What do adoption, housing, media, marriage, and education all have in common?
Activists argue these areas of society deny them equal treatment, and call for justice in the name of “equality.”
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with equality when rightly understood. But what happens when faulty ideas of equality are smuggled into law and public life?
Confusion and chaos follow:
- Sex attacks in women’s prisons by transgender convicts
- A 4,000% rise in children seeking sex changes
- Homosexual practices raising public health concerns
- Same-sex families creating motherless or fatherless homes by design, to the detriment of children
- Debates over sporting fairness amidst transgender participation
This is why we need clarity on what equality actually means.
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle warned that the greatest injustice is to treat as equal things that are not.
Alike things should be treated alike, and unalike things should not. With this in mind, what should we recognise about equality?
1. Moral Assumptions are Often Smuggled Into Modern Calls for Equality
Let’s illustrate this with two examples.
- Gender: When people say “trans women are women”, they want you to believe that self-determined gender is just as valid as biologically-determined gender.
- Marriage Equality: And when people say “love is love”, they want you to believe that straight and homosexual relationships are morally equivalent.
But even under neutral frameworks like natural law, they’re not.
Gender
Natural law says that nature tells us how we should act. Correctly understood, biologically-determined gender recognises the body’s design as male or female, (seen not just in genitalia but also in chromosomes, body structure, and more) which surgery can’t erase. Transgenderism rejects it in favour of subjective personal feelings.
Outliers don’t change the rule.
Citing intersex conditions in response is like citing Tetra-Amelia Syndrome to claim humans don’t have four limbs. Outliers don’t change the rule. So, calls to treat ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ identities the same are not about equality, but about forcing society to treat two unlike things as though they were alike.
Maybe one hasn’t thought it through. Or maybe one has—and decided it’s safer to nod along than to say what one really thinks.
Marriage Equality
Heterosexual sex aligns with the naturally complementary design of male and female bodies and produces children. Homosexual sex does not. It misuses the body and contributes nothing to reproduction. The moral and social outcomes differ.
According to natural law reasoning, the purpose (telos) of something is found in what it’s built to do. The ear is for hearing. The heart is for pumping blood. Sex is for reproduction. Pleasure and bonding may come with it, but they’re not the function, they’re by-products. To treat sex as if its main purpose is pleasure or emotional connection is to confuse the accessories for the thing itself.
Of course, the modern view says sex means whatever the individual says it means. It’s not about bodies, biology, or babies; it’s about self-expression. On this view, the body is just raw material for the self to manipulate. Physical and emotional pleasure are the purpose. Personal choice is all that matters. And any hint of natural limits is seen as oppressive. It’s less about what sex is and more about how one feels about it. It’s not serious moral reasoning, just personal preference with a moral tone.
Thus, calls for “marriage equality” are not about equality, but about forcing society to treat two unlike acts as if they were the same.
Why Should Marriage be Limited to Two People?
Furthermore, if sex no longer matters, why should number? If ‘love is love’, why limit marriage to two people?
A headline read:
This isn’t speculative, it’s already happening:
- Three cities in Massachusetts now allow domestic partnerships with more than two people
- Two cities in California have passed laws affirming polyamory as a protected identity.
If sex no longer matters, and two is just a number, why should marriage be permanent, sexually exclusive or even involve sex or love at all? In a world where we can make of social institutions what we want, why can’t “marriage” just be an infinitely malleable contract?
Because that changes what marriage uniquely is: a covenantal union, not merely a contractual one
You Might Ask: What About Interracial Marriage?
You may have heard comparisons between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. But this is a false equivalence. Race is morally neutral, while sex is not. Race is irrelevant to marriage, while biological sex is central to marriage’s structure and meaning.
Erasing sex from marriage doesn’t make marriage more equal, it changes what marriage is. Hence, comparing same-sex and mixed-race unions confuses two very different things.
2. Unequal Outcomes Aren’t Always Unjust
Let’s talk about equality as a principle for just a second.
Calls for equality often assume that all unlike outcomes reflect injustice. But sometimes, they reflect different choices.
Take the gender pay gap. Men and women often prioritise different things. Some work longer hours, while others choose flexibility or family. These choices affect salary.
Before calling an outcome inequality, we must ask: are we comparing like with like? Role, industry, experience, National Service, working hours, life-choices – all these matter.
We must address real injustices, but only after careful analysis. Otherwise, we risk chasing phantom problems while missing the real ones.
3. Human Flaws are Universal
We often blame inequality on systems. But the deeper problem lies with the people in them.
As gulag survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, the line separating good and evil runs through every human heart. That includes the hearts of the oppressed, not just the oppressor.
Systems can shift power, but they can’t erase selfishness.
If hearts don’t change, inequality just takes on new forms.
True change comes not from systems alone, but from personal virtue, moral responsibility, and voluntary compassion. And we’re seeing signs of it: volunteerism and graciousness are on the rise.
We cannot force kindness, but we can choose it.
Thinking Clearly
Equality, rightly understood, is a moral principle, not a political weapon.
It doesn’t erase the distinctions that give society meaning, it respects them.
It doesn’t disregard differences, but addresses real injustice.
It prioritises changing hearts, not just systems.
And when rightly lived out, it protects what matters most: truth, family, and human dignity.
