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Amid the outpouring of support following Charlie Kirk’s assassination this week, his widow Erika Kirk said she has been moved by stories of people inspired by him to pursue marriage and family — a tenet of his legacy, which rejected “sexual anarchy” and hookup culture on college campuses.
“I’ve heard the testimonies from people my husband inspired to get married, to start families, to seek out a relationship with God,” she said Friday, delivering remarks from the desk where her husband hosted The Charlie Kirk Show.
“He wanted you all to experience what he had — and still has,” Kirk added.
Privately, the father of two told her that, if he ever decided to run for political office, “his top priority would be to revive the American family.”
Kirk, 31, a close ally of President Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been arrested in connection with the assassination.
For years, Kirk warned against what he called “sexual anarchy,” a rejection of traditional norms he said was fueled by the left. Kirk credited his friend and pastor David Engelhardt of Manhattan’s Kings’ Church for popularizing the term in his book “Good Kills,” which redefines it as “the motivation to consume for the pleasure of self.”
“God has a sexual order that lets human beings flourish,” Engelhardt told Fox News Digital. “When you break that pattern, everything goes crazy.”
While society tells young people that college is for experimenting sexually, Engelhardt says the church reminds them that such intimacy is not “cheap” and should be valued.
“It’s super valuable because, fundamentally, it’s about the creation of life, and the creation of life is the most important thing we have,” Engelhardt said.
Kirk loved that concept and “ran with it,” he added.
Kirk spoke about it in a 2021 essay for The American Mind, writing that Democratic ideology sought to upend the family and that it was to blame for marriage and birth rates plummeting and pornography addictions.
“They want anarchy in the bedroom as much, if not more, as they want it in the halls of government,” Kirk wrote.
That piece followed a viral clip in which Kirk accused Democrats of wanting to “destroy the country,” leaving Americans with “no cultural identity” and forcing them to “live in sexual anarchy.”
Kirk also blamed cultural institutions for fueling the trend.
After the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in 2022, which featured Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, Kirk posted on X: “The NFL is now the league of sexual anarchy. This halftime show should not be allowed on television.”
He doubled down in an interview with conservative outlet The Daily Signal, saying it was wrong for children to watch “scantily clad women bending over like long snappers in a football game and being incredibly suggestive.”
“I think that the Left wants to continue to hyper-sexualize all activity,” he said in the interview, adding that sexual anarchy was defined by having “no order, no tradition, no right and wrong.”
Through his annual Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summits, Kirk would encourage attendees to strive for the “biblical model” of romantic relationships.
At this year’s summit in June, Kirk and his wife held a talk focused on dating, marriage and parenting.
He asked her what advice she had for the young women in the audience trying to “navigate the pressures of hookup culture” on college campuses. “They feel pressured that if they don’t get into, let’s just say, sexual situations with a male counterpart, then they will not be able to find a boyfriend or a husband,” he said.
His wife responded, “He’s not meant to be with you … Save it for your husband. That’s simple.”
Kirk added that he didn’t think the church talks enough about purity. “I think it’s incredibly important, and we should tell young men and young ladies to save themselves for marriage,” he said.
“I agree,” his wife responded. “A lot of people will say, ‘Well, how do I know that I’m compatible with that person unless I test drive the car before I buy it?’” she added to laughs from the crowd. “That’s not a real thing.”
“You’ll find your human,” Erika urged the women at another point in the conversation. “I found mine, and he’s amazing.”
In her emotional first address after her husband’s death, Erika Kirk shared one of his favorite Bible verses, Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
“My husband laid down his life for me, for our nation, for our children,” she said. “He showed the ultimate and true covenantal love.”
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