September 19 2025, 08:15 
Mat Staver, the founder and chairperson of Liberty Counsel, an anti-LGBTQ+ Christian Nationalist legal advocacy group, wrote a September 16 email blaming Charlie Kirk’s murder on Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
“Charlie Kirk’s killer and the killer’s ‘partner’ are sadly the result of Obergefell, which stands for the proposition that gender should be abolished,” Staver wrote, incorrectly characterizing the Supreme Court’s decision.
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The Court decided that bans on same-sex marriage denied same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry, thus violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal application of U.S. laws. The Court also ruled that the lack of differences between same- and different-sex couples shows no justifiable reason to prohibit the former group from marrying.
In its ruling, the Court in no way called for the abolition of the concept of gender, despite Staver’s claim to the contrary.
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Staver claimed that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing, identified as a “furry,” a subculture of people who have animal personas (called “fursonas”) and sometimes dress in animal costumes. Robinson may have had an account on FurAffinity.net, a furry website with sexualized images of cartoon animals, according to the British tabloid The Daily Mail.
Staver says furries are “part of the queer ‘xenogender’ umbrella that allows someone to identify as an animal instead of a human male or female.” Xenogender is actually a form of nonbinary identity where animals (or plants or objects) are used to describe people’s gender identities in terms that don’t use language related to the concepts of male and female. Xenogender represents a pretty narrow slice of the community and most LGBTQ+ people have never even heard of the term “xenogender.”
Anti-gay former Kentucky county clerk “Kim Davis has been relentlessly harassed by two men” in court for refusing to issue them a same-sex marriage license, Staver wrote, “and now Charlie Kirk has been murdered, both for refusing to participate in the genderless lie.” The Liberty Counsel is representing Davis’ long-shot bid to overturn Obergefell.
However, Staver’s statement above takes speculation about the killer’s motive for targeting Kirk as fact; the Utah attorney general has chosen not to speculate about his motive.
“When men or women enter into a same-sex relationship, one assumes the personification of the opposite sex, making a mockery of gender,” Staver wrote, showing that he knows nothing about same-sex relationships. Many people in same-sex relationships are attracted to their partners precisely because their partner doesn’t resemble a member of the opposite sex; others same-sex relationships don’t adhere to gender roles at all, instead feeling attracted to one another’s personality rather then their gender expression.
Nevertheless, Staver claims, “In a lesbian relationship, one of the biological women assumes the masculine role. Often this is exhibited through manly haircuts and clothing or gruff and ‘tough’ demeanor. In male-male relationships, one of the men assumes the feminine role, assuming girlish vocalization and gestures, and quite often the ‘cattiness’ embodied by some ungodly women, among other things.”
Staver then claims that Obergefell somehow resulted in a higher number of Americans identifying as transgender. He then says that “the LGBTQ and the radical left” want “a sexual revolution” that promotes “ALL forms of deviancy, including pedophilia … and yes, even bestiality.” This is not true.
“They promoted it in television shows, in music, and especially in K-12 schools and universities,” Staver writes.
Staver then claims, without providing any evidence, that “taking high doses of cross-sex hormones causes emotional instability,” echoing transphobic right-wing rhetoric that seeks to link gender-affirming medications with violent behavior. In reality, no such correlation has been proven.
“Robinson’s case shows the extremes Obergefell has caused,” Staver claims. “Once the difference between male and female was destroyed, it was only the next logical step to destroy human gender altogether and replace it with animals and cartoon characters.”
He then claims, “Others have been murdered in cold blood for refusing to conform to another person’s mental illness,” but he provides no instances in which this has ever happened.
His unhinged message ends with a plea, asking readers for a $50 donation.
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