This is a revised post from my archive, updated with an afterword.
Everyone should be protected under the law. So a ruling by the US Supreme Court, that gay and transgender people are protected against employment discrimination, under the Civil Rights Act, was good news. Unfortunately, such extensions of legal protection aren’t always so well-received, at least not everywhere.
In Canada, for example, Bill C-16 sought protection, for some of society’s most at-risk individuals, against systemic or societal discrimination on the grounds of gender identity or expression. Sadly, Bill C-16 was widely misunderstood.
Critics often mischaracterized the legislation as compelled speech and—no thanks to the media—it was widely perceived as a free speech versus human rights issue. So to bring home the point in a way that should be accessible to virtually everyone, let’s reflect on some ancient moral wisdom. You may recall that the Golden Rule, as it has come to be known, instructs us to:
do unto others as we’d have others do unto us
Now, this isn’t a mere ideal for human decency. It’s perhaps, more fundamentally, the root from which we collectively derive our civility and the basis for any social contract to:
do no harm
This brings us to the bigger picture. There’s probably little agreement between current Pope Francis and myself, however, I share and support his surprisingly humanistic message that:
“the only future worth building includes everyone”
To that end, it’s important to build a more inclusive society, one that enables participation and fosters the contributions of all its members.
What stands in the way is, at least to my mind, one of the most frightening things in society. It's not climate change, terrorism or an unbalanced budget. It’s societal alienation and an ostracized individual's angst—perhaps most hauntingly captured in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Kicking people down, bullying, pointing fingers, US vs. THEM mentality, etc., only serves to push people apart and perilously close to the edge of society.
Now, I must admit, like most rational people I normally don't pay any attention to politicians but, after finding out about the deeply disturbing massacre in Colorado, I listened to then-President Obama’s speech addressing what happened. He delivered words that should benefit us all:
“anything to take away from this tragedy, it’s a reminder that life is very fragile, our time here is limited, and it is precious. What matters at the end of the day is not all the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives, ultimately it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another”
Anyway, I think the Golden Rule compels our humanity and, likewise, so do legal rulings like the Civil Rights Act and Bill C-16!
Be good, God bless and one love y’all (:
Afterword
It’s been several years since I posted this and I’ve returned to it now because, recently, there was a related controversy within the philosophy community. Anyway, I haven’t changed my mind about this issue. However, I’ll just add that I think there’s an important and meaningful distinction between sex and gender which is, rather surprisingly, frequently ignored or confused, even by professional philosophers.