It’s sad but true: A bill predictably likely to pass the Florida Legislature calls for every October 14, Charlie Kirk’s birthday, to be a statewide “Day of Remembrance” — forever.
A Senate committee already passed it on a party-line 5 to 2 vote.
Democrats Tina Polsky of Boca Raton and LaVon Bracy Davis of Orlando voted no.
They meant no offense — nor do we — to the humanity of Kirk, who was assassinated during a speech to university students in Utah three months ago. The problem with the bill is that it is highly offensive to others, whether its supporters intend that or not.
It’s another example of warped political values in Florida, where the only other person so honored in Florida law is President Ronald Reagan.
Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, inspired many people with his conservative activism, but he alienated many others with his pointed attacks.
He denounced the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful,” “not a good person.” He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.” He said the pop star Taylor Swift should change her name if she marries her fiancé Travis Kelce, as a sign of submission to him. He said gun murders were an acceptable price to pay for the right to own them. And on and on.
Whatever his views, Kirk had every right to express them to anyone willing to listen. That’s the American way. But the Legislature should be mindful of how hurtful some of his views were.
It goes without saying that his murder was a crime to be deplored by everyone, not just his conservative admirers.
“It’s beyond belief what happened to him,” said one prominent liberal. “That should never happen to anybody. I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable. That’s not a solution to solving problems.”
That person was Rob Reiner — himself a murder victim.
Every murder is a crime against society, but when victims are silenced for their opinions, as it appears Kirk was, it’s a double strike against the public welfare. His case, though, is one such example among many.
If he’s to be commemorated, so should others. Some names come readily to mind.
Harry T. Moore, a Florida civil rights pioneer, was murdered when a Ku Klux Klan bomb planted under his bedroom blew up his home in Mims on Christmas night 1951. His wife, Harriette, died of her injuries a few days later. As an NAACP field secretary, Moore campaigned successfully for Black teachers to be paid the same as whites and to register more Black voters in Florida than any other Southern state.
He initiated the long and ultimately successful movement to vindicate four Black men unjustly accused in the infamous 1949 Groveland rape case.
No one was ever convicted of the bombing, although a KKK member committed suicide after being questioned by the FBI. A federal indictment against others was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
The Moores are unmentioned at the civil rights martyrs memorial in Montgomery, Ala., because of an arbitrary definition of the Civil Rights Era as having begun with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But they died for the cause just as certainly as anyone else did.
Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner were the young civil rights volunteers kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964 for trying to register Black voters. Eight men eventually got relatively light federal sentences for the killings. Forty-one years later, Mississippi convicted a chief perpetrator. He died in prison.
Medgar Evers was the Mississippi civil rights activist shot to death outside his home in 1963. It took until 1994 to convict his killer, who died in prison.
Those are only a few of many private citizens who paid with their lives for speaking out for what they believed.
Others include the abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy and Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who died at the hands of mobs in Illinois a century ago.
To commemorate only one such victim, as Senate Bill 194 and HB 125 do, is not appropriate. But at least it’s less inappropriate than legislation that aims to rename streets for Kirk at every Florida state college and university.
A Day of Remembrance should honor not one martyr, but many, and right-wing political views should not be a prerequisite.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
