The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the formal charges against Tyler Robinson, updates to the charges against Luigi Mangione, the leftist meaning of ‘violence,’ SCOTUS order for a so-called ‘transgender boy’ to use the boys’ bathroom in South Carolina, Hong Kong lawmakers’ rejection of same-sex marriage bill, and a Berkshire Hathaway real estate that sums up our civilization crisis.Part I (00:14 – 08:11)We have to talk about this: The transgender dimension of recent mass shootings by WORLD Opinions (R. Albert Mohler, Jr.)Part II (08:11 – 12:44)Part III (12:44 – 17:23)Violence, Peace, and Peace Research by JSTOR (Johan Galtung)Part IV (17:23 – 20:57)Supreme Court Rules for Transgender Boy in Bathroom Dispute by The New York Times (Adam Liptak)Part V (20:57 – 25:39)Hong Kong Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Reject Same-Sex Rights Bill by The New York Times (Tiffany May)Part VI (25:39 – 28:11)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Wednesday, September 17, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. We all knew that we would know more as of yesterday, and that is because law enforcement and prosecutorial officials in Utah released information yesterday with official charges against Tyler Robinson, now formally charged with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But we also knew there would be more information. that would help us to fill out the crime, to understand the charges, the context, the results of the investigation. And we did get a great deal of information yesterday. None of it contrary to what we thought going into the weekend, but it is important that we understand a larger composite hole as we look to this picture, the larger picture. So as law enforcement officials set out the charges and put forth at least the first view of their evidence, they mentioned the fact that,

that the background of Tyler Robinson is one in which you had a young man who became radicalized, left-wing radicalization, and he did so, even as the investigators recognize, his parents held a very different position. For one thing, you have a father who is presented as being far more conservative than his son, father and mother who turn out, at least given this evidence, to have done basically the right thing in reaching out to their son. The mother reached out explicitly to the son, asking, is this you? Asking, where? are you recognizing the weapon that was used. The parents had the concern. This was a weapon that did belong to their son. They asked for a photograph of the weapon. It did not come.

And then came messages of threatened self-harm. The parents convinced Tyler Robinson to go to their house. And eventually, a family friend was involved who contacted authorities. And eventually Tyler Robinson turned himself in rather than to hurt himself. But the messages are absolutely chilling. The calculation and all of this absolutely chilling. At no point in all of the information released yesterday did it appear there was any remorse in terms of the evil of the act in killing Charlie Kirk. Instead, there was information coming from the accused killer that Charlie Kirk was a voice that needed to be silenced. He was holding public events and making public arguments that he declared to be harmful.

It's also interesting to note that the law enforcement officials setting out their case, and this means their case for the charges, pointed out that there was a lot of evidence, including text messages between the accused killer and his roommate. And further information about the roommate came forward. For one thing, we had Governor Spencer Cox, who Sunday morning revealed that his roommate was one with whom he was involved in a romantic relationship and was, according to the governor, a male transitioning to female. And all of that becomes pretty clear. It's in the background, as was set out by investigators yesterday in that press conference, but they went on to give some

details about the text messages between the accused shooter and his roommate. And they go beyond what we knew. Listen to this. For example, the roommate, we are told, found a note that stated, quote, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. When the roommate reached out with something like you're joking, right. He said, quote, I am still okay, my love, but am stuck in Orham for a little while longer, yet shouldn't be long before I can come home, but I got to grab my rifle still. He went on, quote, to be honest, I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I'm sorry to involve you. The roommate then responded, you weren't the one who did it, right? Then Robinson responded in the text, I am, I am, I'm sorry.

