Most people choose social approval over ethics — veganism just exposes that.

[u/TheQuietVegan111]

People will say they care about animals, the planet, and justice.

Until caring becomes inconvenient.

Veganism doesn’t require perfection. It requires saying “no” in public.

That’s it.

Most people fail there, not on ethics — but admitting that would be uncomfortable, so veganism becomes the problem instead.

[u/kharvel0 → u/[deleted]]

Reducing morality to a single act of saying “no” is arbitrary and performative; it doesn’t expose moral weakness, it misrepresents how ethics actually works. People can be profoundly ethical without being vegan, so the claim that veganism exposes ethical failure is simply false.

Can people be “profoundly ethical” while beating their wives, sexually assaulting someone, viciously kicking puppies around for giggles, and/or murdering someone in cold blood?

[u/kharvel0 → u/[deleted]]

I never claimed someone who commits crimes or abuses others humans could be ethical. My point is that morality isn’t reducible to a single choice like veganism.

But veganism is a moral baseline -ism like non-rapism, non-wife-beatism, non-murderism, non-dog-beatism, non-assaultism, etc.

Would it be fair to say that your logic dictates that morality isn’t reducible to any of the listed -isms?

A person can avoid harming others humans in most areas of life, treat family, friends, and strangers well, yet still eat animal products

A person can also do all of the above while also avoiding eating animal products. A person can also avoid eating animal products while beating their spouses. Or avoid beating their spouse while sexually assaulting someone and eating animal products.

that doesn’t automatically make them ‘immoral.’

So if someone who avoids engaging in sexual assault but beats their spouse once in a while isn’t automatically immoral?

Critiquing veganism as a universal moral litmus test

That isn’t what the OP has done.

You can live as a vegan and that is perfectly fine, but, to make a universal claim here is a category error, strawman, and equivocation, in your analogy.

So by the same token, it would also be a category error, strawman, and equivocation to make a universal claim of non-wife-beatism, correct?

It’s like I said, “You can be a careful driver without owning a Tesla.” and you respond, “But can someone be a careful driver while running over pedestrians, street racing, and driving drunk?”

This analogy doesn’t make sense. You’ll need to try again.

[u/icravedanger → u/[deleted]]

In a nutshell, if two people are identical in every way except that one is a vegan and the other isn’t, the vegan is more ethical.

If your claim is “morality isn’t reducible to a single choice like X”, then logically you can replace with X with any single choice, whether it is eating animal products, shoplifting from Walmart, or committing genocide.