An Idaho highway named after Charlie Kirk? No, thank you | Opinion

The Idaho Family Policy Center wants to name a state highway after Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist who was assassinated in September while speaking on a college campus in Utah.

The center is proposing legislation to designate Idaho 16, which runs from Star to Emmett, the Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway.

“Our state should recognize Charlie’s legacy and stand up to those who would kill us for sharing our Christian faith and our political viewpoints,” Blaine Conzatti, the center’s president, said in the statement.

The center said it wanted to denounce “politically and religiously motivated violence.”

There is no indication that religion had anything to do with Kirk’s assassination.

Also, the center wants to name a highway after a man who excused politically motivated and religious violence, himself. And he heaped hatred on many people simply for who they were.

No doubt, Kirk more than anyone united the right-wing Christian nationalist movement.

But he was a deeply polarizing figure.

Unmarried women, minorities, Black Americans, Muslims, transgender people, immigrants (both legal and undocumented), people from India — and Martin Luther King Jr., whom he called “awful” — all came under Kirk’s wrath.

He promoted the “great replacement theory,” which is a conspiracy theory that claims immigration is being used to dilute the white American demographic.

He called on a “patriot” to bail out the person who attacked and beat Paul Pelosi, the husband of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California.

He said Black people were better off in the 1940s because they committed fewer crimes.

He railed against affirmative action, saying, “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

He said the United States made a mistake when it passed the Civil Rights Act.

It would seem that only white Christian men and their subservient wives have a place in Kirk’s America.

Honoring him is an affront to decency.

Aside from a couple of visits to Boise State University and the Ford Idaho Center over several years, Kirk has no ties to Idaho.

We can think of several other people who have Idaho ties who would be more appropriate to name a highway after. Perhaps any one of Idaho’s Medal of Honor recipients, such as Kuna’s Bernie Fisher, or business leaders, such as Joe Albertson.

Perhaps the city of Boise should rename the street where the Idaho Family Policy Center has an office after the drag performer who was defamed by the center.

As a society, we absolutely should decry and condemn assassinations and political violence.

But that doesn’t mean that in order to do so, we must glorify and make a martyr of Charlie Kirk or pretend that he was something he was not.

We should certainly not name an Idaho state highway after him. If we did, it would certainly be a divided highway.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.

This story was originally published November 20, 2025 at 4:00 AM.