I’ve gotten two texts now with this message: “Charlie Kirk lived for Christ and gave his life for truth. Watch this powerful tribute to his legacy of faith and courage.” 

Of course, I didn’t click the link. I have no idea who’s responsible for sending this text, or how I ended up on their list. 

Up until these past few days, I didn’t know much about Charlie Kirk—and I’m not going out of my way to learn anything new. 

It’s not callous indifference, but an evenhanded acknowledgement of how much there is to mourn—and how much our culture and media dictates which lives are worthy of it. 

For my part, I can’t help but think of the Minnesota lawmaker who was killed earlier this summer. I can’t remember her name—and I’m not positive, but I think there might have been two victims. Two lawmakers? 

I checked. Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in the early hours of June 14, after the assassin had already attempted to kill another Minnesota lawmaker and his wife. 

→ If you want to understand Donald Trump’s reaction to political violence over time, here’s a helpful piece from NPR. 

Along with Melissa Hortman and the other victims of the violence in Minnesota, I’m of course thinking of the people of Gaza who are dying even as I write, as you read. Though grossly underreported in our media, their lives—each one—is a universe unto itself, to their siblings, parents, children, friends. Futures cut short. Joy extinguished.

No, I’ve learned quite enough about Charlie Kirk over the past few days. 

Enough to know that he was 31. That he was a father, and had a growing family. 

I wonder how his children will see him. Will they wrestle with his legacy? Will they shoulder the racial resentment, the transphobic tropes? 

And as I understand it, he was a provocateur. Someone who relished confrontation and craved bringing embarrassment and shame on his opponents. 

Kirk was a man who never worried once about whether he said the right thing, whether he overstepped, whether he had crossed the line.

I weep for this country where we treasure clap backs and sound bites over compassion and reason. Where we wall ourselves in with cobbled-together half truths, one brick at a time. 

He was also someone who hated my community, and didn’t think twice about spreading misinformation about us—trans people in particular. 

A friend of mine sent me his thoughts the other day on how there’s an expectation in such a circumstance for everyone to sort of circle the wagons and condemn and defend and mourn. That it’s a measure of our goodness. 

I agree with him. Yet, I would add something else, which is to invite deeper reflection on why it is that some lives seem to matter more than others. Here’s my hypothesis: our society has a particularly difficult time coming to terms with the passing of young men—white men, in particular. (And Christian, and straight, and what-have-you on top of it.) 

As much as Charlie Kirk, I think, saw himself as leading the counter charge against a “feminization” of society—by which I mean a softening of it, an opening to other lives, perspectives, experiences, and modes of being—I think we still carry this very trenchant, sort of medieval idea about young men as the pillars of our society. As our defenders.

And, as such, carrying greater value. 

Agree with them or not, we value their fight and we relish the chance to say, “I may not have agreed with XYZ but in the end, he wasn’t such a bad chap.” We don’t know how to cope with their passing because what does that mean for the rest of us? What does it mean for our future when our knights are no longer in the battle? 

The most radical thing we can do right now isn’t to trip over ourselves humanizing Charlie Kirk. (Or to waste time villainizing him.) Instead, it’s to open our hearts to anyone who thinks or believes differently than us. To interrogate the lines drawn around us. This isn’t a time for tribalism, to rally around a USA cry, but to open our hearts to humanity, full stop. 

I don’t think Charlie Kirk was courageous, or that he lived his life for Christ. I don’t think he would’ve known Jesus if he came up with a name tag and tried to shake his hand. Jesus met with people who didn’t belong to his group. He broke bread with them. He had compassion for them. Don’t conflate white Christian nationalism with the teachings of the Gospels. 

Jesus’ teachings are the most radical thing we can follow, still today.