On Tuesday, the Supreme Court extracted the teeth from the Voting Rights Act, and on Wednesday, it proclaimed that gay Americans are equal to their fellow citizens in the eyes of the law.
So if they advocate some policy on the grounds that it conforms with what they take to be the correct principle of justice J, and the majority chooses a different policy on the grounds of an incompatible principle L, the democratic theory says that they ought to accept the policy that is grounded in L because only in this way do they accord the proper equal respect to their fellow citizens.
For a group of nearly 300 million human beings in this country the idea of being born "free and equal in dignity and rights" (UN Declaration of Human Rights) to their fellow countrymen is indeed unfathomable.
There are so few opportunities for poor people to get educated, to get out of poverty, to be treated as equals by their fellow citizens, to not be discriminated against on account of their race, colour or place in the society.
But how can they really when Europeans laws such as this Swiss law and the ban of the burqa in France make it so difficult for Muslims to even pretend to be equal citizens with their fellow Europeans?
Blanke, who Olusoga tells us, "may well have arrived in England in 1501, as part of the entourage of Catherine of Aragon", had earlier petitioned the king for a pay rise, demanding and receiving pay equal to his fellow trumpeters.
Mary Magdalene was extremely close to Jesus, and seemingly equal to her fellow disciples in stature.
ENDA therefore signals that LGBT Americans are not entitled to the same rights as our fellow Americans, not that we are equal to our fellow Americans.
The "Micromégas" story includes a character who observes that "One hundred thousand animals of our own species, wearing hats, are slaying an equal number of their fellow creatures who are wearing turbans".
Or, should a majority of cilantro-lovers be asked to forgo their purported values in order to allow their fellow buffet citizens equal taco access?
Worst of all, if I were in the Oklahoma National Guard, I would be reminded that my sacrifice was not equal to that of my fellow servicemembers, solely because I love a man and not a woman.
