Fortunately the courts, which have been the best venue to reveal the bias at the root of anti-equality sentiment, may also offer the best route to confronting it.
But supporting women's issues can be a political liability, and politicians are quick to dismiss gender equality when public sentiment deems it inconvenient.
Democratisation has made one inalienable gain: equality of the sentiments.
Slogans and speeches calling for religious equality and anti-government sentiment were prevalent.
Bobby Kennedy may very well have embodied a sentiment of equality and social democracy that our people should be treated well.
The sentiment rejected was, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex".
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, shared that sentiment: "It's about equality, but it's not just about equality.
The blacks were prized goods and their worth soared as commodity-based booms in the New World overwhelmed the sentiments of liberty, equality and fraternity.
In the building's mixture of plain functionality and elaborate decoration you can feel the tension the place represents, trying to combine democratic sensibility and noble sentiments, principles of equality and high aspiration.
Louis Agassiz, a great 19th century scientist now in the US Hall of Fame, thought social equality between black and white a "practical impossibility" and intermarriage "a perversion of every natural sentiment".
Even when it comes to noble sentiments like democracy and equality, stock price counts for lots more than principle does, writes Allan Sloan.
