From Jefferson wringing his hands about slavery to Kennedy hesitating to enact civil-rights legislation, history is full of the privileged urging the oppressed to be more patient, and not to advance rash claims for equality.Republicans have been here before, when they nominated their only true libertarian candidate for the White House, Barry Goldwater.
The latest group to feel the sting of culture and tradition being used against them are millions of LGBTI people, whose claims for equality are frequently blocked on the basis they pose a so-called threat to prevailing cultural and traditional values.
The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage there.
In the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft does not make the claim for gender equality using the same arguments or the same language that late 19th- and 20th century feminists later would.
"I've witnessed serious hypocrisy in spaces that claim to be for equality, but the True Colors Fund is the real deal.
The "equality" agenda, which aims to give Catholics firmer legal claims for equal treatment, will move ahead.
They try to wrap themselves in the cloak of warriors for equality, claiming the mantle of a new civil rights movement.
There is no suggestion that any law has been broken, but the claims will be particularly embarrassing for equality campaigners because low pay and poor conditions in the garment industry in south Asia disproportionately affect women.
Many people, for example, reject either the claim that equality is a communal good or that it is valuable at all.
The ruling, however, does not necessarily relieve the anxiety for landowners, said Scott Peterman, president of Upstate Citizens for Equality, a landowners group formed to oppose the claim.
