Last year Ireland became the first nation in the world to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote. Considering that male homosexuality was a criminal offence just over 20 years prior to the referendum, this was a significant event. The groundswell of support for marriage equality among young voters, many of whom were otherwise politically indifferent, showed that the issue went far beyond the specifics of constitutional definitions. It was a personal statement to the rest of the world: “This is Ireland, and it’s not the rigid ecclesiocracy that you’re thinking of.”
The Yes Equality message was a master stroke of sloganeering. The core message of the yes side was pithy enough to print on brightly coloured badges that were ubiquitous in the run up to the referendum and that can still be found pinned to coats and rucksack straps around the campus to this day. And who could possibly disagree with it? Whatever you think of marriage as an institution, if the government is in the business of defining and recognising it then it had better do so equally. Campaigns such as this are examples of equality campaigning done correctly. The inequality is quite clearly defined by some unjust law or antiquated passage of the constitution. Once it is rectified everyone moves on with their lives, pausing only to occasionally contemplate how far the country has come. This is real, measurable progress.
In our eagerness to eradicate the inequalities that matter, we seem to have collectively forgotten that in a truly free society, equality doesn’t and shouldn’t exist.
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If our fixation on equality stopped there, everything would be just fine. However, in our eagerness to eradicate the inequalities that matter, we seem to have collectively forgotten that in a truly free society, equality doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. This inconvenient reality persists even in sophisticated and progressive society for lots of reasons, one of which is the fact that there are actually two sorts of equality: that of opportunity and that of outcomes. The former consists of a long history of legal and policy achievements such as universal suffrage, equal pay acts and free secondary-level education. It is by no means a finished history – we still have father’s rights and education equality to worry about, among other things – but wherever it manifests there is usually a laudable and, most importantly, well-defined issue to rally behind.
The latter is little more than idealistic utopianism. It is difficult to decide what is more perturbing about those who advocate for equality of outcomes: the means that they are willing to employ in order to achieve it, or the fact that they believe it to be achievable. In the past few months alone we have seen student protests across US campuses against an administration that is not doing enough for racial equality, as well as wider calls to boycott the Oscars on similar grounds. A highly pertinent example of this behaviour in Ireland can be seen in the gender quotas currently being imposed on our political parties under threat of financial penalty should they fail to comply.
Advocates such as the “Women for Election” not-for-profit claim that the electorate have never had a real choice before the 30 per cent gender quota, due to the preponderance of males standing for election. This being said in a democratic republic where the majority of the electorate is female. The case for this interference in the democratic process is made by appealing to nebulous barriers such as the “boys’ club” culture and the gender pay gap making politics too costly an endeavour for women. Never mind the fact that women had no problem entering and now dominating the fields of law and medicine, once two of the biggest boys’ clubs imaginable. Never mind that the gender pay gap is actually 17 percentage points in women’s favour before they have children, according to a 2012 OECD report, or that every single woman in the teaching profession – another female-dominated field – could keep her job open for up to ten years upon being elected to the Dáil. If any politician dared to say that women were somehow less capable than men at dealing with the bitter vicissitudes of politics, that would be the end of their career. Espouse the exact same sentiment in the form of a quota, however, and you are standing up for equality. It would appear that some egalitarians want to have their equality and achieve it, too.
Social media outrage culture has also led us to fear the disapprobation of a righteously indignant crowd.
Even in the face of evidence against their position, why are outcome egalitarians like these so prevalent not just in Ireland, but all over the western world? In some cases it can be explained by self-interest. We generally want to be considered fair-minded people by our peers. Social media outrage culture has also led us to fear the moral disapproval of a righteously indignant crowd. The confluence of these two forces makes for a powerful incentive to not raise our voices in dissent when issues of equality come up.
What that explanation cannot account for is the existence of true believers in the equality doctrine: the progressives. Characterised by a fixation on immutable characteristics such as race and gender and a severe aversion to dissenting opinion, their approach to equality is one of unmitigated absolutism: if inequality exists anywhere, for any reason, it simply must be eradicated by any means. It’s all in the name of progress, as though progress were a linear path mapped out for us by some higher authority.
If that sounds like divine predestination, it’s because the progressive ideology is just one charismatic spiritual leader away from being a religion. Equality as absolute virtue is its central article of faith. Anything seen to promote inequality is anathema, whether it’s genuinely execrable behaviour like racism, or the biological truism that we are a sexually dimorphic species. Blasphemy is easy: just state that meritocracy is always more important than equality, or that you treat everyone you meet as an individual regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation. It’s also hard to resist a comparison between the Flagellantism movement that swept Europe during the Black Death and the endless call to confess the intersectional sins of “privilege”.
The number of people in this country identifying as atheists rose precipitously in the past two decades, as did the number of people claiming no religious affiliation. The Catholic Church has lamented this unprecedented level of apostasy as the Irish abandoning faith altogether. But the faithful haven’t actually gone anywhere – they’ve simply traded in the holy perpendicular of the crucifix for the sacred parallel of the equals sign.