The roommate then said, I thought they caught the person, and Robinson said, no, they grabbed some crazy old dude that interrogated someone in similar clothing. It is a very dark picture. It's a very dark picture in every way. Everywhere you look, it's dark. Robinson expressed frustration as to how he would explain losing the gun to his father. He also went on to explain that his father was pretty conservative, quote, since Trump got into office, my dad has been pretty die-hard maga. Robinson also indicated that he was likely to turn himself into law enforcement officials, which he did. The text exchange with the roommate is just pretty chilling, and it's

chilling at every level. I wrote an article published yesterday at World Opinions with the headline, we have to talk about this. And I was referring to the trans issue as it is unfolding in this story, but also in shootings in Minneapolis and in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a it's a link that isn't incidental. It's hard to know exactly how to track all of this, but we do have to talk about it. It's something that has to be investigated. This is now something that cries out for attention. Of course, it would be false to accuse all transgender persons being tempted towards any such crime. That's not the point. The point is there is a pattern here. And I think as Christians, we can understand that the turmoil involved in transgender identity is likely to point to even

deeper turmoil in at least some individuals that has to have something to do with all of this. And so I want to be careful, but I think one of the worst things we can do right now is say, pattern what pattern? I don't see a pattern. Problem? What problem? I don't see a problem. I think the media is trying to do that. I don't think that is an option available to us. I want to be careful, as always, but I want to carefully say, I think it's just not right to say we don't see anything here. To say, you know, problem, what problem, issue what issue? I think we know there is some issue.

It would be unfair to say we know exactly how to unpack all of this. We have two shooters in Minneapolis and in Nashville who had some kind of transgender identity. In this case, you have an accused shooter who's in a romantic relationship with someone who is transitioning to use the term that is reported here from male to female. and I just think it's given the inner turmoil that has to be involved there, I think this is clearly an aspect or an angle that's going to have to be investigated. A lot more is likely to come out. I think just a footnote here, as you think about, say, the history of crime, these dimensions would be virtually impossible to explain to someone from just decades ago. This whole idea of transitioning from male to female, just try explaining that to, you know, an FBI.

official from the 1960s or so. It's just nearly impossible to imagine, but we are now an uncharted cultural terrain. And I think we as Christians understand this is going to come with some cost and an enormous amount of confusion. We're going to have to try to figure out. All right. So what we had happened in Utah was that law enforcement officials indicated charges that are coming. They made some preliminary release of the material that was necessary in order to make the case for the official charges. This is the point of the investigation at this point now in Utah. The investigation, of course, will continue. There's so much information here now we already know, but as is always the case in this kind of prosecution, it's going to take a while for a lot of this information to come out. And at the same time, there is the question as to whether or not there will be federal charges. Since the state charges there in Utah include a charge of capital murder. And because all of the major events, at least at this point that are known, took place within the state of Utah, that doesn't make federal prosecution automatic in any sense, although the FBI was clearly involved. Perhaps charges related to terrorism will apply.

We're going to have to wait on the federal side for further developments and announcements. But at this point, I want to shift from Utah for just a moment to New York because of a related issue. In New York, the news came yesterday that a New York judge has dismissed two of the murder. charges against Luigi Mangione, charged with a murder of health care executive Brian Thompson. Now, one of the things we pointed out is that what emerged with the arrest of Luigi Mangione was the emergence of kind of a murderer-cheek tendency in the culture. You had people who actually came out celebrating and applauding and talking about how handsome Luigi Mangione is. They wanted to make him kind of a poster child for righteous crime.

Think about that as an oxymoron. Two words that should not be put together. And it's a very dangerous moment for our society. We need to notice that, especially on the left, this has been something that's been going on for years. You've had teenagers and the hippies going back to the 60s on college campuses, wearing t-shirts, or Che Guevara on them, and other radicals, including Marxist-Leninists.

This is not entirely new. Furthermore, Hollywood has sometimes put out products that have glorified criminals in such a way that there were certain kinds of criminal heroes and heroin of all things. But now we're talking about a murder. And in both cases, these murders are incredibly high profile. In both cases, there is video evidence, cold-blooded, calculated murders. And it should be a very troubling thing that some of these murders are celebrated at some level in popular culture. There are people who are looking at, especially the generation of young adults right now, Generation Z, and seeing this as a distinctive development. If so, this is an

