Equal treatment

“ I call upon the people of the United States, including government officials, employers, educators, and volunteers, to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities honoring all those who work for self-determination, equal treatment, and full participation. ”

“ The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation. ”

“ We hold these rights by virtue, of our manhood, it is said; they are inherent in it, and constitute it. But my rights bind you, and yours bind me, and yet you and I are equal; our manhoods are equal. How, then, can the manhood of either bind or morally oblige the other? ”

“ So there is constant surrendering of personal desires in recognition of the fact that others have equal rights, and that, after all, one part is as good as another, since all are essential to the whole. ”

“ Do you fear, perchance, that by granting us equal rights you will reap the fruits of the education which you have given us? Very well; it is in your power to give us a different one. Or do you fear that we would destroy the ruinous fruits of your own education? ”

“ Real and comprehensive knowledge, physical and moral, equally and impartially given by education, and by all other means to both sexes, is the key to such higher enjoyments....
“Demand with mild but unshrinking firmness, perfect equality with men: demand equal civil and criminal laws, an equal system of morals, and, as indispensable to these, equal political laws, to afford you an equal chance of happiness with men, from the development and exercise of your faculties.” ”

“ Is it a dream, then, that all men should ever be free and equal? It is at least evident that here ethical notions have been interjected into social relations, with the result that we have been taught to think of free and equal units willingly serving each other. ”

“ And so it would go on as it did go on, until the world's awakening, at the end of the last century, to the necessity and possibility of a reorganization of human society on a moral basis, the first principle of which must be the equal liberty and dignity of all human beings. ”

“ Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?—would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale. ”

“ When it ordains us to love our neighbour as ourselves, what else is taught but that, in the right choice, equality (be it our own or that of others) shall fall with equal weight into the balance, from which follows the subordination of the single individual to the good of the collective whole ”

“ We are in no vain chase of an equality which would eliminate all individual initiative, and check all progress, by ignoring differences of capacity and strength, and rating muscles equal to brains. But we are in pursuit of equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading happy lives than humanity in general ever had yet. ”

“ Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all, in order to produce the desired result—a harmonious union and a homogeneous people. ”

“ A solution, in accordance with the fundamental laws of ethics, of the woman question, which is a part of the great social question, can be arrived at only by a transformation of the social order of things, made in conformity with the principle of equal liberty and equal justice to each and every one. ”

“ But the goal thus defined implies methods different from that of some advocates of equality. They propose at once to assume the non-existence of a disagreeable difficulty, and to take men as equal in a sense in which they are not, in fact, equal. To me the problem appears to be, not the instant introduction of a new system, but a necessarily long and very gradual process of education directed towards the distant goal of making men equal in the desirable sense; and that problem, I add, is in the main a moral problem. ”

“ We are entering into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all. It is no novelty that mankind do not distinctly foresee their own changes, [Pg 81] and that their sentiments are adapted to past, not to coming ages. ”

“ Let her ask to be placed on an equality with man in regard to the holding of property, or to civil or ecclesiastical rights, or authority or position; let the daughters ask equal rights and privileges with sons; let them request admission into the same colleges and universities with their brothers, so that they may compete with them for the honors and degrees conferred in such institutions,—and what then? The flowery oratory is all gone. The "angels," the "heroic, brave, and virtuous women," have suddenly become agitators whose conduct is unseemly. ”

“ This broad natural equality of sentiment, rooted in equal material opportunities, equal education, equal laws, equal opportunities, and equal access to all positions of honor and trust, has just sufficient inequality mixed with it—in the shape of greater or less mental endowments, higher or lower degrees of culture, larger or smaller material possessions, and so on—to keep it sweet and human ”

“ Men were told that it was necessary for their health that we should have an unequal moral code. Now that is all done away with and the foremost medical men and the foremost scientists are agreeing with the women; they are agreeing with the women that it is quite possible, and it is necessary for the sake of the race itself, that this equal moral code shall be established. ”

“ Those fallacies run through all socialistic schemes and theories. If we take rights to pertain to results, and then say that rights must be equal, we come to say that men have a right to be equally happy, and so on in all the details. Rights should be equal, because they pertain to chances, and all ought to have equal chances so far as chances are provided or limited by the action of society. ”

“ More important is it to deal with the springs of action, to teach the equal standard of purity for men and women, and the moral responsibility of parenthood to adolescent youth, and at the same time to impress upon [47] the whole community its responsibility of oversight of morals for the good of the next generation. Conviction of personal and social responsibility as superior to individual preferences is the only safety of society in all its relations, from eugenics through economics to ethics and religion. ”

