
I know a woman when I see one.
I was at least glad to know, at least she was saying a biologist would be able to, hopefully.
Yeah, and that there's maybe, I think that's an interesting take.
The problem is, a lot of biologists nowadays believe that gender and sex are not related because the entire institutions have been corrupted.
So, look, this is something where the church should be like, wow, do we believe in the Bible?
A lot of churches say they don't.
They say they do, but they really don't.
Bad politics is rooted with bad theology.
Never forget that, okay?
So, do you believe God created man and woman, or do you believe that God created man and woman and the 95 other genders, according to Brown University?
And so the church is silent on this issue, largely not this church, but a lot of churches.
And we're living in a moment right now where this is kind of like the premier issue.
And part of it is to distract us, but actually, I think the insignificance of being able to answer basic questions allows us to answer complicated questions.
That if we can't answer what a woman is, then we probably can't figure out, and we shouldn't, by the way, get involved in wars in other countries.
This has been my argument the whole time.
And I'm like, listen, you want to go, you want to send troops where?
We can't agree as a society on what a woman is, and you want to go launch Tomahawk missiles 5,000 miles away in a country most people can't pinpoint.
They're like, oh, they're not related.
Oh, they're totally related.
They're related in that if you can't get the building blocks of your society right, you're not a country ready for war, let alone anything.
And so, this is a very important thing.
So, God created man, God created woman.
You don't have to overthink it.
You don't have to be a biologist to talk about this.
So, where do we stand with this issue today?
Well, so I tweeted out something where I said Richard Levine was born a man, had a family, 54 years old, had kids.
Transition, I was probably being overly generous by the way when I said that, to Rachel Levine and is now the woman of the year, right?
According to USA Today.
And so I got banned from Twitter for that.
And so because I dead named Levine, if you don't know what dead naming is, I didn't know it either until I did it.
You're not allowed to use the birth name of someone who's transitioned, it's considered harassment.
So this is the new rules.
Yeah.
So I got banned from Twitter on this.
So then Twitter offers you this opportunity, very Maoist show trial.
So they say, okay, if you delete the tweet and acknowledge you engaged in our hateful policy, you get your Twitter account back.
So I refuse to delete the tweet.
I did nothing wrong.
I'm not going to tell somebody I lied when I told the truth.
And what a hypocrite I would be to come to this church and say, you know, it's gonna cost you something while I privately delete the tweet and go back to Twitter.
It's gonna cost you something while I tell my Turning Point USA students to keep on fighting hard.
It's gonna cost you something.
No, it cost me my Twitter account for now.
1.7 million followers reach tens of millions of people every week.
Whatever, we're on pause with that.
Twitter's gonna have to decide whether or not they're going to back down.
They probably won't.
I may never get access to Twitter again.
Yeah, big loss for society, right?
Whatever.
But it's gonna cost everybody something, right?
It's the little stuff that amounts to the big stuff.
But the more important point is how do we get to a place?
Where this entire kind of like bullying intimidation group of the transgender people are able to like control whether or not I use the proper name of you were born, even though I use the right name later in the tweet.
And so I just want you to understand, I just want to take pause, and this is where I really want the church to do more because it's because of the church's silence this is happening.
What's happened in the last week?
So we have the Florida thing with Disney and Ron DeSantis, but then also in the last week, you saw someone who was born by the name of William Thomas.
Who was the 462nd best swimmer, was born a man, and then transitioned to a woman and won the NCAA championship as a woman.
And I would bet there's still people in this room that had never heard that story yet, where a man born as a man competed as a woman and beat other women, went from the 462nd best man and competed as a woman, and basically destroyed women's sports as we know it, and it's only gonna continue.
And so, how does this happen?
Very simple.
What is true?
What's true is what the Bible tells us about everything.
So, if all of a sudden the organizations, the pastors who are in charge of communicating that truth go silent, especially on the most important issues, then where's society going to find truth?
Without God and without the Bible, right and wrong is merely an opinion.
And that's where we're at.
So we have, so the NCAA meets and they say, well, who's to say that William Thomas can't be Leah Thomas?
And most megachurch pastors, too focused on building bigger buildings, bigger budgets, and having more baptisms, which I'm in favor of all those things, but they put the church business model above righteousness, where this church put righteousness above the church business model, and the Lord has blessed this church, I think, immeasurably because of that, is most pastors did not even mention the fact that biological reality.
In women's sports, it was completely destroyed in the last couple weeks.
And it's another one of those issues where 95% of the people believe this is crazy and 95% of people are afraid to speak out about this.
And so you get to this moment where the question is how do we communicate about this?
And look, I want the best for Thomas, this person, right?
William Thomas, Leah Thomas, whatever that we want to call that person, right?
I refuse to call Thomas a man.
Oh, no.
I refuse to call Thomas a woman.
Yeah, that's right.
I get so confused.
If you're confused, I'm confused.
Trust me.
I refuse to call Thomas a woman.
Okay, now we got it right.
And the reason being is I refuse to tell a lie, but I want what's best for Thomas counseling, therapy, hopefully, a pastoral advice to bring that person to be able to bore anew.
Romans 12 2 Do not conform to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
I believe that mental condition that Thomas has, which is a mental condition called gender dysphoria, can be changed by the renewing of their mind.
The promise of Romans 12 2 is applicable to all people.
I really believe that.
And so, now, the second part.
I don't like cheating.
And you don't either.
And Thomas is a cheater.
And we should not put up with cheating.
So, the individual suffering and the plight of Thomas needs to be separate from what society reorganizes for the individual.
Those are two separate things.
So, love, compassion, mercy, truth, all that stuff for Thomas as a person.
But that doesn't mean you reorient society for the person who's suffering.
You know what that's like?
It's like saying we got to suspend all driving because there's some alcoholics out there that might ruin it for the rest of us.
You don't do that.
Of course not.
You don't all of a sudden make other people less free because of a small group of people that can't handle themselves.
It's such a simple moral principle.
And so, and I wish more people communicated this in this way.
Because I think it resonates with 99% of the population.
Because it's not about, and I do, I have a spot for all people that are suffering, but Thomas is also making the decision to cheat and to get into the field and to still compete and all that.
But that's always gonna happen, okay?
So the question is this this was the question when banks were being robbed in the early 1900s.
Who's at fault?
So at first, there were people like, well, the bank robbers are at fault.
No, it's the people that aren't protecting the banks that are at fault.
You're always gonna have bank robbers, you're always gonna have cheaters.
The question is, are you protecting the banks?
The resources, are you protecting the women?
So, who's at fault?
The guardians of society are at fault.
The NCAA is at fault.
We're at fault for putting up with this nonsense.
And so, we have to have a total reframing of wow, this is a societal question, right?
And I want everyone to get the help they need.
But when all of a sudden your therapy becomes the disenfranchising of other women, that's basically the argument they're making, by the way.
That if this person can't compete against other women, you are basically interrupting that person's therapy.
I refuse to believe that we need to destroy all norms in society to go give therapy to a minority of the minority of the population to go destroy the ambitions and the dreams of biological women.
We shouldn't put up with it.
We shouldn't put up with it.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.