incredibly troubling development. I think in the case of Tyler Robinson, we have seen it largely in the social media phenomenon where people were posting, and for all I know, still are, you know, statements of some kind of jubilation or celebration in the death of Charlie Kirk, and that has led to some firings and some censures and other actions. But, you know, this actually comes as a shock, or it should come as a shock, a shock to the moral system of our country that something basically is wrong. In New York, the judge tossed out two murder charges, and that includes a terrorism attached charge, saying that the crime did not fit the New York State definition of terrorism. Now, if so, if that's so, then shame on New York for having a definition of terrorism

that doesn't involve the targeted killing of an insurance executive to send a political signal. If that doesn't count as terrorism, then what does? I think it's the essence of terrorism. But, you know, New York State is one of those states that has very liberal laws in so many respects. And that's why, shifting to Massachusetts, the prosecution of the surviving brother in the Boston Marathon bombing incident, that's why the Fed stepped in because the federal government still has a death penalty for aggravated murder connected to terrorism. And so, you know, it's going to be very interesting to watch what happens in the case of Luigi, Mangione, but it does have direct relevance to the announcement that came out of Utah yesterday.

In contrast to the state of Massachusetts, the state of Utah does have a capital murder charge. And that charge was brought and is being brought against Tyler Robinson for the murder, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think in Christian worldview terms, one of the things we need to note is that if you take the demands of the left to eliminate the death penalty, then you eliminate the death. penalty. You are then saying there is no crime that can be committed by anyone with whatever intent under whatever circumstances, whatever complications, you are then saying there's no crime. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the intent, whatever the motivation, whatever the carnage,

whatever the complications, including other criminal acts, you're saying there is no act that deserves the death penalty. Okay, once you say that, then you said that. And yet, even the people in your own state don't believe that. And so in the state, of Massachusetts, there was widespread public support and an intense understanding that the death penalty applied in the Boston Marathon bombing, but the feds had to step in with a federal prosecution in order to bring that kind of charge. I am thankful that is not the case in Utah. And I'll just tell you, I think there is more wisdom in the Utah statute than in states that have no death penalty. The question is whether the feds will step in in this case is thus not yet settled.

Okay, now I want to shift to a different issue. I don't hear people talking about this. I think it's an important part of this picture. And I think when you hear people talking about violence, violence, violence, we need to watch how they're using the word. How are they using the word violence? Here's my argument. The word violence has been morally discounted in our society, particularly among the intellectual elites, such that, quite frankly, I think violence, that is to say actual violence, is, is being, to some extent, aided and abetted by the intentional confusion of vocabulary. So let me be clear. What in the world am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that over the course of the last several decades, people on the left employing kind of a critical theory, a Marxist, social constructivist kind of worldview, they have used the word violence with reference to what they call structural violence, which doesn't mean, say, an act of violence like hitting someone or assaulting someone. It means structural injustice, as they would define it.

A classic statement of this comes in the argument by Johann Galtung on structural violence. And he and also an author by the name of George Kent have identified several different aspects of violence. Listen to this, quote, there's physical violence, economic violence, political violence, and cultural violence. All right. So the first is physical violence. We understand what that means. and that is usually the term that we associate with violence. You see violence in a headline, you use the word violence in a conversation.

You generally mean some kind of physical aggression, some kind of violent act or intention to bring about a violent act. But these other three, economic violence, political violence, cultural violence, I have seen other categories of linguistic violence. When you start using the word violence in that kind of theoretical sense, and it's coming very much from the ideological left. And this is why they refer to it as structural violence. They're saying, you know, having economic inequalities, a form of structural violence, economic violence, discriminatory policies or policies they don't like become forms of cultural violence. And, you know, if you're going to use the word violence over and over again, you do not add meaning to it. You reduce meaning from it. I'm not saying that you can draw a direct line from the subversion of the

word violence to the emergence of violent acts, because violent acts are as old as the book of Genesis. I am saying that we have to take responsibility for our use of words. And I think if we're going to use the word violence, we better mean violence. And I think when you begin to stretch that word ideologically, you really begin to, you take the heat, the meaning, the threat, the moral valence, as it's referred. you take that out of the word violence. It makes actual violence look less violent if you're going to use the same word for other things that involve no physical violence at all. Now let me connect

that to the press conference yesterday in Utah and the reference to Tyler Robinson having a romantic relationship with a roommate who's transitioning from male to female. There are those in the activist community, in the academic community, who have for years now argued that it is an act of violence against transgender identified persons to say that there's anything wrong with the category or that their claims, regardless of what they are, are to be challenged in any way. That's being discussed as an act of violence. And it's just a confusion. And I think, in some ways, it's an intentional confusion. I'm not even saying all the people who use violence, I think, wrongly in these categories and try to shift to structural violence, cultural violence.

