Hailed as the guiding star of the modern-day human\nrights movement, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks of\n\u201cthe inherent dignity\u201d and \u201cequal and inalienable\nrights of all members of the human family,\u201d including \u201cthe equal rights of men\nand women.\u201d Tragically, as pointed out by Harvard Professor Mary Ann Glendon,\nthe UDHR is now being \u201ccompromised by the practice of reading its integrated\narticles as a string of essentially separate guarantees. Nations and interest\ngroups continue to use selected provisions as weapons or shields, wrenching\nthem out of context and ignoring the rest.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One such weapon hides behind the label of \u201cequality,\u201d as in portions of the mislabeled \u201cEquality Act\u201d and the misleading \u201cEqual Rights Amendment,\u201d and in some proposals for the UN Sustainable Development Goal of achieving \u201cgender equality.\u201d While it is urgent to protect the all-too-oft trammeled rights of women\u2014including, as enumerated in the UDHR, the right to live free from slavery, torture, and degrading treatment (articles 3-5), to own property (article 17), to receive equal pay for equal work (article 23), and to be educated (article 26)\u2014it is dangerous to undermine the most important of their \u201cequal and inalienable rights\u201d (preamble) by failing to recognize the God-given uniqueness of woman and man and of their marital union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The words \u201cequal and inalienable\u201d were inspired by language from the Declaration of Independence that \u201call men\nare created equal\u201d and \u201care endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable\nRights,\u201d echoing in turn the Creation account of Genesis: \u201cGod created man in\nhis own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he\nthem,\u201d with the woman described as \u201can help meet\u201d for man\u2014or, as in the updated\ntranslation of Richard Elliott Friedman, \u201ca strength corresponding to him.\u201d Men and women are created equal in\ndignity and strength but endowed with unique gifts. Only in their union,\naccording to Jewish tradition, do they become \u201ca perfect whole\u201d and thereby\n\u201cone complete human being.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This \u201ccomplementarity between man and woman,\u201d declared Pope Francis at the Humanum Conference, \u201clies at the foundation of marriage and the family\u2026. Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child\u2019s growth and emotional development\u2026. The family is an anthropological fact,\u201d and \u201cwe cannot qualify it with ideological concepts,\u201d for \u201cfamily is family\u201d and \u201chas a force of its own,\u201d being founded on \u201cthe union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for people, families, communities and societies.\u201d Therefore, he urged, \u201cwe must not fall into the trap of being limited by ideological concepts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His warning calls to mind the trap laid by the sirens inhabiting an island in Greek mythology who, with their irresistibly bewitching song, lured passing sailors to their death by shipwreck on the rocky coast. So enticing was their music, we are told, that Odysseus ordered his crew to bind him to the ship\u2019s mast lest he succumb. To avoid shipwreck today, we must resist the siren song that claims \u201cequality\u201d but denies the complementarity of man and woman, created equal in dignity and strength but endowed with unique gifts whose highest expression is in their marital union\u2014 \u201cunique, natural, fundamental and beautiful\u201d\u2014 to create what the UDHR recognizes as society\u2019s \u201cnatural and fundamental group unit,\u201d the family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To avoid shipwreck today, we must resist the siren song that claims \u201cequality\u201d but denies the complementarity of man and woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":20770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"To avoid shipwreck today, we must resist the siren song that claims \u201cequality\u201d but denies the complementarity of man and woman.","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"510"},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[510,805],"tags":[4089,427,4529],"class_list":["post-20540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-foreground","tag-equality-act","tag-marriage","tag-universal-declaration-of-human-rights"],"yoast_head":"\n