Do we like Stephen King?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Backs trans people in plain words, gives generously at home, and owns his errors, though his quick-draw posting has produced a few real clangers.
King is the Maine horror novelist, and he and his wife Tabitha, also an author, have put serious money back into the state. I'll be upfront that the record I could open for his early life was thin, so this column is about the public King of the last decade or so.
The messiest recent episode was September 2025. After Charlie Kirk was shot dead, King posted that Kirk had advocated stoning gay people to death. TheWrap called the claim unsubstantiated. King deleted the post and wrote “I was wrong, and I apologize.”
It got uglier from there. Texas Senator Ted Cruz called King a “horrible, evil, twisted liar”, and King replied that the error came from an unverified claim he'd read. He added “Won't happen again.” An apology only counts if the behaviour changes afterwards, and the July 2026 Platner episode suggests the quick-draw posting hasn't fully gone away.
That Platner episode was a stoush of his own making. On 6 July 2026 King wrote that Platner may drop out and that he hoped he wouldn't, while also taking a swipe at Trump. Thousands of replies accused him of defending sexual assault. The next day he wrote “Not defending Grah, Platner. If he committed rape, he should bow out.”
On the harm test, his own words are mostly on the right side. In 2020 he answered a follower with “Yes. Trans women are women.” He later said J.K. Rowling had blocked him over it. That is a clear stand, made at some cost, and it counts. He has also called out Trump over ICE and the direction of the country, and a White House spokeswoman answered by saying he'd “no grasp on reality”.
There are older stains. In 2014 he called Dylan Farrow's open letter about Woody Allen an “element of palpable bitchery”. He then walked it back with “Probably used the wrong word”, which Salon didn't read as a real apology. Allen has denied the accusations, and King said he had no opinion on them. It was a clumsy, unkind moment rather than a pattern, but it's on the record.