I'm not saying they have any self-conscious intention in every case to do this. I'm saying the effect, however, is to minimize physical violence. And I think if you minimize physical violence, you are yourself, let's just say, breaking down some of the barriers to violent acts. One final thought on that, I have noticed in recent years, an increasing number of citations about things such as environmental violence. and climate activists and others use that kind of term in environmental violence. And they're not necessarily talking about some, you know, act chopping down a tree. They're talking about the entire structural problem. And let me just state it bluntly.

I see that as a structural problem. Okay, talking about related issues, it is interesting. Headline just in recent days, New York Times, quote, Justice's rule for now for a transgender boy. And various major media have picked up on this story. The story is dateline in Washington. Quote, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a transgender boy, this is a Wednesday of last week, may use the boy's bathroom in a South Carolina public high school while he pursues a challenge to a state law requiring students to use the bathrooms for their sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.

That's a quotation from the policy that's being contested here. Now, I want to state that was read from the New York Times. I do not believe that a transgender boy is a boy. And I do not believe it's appropriate to use the masculine pronouns in reference to a so-called transgender boy. I want you to hear the confusion that comes when major media simply uses that kind of term over and over again and tries to reinforce it with pronouns and all the rest. It's an intentional effort to try to destabilize the entire category of male and female. And in this case, it's an article by Adam Liptack.

It's about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did basically rule. And this is not a court decision. It's a procedural ruling that this young person can continue to use the boy's bathroom, basically, even though the person is biologically female. So, you know, by the way, I think we need to. raise something very interesting here. It has to do with the fact that there really is an ontological difference. That is a creation order difference between male and females. Let me just point out

something that's politically incorrect, but I think it's important. There really isn't a big issue when it comes to, let's just say, practical considerations in putting biological females on biological male teams. That has not been a major issue. It's biological males in female sports places. That becomes the issue. And it's because of the physical advantages, especially in adolescence and thereafter, that comes to males in terms of physical strength, stride, skeletal structure, and all the rest. And so you really don't have a problem with, let's just say, biological girls swimming supposedly as boys, on a boys team. And it's because that's just really not a physical thing. It goes the other way. It's the same thing here, although it, let's just say it's a related

thing here. I think it's interesting that there would be more outrage about a biological male in a girl's bathroom than a biological female in a boy's bathroom. And I think it's because of just the sense of protecting females that is just very deeply ingrained in our society. I mean, both are categorically wrong. In this case, I believe the policy of the school saying that that students are to use the bathrooms for their sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth. It's a ridiculous number of words to say the obvious truth. Girls should be in the girls' bathroom. Boys should be in the boys' bathroom. Girls should be on the girls' teams. Boys should be on the boys' teams. But I do think it's

interesting that when everybody talks about total equality and all the rest, you know, even when you try to say, look, gender's entirely a matter of social construction. No, it's not. And I think it is interesting that even the pattern of these court cases indicates, no, it's actually not. On a related issue, a headline recently came from Hong Kong telling us that legislation proposing some same-sex rights had failed. And this is international news. One of the very interesting things we've noted is that the United States has put pressure, at least in the Biden administration, in the Obama administration, of many foreign nations to kind of get in line with some recognition of same-sex marriage or partnerships or something.