“ Accordingly, all the leading reformers begin by piously reiterating certain phrases about equal rights for all and special privileges for none, and of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. ”

“ There are some few points in which we can obtain equality in this world, and that equality can only be obtained under a well-regulated form of society, and consists in an equal administration of justice and of laws to which we have agreed to submit for the benefit of the whole—the equal right to live and not be permitted to starve, which has been obtained in this country. ”

“ But it clearly does mean that all men are created equal in a moral, legal and governmental sense, equal as members of society or citizens of the State, no matter how [Pg 39] much they may differ in inherent or acquired advantages. ”

“ Others think the standard is to be found in equality, and that those laws and those only that tend to make everyone equal before the law are just. [5] Others think the test to determine whether an act is just is to inquire whether it will promote the welfare of the race as distinguished from the welfare of particular individuals, or classes of individuals. ”

“ At that time only a few dreamed about equal rights for all, discussed the pride of position and birth, complained about the unjust privileges, and compared the fate of the oppressed with the fate of those occupying higher places in life. ”

“ While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal..." ”

“ It is proposed merely to efface those factitious characteristics, whose removal will clear away barriers and secure the more rapid improvement of all, by blending their culture, their liberty, and their worship—showing us men and women as equal units of humanity in its personal ends, but dependent co-adjutors in its social means. ”

“ They ask for an equal system of morals, founded on utility instead of caprice and unreasoning despotism, in which the same action, attended with the same consequences, whether done by man or woman, should be attended with the same portion of approbation or disapprobation; in which every pleasure, accompanied or followed by no preponderant evil, should be equally permitted to women and to men; in which every pleasure accompanied or followed by preponderant evil should be equally censured in women and in men. ”

“ the idea of equality — the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the divine tribunal and divine laws. ”

“ i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right.5
1. ”

“ We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; ”

“ Equal rights to the best facilities for intellectual and spiritual culture, equal rights in the eligibility to every position of honor and trust, and equal rights in the exercise of a free and unconstrained choice in all social relations as a principle at once American, Methodistic, and Scriptural. ”

“ It is held that there should [Pg 4] be no restraint not required by the general good, and that the law should be no respecter of persons, but should treat all alike, save where dissimilarity of treatment is required by positive reasons, either of justice or of policy. ”

“ I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all were equal in colour, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal,—equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. ”

“ Among those causes of human improvement that are of most importance to the general welfare, must be included the total annihilation of the prejudices which have established between the sexes an inequality of right, fatal even to the party which it favors. In vain might we seek for motives to justify the principle, in difference of physical organization, of intellect, or of moral sensibility. ”

“ Everyone finds it more difficult to say that those who are ‘different’ from us in some way should have the same equality rights that we enjoy. Yet so soon as we say any ... group is less deserving and unworthy of equal protection and benefit of the law all minorities and all of ... society are demeaned. It is so deceptively simple and so devastatingly injurious to say that those who are handicapped or of a different race, or religion, or colour or sexual orientation are less worthy. ”

“ The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. ”

“ ‘Before God we are all Equal,’ says many a one,—and he readily admits that in another life we shall actually be placed upon an Equality, because this is a matter beyond his control,—who nevertheless himself relies upon the inequality of men in this life, maintains this inequality with all his power, and endeavours to draw from it the greatest possible advantage to himself. The principle of Equality must therefore be applied to the earthly relations of men, if it is to become the source of true, active Good Manners among them. ”

“ Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice, or freedom—for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law—prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles. ”

“ If not, enquire whether all human propensities, duly governed, be not a benefit and a blessing to the nature in which they are inherent.
Human beings, of whatever sex or class! examine dispassionately and narrowly the influence which the control here recommended will produce throughout society. Reflect whether it will not lighten the burdens of one sex, while it affords scope for the exercise of the best feelings of the other. Consider whether its tendency be not benignant and elevating; conducive to the exercise of practical virtue, and to the permanent welfare of the human race. ”

“ A perfect equality will, indeed, be produced,—that is to say, equal want, equal wretchedness, equal beggary, and, on the part of the partitioners, a woful, helpless, and desperate disappointment. Such is the event of all compulsory equalizations. They pull down what is above; they never raise what is below; and they depress high and low together beneath the level of what was originally the lowest. ”

“ Have we a right to assert our wishes and interests in the social institutions, or must we, without choice, be content with the institutions which men alone have created? Is our intelligence, our opposition, our voice, to direct our fate, or are we, in blind submission, to recognize and acknowledge men as our providence and our gods? ”