Seasons of Grace
In a relativistic, anything-goes and anything-means-anything culture, the demand for gender equality is increasingly strident.
First to clarify: As a woman, I believe fiercely in gender equity. That is, I believe that a woman who performs a job should receive the same wage as a man who performs the same job. (This concept must be more clearly explained to the current occupant of the White House, who recently declared “Equal Pay Day” although the Obama Administration pays its male workers 13.26% more than their female counterparts.)
But gender equality—the undemonstrable conviction that men and women are interchangeable, that there is no essential difference between the sexes?
I was a witness to the folly of this philosophy when our second child was born and I found myself raising one of each: a fanciful, doll-hugging, hair ribbon-loving, pretty-in-pink little girl, and an instrumental, car-driving, gun-playing, fortress-building little boy. Any mother can answer confidently along with me: No, males and females are not the same.
The quest for gender equality, like the idea that one’s sexuality is chosen and not given at birth, sees its dénouement in ill-conceived goals like women in combat, multi-sex restrooms and, most recently at some 36 leftist institutions of higher education like Brown University, the radical expansion of benefits offered as part of student health insurance plans to include sex-change operations.
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But there is more: Two new fronts opened this week in the ongoing gender wars.
First is the victory of Spain’s men who will now, after an appeal in that nation’s Central Dispute Tribunal Court 11, be granted breast-feeding leave from their jobs. The presiding judge ruled that under Spain’s Equality Law and Act 48.1 of the Public Service Statute, which were designed to balance the needs of work and family life, breastfeeding permission was “not exclusive to mothers” and applied to “both parents”. The case was brought by a new father who argued successfully that he should be permitted to share his wife’s leave of absence after she, a working judge, used only two weeks of her paid leave and he was denied the right to use the remaining three weeks.
And then there is the Washington Post, where guest columnist Jennifer Bryson called for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services to credential nuns to serve as U.S. military chaplains. No matter that nuns cannot celebrate Mass, convect the Eucharist, hear confessions, perform marriages, or anoint the dying; in Bryson’s estimation, nuns serve Christ with “radical commitment” and could help ease the current shortage of Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military.
As the trend advances, it seems only a matter of time until someone sues God for denying men the privilege of giving birth to a child….
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