It is supposed to be a basic belief held by members of today's Western society. That all people are created equal. Of course, this belief is not respected in the Middle East or parts of Asia, but that's the way that society was built up. With the belief that people are not all created equal. It's a sad fact of life.
Another sad fact of life is the lie that people live through their entire lives.
The Church says that "all people are equal in the eyes of God", the US says that "all men were created equally", and it is now defined by most of the world as a crime against humanity when certain groups of people are targeted for discrimination or persecution. If all people are created equally, however, why are people not all equal in the eyes of legislation and holy scripture?
From Corinthians 1, 6-9: "Neither the sexually immoral . . . nor practising homosexuals . . . will inherit the kingdom of God."
Clearly God is not all-loving.
In the United States, Massachusetts is the only state to have granted same-sex couples the legal right to marry, as opposed to the civil-union status granted in California, Connecticut, Hawai'i, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, and the District of Columbia. That's 9 states (and one district) out of 50. That's pathetic, especially in the face of the United States Constitution, which says that all people were created equal.
Most of the original European Union members states have granted same-sex unions, and a few, such as Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium, have granted marital status. Canada and South Africa join them with legislation granting the legality of same-sex marriages.
But, not only is gay marriage not legal in most of the US, gay members of the Armed Forces are not allowed to be openly gay without having their military status terminated. The Pentagon says that this is because it will "break down the solid battalion structure of the Army". Contradictingly enough, the United Kingdom allows gay people to be open in their Armed Forces, and, to date, there have been no intra-squad or battalion issues that have had to be dealt with.
To get the the essence of this post, I'm going to say that although our society would like us to believe that we believe that all people are created equally, it is evident that we don't believe that
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I think the problem that we in Western society have is what we mean by 'equal' or 'equality'. Even within our society there are differences depending on cultures and attitudes. Because we can't immediately see this difference of interpretation we tend to assume that everyone else has the same definition. There's a TV advert for HSBC which shows that a hand sign meaning 'OK' is universally understood as meaning the same thing throughout South America except in Brazil where it is considered an insult.
On a tangent to the idea that 'all people are created equal' is the question of - What is Popular Sovereignty? Most of us would probably think in terms of the democratic form of government, but is that really what it means? I think the answer is not so simple as that. If you connect it with 'free will' it is possible to see that if a person chooses to live in accordance with the accepted norms of a society, even one which we disagree with, then that person can be said to be practising popular sovereignty. Those are my own thoughts.
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