By DONALD DeMARCO
Twenty years ago, a Canadian lawyer wrote an article in which he listed three seemingly irrefutable examples of abusing the notion of equality.
The first was a blind Manitoban fencer who claimed he had the right to compete against sighted opponents. The second involved an alcoholic who insisted that his workplace should accommodate his disability. The third, according to our Canadian defender of the law, was a homosexual couple that demanded the right to marry.
How times have changed! What was viewed as an absurdity two decades ago is now law. Philosophical values such as truth, justice, and goodness, however, do not change. There can be no justice without truth, nor can there be equality without truth. We need truth to render justice; we need truth to distinguish between equals and un-equals.
Aristophanes understood the relationship between truth and justice far better than our present liberal society does. In his play, The Assembly of Women, dating from 391 BC, he shows, in comic fashion, the absurdities that result when equality is severed from truth and taken to an extreme.
In the play, some women take over parliament and pass laws to ensure that absolute equality between citizens is achieved. Private property is abolished so that no one person owns more than any other person.
But the zeal of the assemblywomen does not stop at that point. They want everyone to be equally happy. They want the old and ungainly women to enjoy the same pleasures as the young and beautiful. Thus, a law is passed requiring young men to make love to less attractive women before they enjoy the pleasures of those who are more attractive.
In the end, the old and ungainly women triumph over the young and beautiful. The law that was intended to enforce equality ends up by establishing inequality. The former were granted higher rights than the latter. The noble attempt to expand equality resulted in the violation of justice.
Laws have their limits. There can be no law that gives all people the right to be equally happy. The truth of the matter is that people are individuated and approach life in different ways. Consequently, happiness will rest on individual natures and the particular choices each individual makes.
At the same time, people are equal in those areas in which they all have something in common. For example, since all people are human beings, they are equal in that respect and therefore equal in the eyes of the law and equal as citizens. Truth is the factor that determines whether or not there is equality or inequality between people. People are equally human but not equally talented. They do not have, as George Will has stated, “the moral equality of appetites.”
A blind fencer is equal in humanity to a sighted one, but not in his fencing ability. An alcoholic is equal in humanity with his co-workers, but not in his sobriety. Society does not want blind pilots or drunk surgeons. In this regard it respects the simple truth that pilots need good vision, and surgeons need full concentration. It is truth that is primary, not equality.
John Wauck, in an essay entitled “The Truth Hurts,” has spelled out the inequality between heterosexual and homosexual unions rather graphically, though politically incorrectly: “The Church teaches that sex must be open to the transmission of new life; homosexuals have helped open it to the transmission of death.” New human life and AIDS are demonstrably unequal.
When truth is compromised in the interest of enlarging the spectrum of equality, injustice comes to the fore. Truth must precede equality to ensure that justice is maintained. Without the clear vision that truth provides, any two things can be said to be equal. Truth, at times, may hurt, but its primary function is to liberate.
In the run-up to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, we witnessed preferential treatment being accorded, in many instances, to same-sex couples seeking affirmation and Christians refusing to provide that affirmation.
As in Aristophanes’ play, although the initial intent is to expand equality, the net result is to legalize and intensify inequality.
A few examples:
A florist in the state of Washington, who is a grandmother and a Southern Baptist, declined a request to arrange flowers for a same-sex wedding because it violated her Christian beliefs. The same-sex couple filed a complaint which led to a suit against the florist, a court order, and thousands of dollars in fines. The suit is ongoing.
In Indianapolis, a Baptist couple was forced to close their bakery after they refused to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding.
In Albuquerque, N.M., a Christian couple declined a request to photograph a same-sex ceremony. The New Mexico Human Rights Commission convicted the couple of discrimination and levied a fine of several thousand dollars. The New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the commission.
An excessive concern for equality carries another danger, that being the elimination of complementarity. If people are too equal to each other, they cannot complement each other. Yet complementarity — between male and female, parents and children, teacher and students — is a reality that must not be ignored.
Wisdom is needed to distinguish between equality and inequality on the one hand, and complementarity on the other.
Too much concern for one value, however noble it may be, and too little concern for wisdom brings to mind Othello’s tragic lament, that he “loved not wisely, but too well” (Act 5, scene 2).
+ + +
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review.
(His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry that Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress