I’ve been debating how to acknowledge the killing of a prominent political figure, especially one who stood opposed to my rights as a human being. One who suggested Black pilots are unqualified, called the passage of the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake,” and said that Black women like Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “do not have the brain processing power” to be taken seriously.

Yet I’m told I must mourn the death of a son, husband, and father of two. I’m reminded at every turn that “there is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”

Kirk is being hailed as a hero and martyr. The New York Yankees held a moment of silence for him. Ezra Klein wrote a truly awful piece claiming Kirk was “practicing politics the right way.” And Donald Trump ordered the flag of the United States of America to be flown at half-staff for Kirk—a courtesy he tried to deny John McCain and railed against for Jimmy Carter—and will award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Meanwhile, as I’m called on to denounce political violence, Trump also said “we just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics,” while the far right calls for retribution, so apparently political violence is acceptable, as long as it targets the left.

Erin Reed, in her Erin in the Morning newsletter, wrote this:

Quickly, political figures and pundits rushed to denounce the killing, as they should. But some went further, valorizing and lionizing a man who built his career on contempt of people he viewed as lesser. Political violence is corrosive and we must not excuse it—killing Charlie Kirk was horrific. But we also must not sanitize the memory of a man who wished harm on those he disagreed with, and who spread a message of hate to anyone willing to listen or pay him to do so. We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

And closes:

You can stand against political violence, as anyone with a conscience does. You can call for a politics rooted in kindness—something we desperately lack today, and something I know the absence of intimately as a transgender person who has lived under the weight of rhetoric like Kirk’s. You can and should condemn killing over speech. But to ask that people carry on Kirk’s “work” is a bridge too far. We must not valorize his life. We must not sanitize his hate. Not now. Not ever.

I wrote of Trump’s assassination attempt last July (“A Sad American Legacy Continues”):

This abhorrent act against a former president and current presidential candidate must serve as a reminder that political violence is never acceptable, no matter the target, and that violent rhetoric has real-world repercussions. Yet we must not mistake from where that rhetoric often comes.

I’ll reiterate that sentiment for Charlie Kirk—but I won’t mourn him.