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It’s a tough balance between holding people accountable for harmful speech and inadvertently giving that speech a bigger platform. Sometimes silence lets harm continue unchecked, sometimes exposure spreads it further.

Good point about the calculation test for harm. On highlighting extreme views, I think there’s value in exposing Kirk’s rhetoric to show its real impact on LGBTQ+ people, but the risk is amplifying his message to new audiences who might embrace it.

Who gets to make those calculations? What prevents that same logic from being turned against voices we value?

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Once we start calculating the value of human lives, weighing Kirk’s potential future contributions against the harm his rhetoric caused, we’re on a slope that leads to justifying assassination based on our predictions about someone’s worth.

Thank you for sharing this perspective. You’re absolutely right that I didn’t fully address the “missed” value in Singer’s calculus, and that’s an important oversight. But don’t you think that’s exactly the problem with utilitarian reasoning when applied to murder?

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themoralityof.substack.com

I watched Charlie Kirk get shot yesterday online and felt nauseous, not because I mourned him, but because murder is wrong even when his death benefits the LGBTQ+ community. Wrestling with political violence and moral consistency. #philsky #charliekirk themoralityof.substack.com/p/the-morali...

The Morality of Political Violence

Between Justice and Murder: A Queer Reckoning

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Daniel Strongman @themoralityof.com · 21/08/2025

Reporting from Phoenix, AZ, I’m here leading events with Shoes That Fit. This organization gives athletic shoes to kids in need. Nordstrom is on a mission to raise 1.7 million dollars and distribute 50k pairs of shoes to kids in need. #fashion #shoes #philanthropy www.shoesthatfit.org/nordstrom/

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In solitude we discover who we are; in community we learn who we might become.

Belonging is the art of being seen completely and choosing to stay anyway.

Home is not a place we find but a feeling we create in the spaces between understanding and being understood.

True intimacy lies not in knowing everything about someone, but in being comfortable with the mysteries they choose to keep.

The daily act of choosing visibility over safety is a form of quiet heroism rarely acknowledged. #lgbtq

In the space between who we were taught to be and who we are, entire worlds of possibility are born. #lgbtq #philsky

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The profound loneliness of carrying joy that others cannot see or celebrate carves depths in the soul unknown to others. #lgbtq

Daniel Strongman @themoralityof.com · 12/08/2025

To deny another’s authentic existence is to diminish the very fabric of human possibility itself.

Daniel Strongman @themoralityof.com · 12/08/2025

The courage to be oneself is the foundation upon which all other freedoms are built.

Daniel Strongman @themoralityof.com · 12/08/2025

The measure of a society’s wisdom lies not in its uniformity, but in how tenderly it protects its most vulnerable truths.

Thank you for putting this into words. It’s something more of us (especially cis people like me) need to sit with.

What you said about the casual conversations, those half-acceptances that people toss around when they think no one trans is listening, that hits. It’s like watching the door crack open, but knowing you’re still not safe to walk through it.

I really feel this. Visibility is powerful, but it comes at a personal cost, and that cost is rarely acknowledged. It’s hard knowing that just existing can change someone’s opinion, while also knowing it’s not your job to educate or be someone’s “turning point.”

That’s the highest compliment, thank you! If it lingers, it’s alive. And maybe that’s where morality lives too: not in the answers, but in the questions we can’t shake.

Totally agree. The Cogito centers the self so completely that it risks erasing the other. Morality can’t live there long. It needs a world beyond the self to mean anything. Thank you for your insights!

I love this statement! Thank you for your kind words.

So morals come from many places: the body, the tribe, the home, the nation. Some we inherit. Some we learn. Some we question. Some we outgrow. They evolve as we evolve. But they all start with a simple question: What kind of world do I want to live in?

Family reflects culture. What’s moral in one home may be immoral in another. In one country, duty to elders is sacred. In another, independence is praised. These differences are cultural relativism in action.

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But not all morals are built-in. Many come from family. We absorb rules before we understand them. If we’re taught that obedience is good, we internalize it. If we’re taught rebellion, we learn that, too.

Evolution shaped this, too. Groups that valued fairness, loyalty, and care survived longer. Morals weren’t just kind, they were adaptive. They kept us alive. That instinct still guides us.

Some are innate. We’re born valuing our own lives. From that self-awareness comes a basic rule, if I don’t want to be hurt, I shouldn’t hurt others. Empathy begins with the body.

We all think. We all are. But the world doesn’t treat every “I am” the same. #philsky #lgbtq

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So here’s the question: Do I exist in my mind, or in yours? Is queerness what I know, or what you refuse to see? Being queer is more than being. It’s being misread. It’s being rewritten. It’s surviving the space between truth and distortion. #philsky #lgbtq

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Cogito affirms that I exist. But not who I am. Identity isn’t born in a vacuum. It’s shaped by thought, mine, and theirs. If we all think, are we the same? In essence, yes. In experience, no. We do not all walk through the same world. #philsky #lgbtq

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“I think, therefore I am.” But what happens when others think you are something else? If my queerness is known to me as truth, but framed by others as deviance, am I still myself? Or am I a projection in their world? #philsky #lgbtq

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Is acceptance real if it disappears when you ask for rights? #philsky #book #writer #lgbtqia #queer

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Thanks for the good faith discussion too! I really appreciate you pushing back on the historical details and keeping me honest about the CNT-FAI. These conversations are how we actually learn from each other, even when we don’t see everything the same way. Solidarity.

To become who I am without needing the world to agree.

The betrayal was clearly the knockout blow, but the internal fractures didn’t help their resilience when it came.

So maybe both things were true: they faced genuine ideological contradictions about inclusion vs. revolutionary purity, AND they were ultimately crushed by external betrayal rather than those internal contradictions.

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You’re right about the betrayal being the decisive factor, the Stalinists turning on them mid-war was devastating. At the same time, they did have internal tensions that weakened them beforehand, expelling moderates like Pestaña, conflicts over militarization with groups like the Iron Column.

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It’s a hard tension: how do you build inclusive justice while dealing with genuinely harmful ideologies? Maybe there’s no single answer, just ongoing experiments in building power from below while learning from what worked and what didn’t.

The CNT-FAI showed incredible solidarity and creativity, but they also excluded groups they saw as counter-revolutionary, which contradicts the “liberation for all” ideal and arguably weakened their movement.

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The ethics of dupes might come down to intention. Is it about access or assimilation? A dupe that nods to the original isn’t the same as a fake trying to pass, one says “I belong,” the other says “let me in.” Maybe the real question is: what are we trying to prove, and to whom?

There’s a real moral question here: what is authenticity, and who gets to define it? If a “dupe” offers the same aesthetic experience without the luxury price, is it any less real, or just less exclusive?

The optimistic scenario requires either clear economic failure that’s politically attributable to the tariffs, or a major external shock that forces reconsideration. Neither seems likely enough to bet on.

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The business community’s response will be key. If downstream industries organize effectively around supply chain disruption and consumer price impacts, that could create counterpressure. But concentrated benefits usually beat diffuse costs in American politics.