It also turns out that Hong Kong had been moving in this direction, even with a court case, if nothing else basically calling for legislation that would allow for some recognized partnerships. But it failed. And it failed, and this came as a surprise, this headlines around the world. Supporters, by the way, of the legislation did so in terms of public. relations for Hong Kong. They were making the argument that it would be good for Hong Kong's international reputation as a hub for business if there was the recognition of same-sex partnerships. It didn't pass, however. And so it's also important for us to recognize that

pressure is being brought on Hong Kong. And even the courts there may make orders relevant to this. But the point is everyone's being told to get in line on this. And Hong Kong, of course, is under a very different kind of political situation with increased direct rule subservient to the Communist Party in China. And, you know, on these kinds of issues, China is not exactly on the cutting edge. And so it is interesting that Hong Kong, given all its cosmopolitan nature and all its business interests, argues that it should be at least somewhat independent and distinct from some mainline Chinese. cities based upon these international ties and business interests. But it is interesting that this was not successful as legislation. It's also interesting that a major political leader in Hong Kong

speaking against the legislation pointed to it as a Pandora's box. As the Times reports, quote, he described the bill as a de facto recognition of same-sex marriage, which risk, in his words, opening a Pandora's box of related issues, and that would include same-sex adoption. Well, bingo, that's the problem. None of these things is independent of the other. You redefine marriage. You create some kind of legal partnership, same-sex partnership. The next thing you know, you're redefining the entirety of family structure, and eventually you're redefining the entire community structure. Eventually, all the laws have to be changed. Eventually, everything's going to have to be changed. And so it is a Pandora's box,

so to speak. And legally, we see that in the United States. That's one of the reasons why, even as, thankfully, there are now many people who are looking at legalized same-sex marriage in the United States, and in particular, looking at the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage, and they're saying, you know, it follows basically the same flawed logic as Roe, which was reversed. And so there are promises coming from conservatives and threats coming from liberals about the fact that there could be a major legal challenge to same-sex marriage. But this is where the complexities really do come up because once the Supreme Court did rule striking down laws in the states prohibiting same-sex marriage, all kinds of other things had to make accommodations. All kinds of other adjustments were made. Other laws were adjusted to meet this new law.

And that's the big problem. And one of the things we need to note is that when social revolutionaries say, it's just about this. No, it is never just about that. And especially when you're talking about marriage, a creation order, the most fundamental creation order institution on the planet, you can't define that even a little bit without redefining virtually everything else. I think it's also very interesting, given the history, that it looks right now that even in Hong Kong trying to be so cosmopolitan and so up to date, there is not, at least

at this point, a willingness to actually redefine marriage. Rather, the efforts are to create something tantamount to marriage. but as we've seen in the United States, whether there's a domestic partnership law or something like that, the next thing you know, you have created a total redefinition of marriage. We can be thankful at this point that this has been voted down, and we can take some hope that there might be a return to some sanity in this country, but we also need to acknowledge in a pattern of sin that even undoing that will not be uncomplicated. And the battle for it is likely to be very long.

While we are speaking about revolutions in the society, moral revolutions that have vast impact. I want to refer, in this case, not to an article, not to an editorial column, not to a development in the headlines. I want to point to a real estate ad that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It's a real estate company putting forth its services. It's Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. And the thing that caught my eye is that it is directed towards real estate buyers, potential clients whose best friend is an animal. Here's the ad. A place for you and your best friend.

Not a human best friend. It is an animal. The advertisement for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services says, quote, pets are often the most discerning companions when it comes to discovering the perfect home. Yeah, your dogs, your consultant. Okay, nevertheless, let's leave that.

Quote, our network forever agents are here to ensure that both you and your loyal friend find a residence that suits your shared lifestyle. When you are ready, contact the article basically says one of their agents with a network, with locations spanning North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Okay, we are living in a very, very interesting time of moral confusion, where it now makes sense for an elite real estate company, reaching out to elite clients not to be addressed to married couples at all, not to be directed towards even domestic partnerships or whatever you might call them, wherever in the world, not directed towards families at all, nor any semblance of a family,

but now simply to wealthy individuals with their best friend who is a pet. And you know, I think some people look at that ad and say, it's just an ad. I want to look at that ad and say, no, it's an argument. It's a very significant argument. We need to be. to recognize this argument for the sign of the times that it is. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmoler.com. You can follow up me on X or on Twitter. We're going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsd.cels.org. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com.

I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.