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Equality is: Everyone having to abide by the same rules, and not getting any special treatment based on race, religion, SEX, age, or sexual preference. Or that's what I would say it means. But there is no such thing as equality, People are treated differently based on these facts...Sorry, I'll leave now sweatdrop ...

Pushing reality aside? Please elaborate.

I disagree; if you have ever read A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murry (the main character) goes to a planet called Camazots, where every single house is white, has a green lawn and a widow box, and a little white fence. The boys bounce balls all in rhythm, and the girls skip rope. The ropes all slap the ground in unison.
When she confronts the leader of the place, known simply as 'IT', she recites that section of the Declaration of Independence to keep her mind focused so that IT doesn't take over her brain. When she says that all men are created equal, IT siezes upon the sentence in triumph. IT claims that IT has realized the ideal; that all men are created equal on Camazotz. That all men are the same, the true equality.

Meg wavers, unsure, then realizes. Equal is different from the same. Secure in that conviction, she repels IT, and the story continues.

I think that the previous section of the story illustrated my point perfectly. 3nodding

But we can still strive for it, can't we? If we abandon all attempts at equality, everyone loses. And the more we practice, the closer we can come to that complete judgement, though I think you're right; we can't acheive such a thing. Personally, I wouldn't want to.

Most people are born equal. All of us have some great potential straight from the womb. However, from that moment on such potential is either facilitated or hindered by the enviornment into which we find ourselves born. Economic constraints limit our access to education and adequate learning tools. Social conditions create bias for another social and cultural groups outside of our own. The part of the world we are born in shapes our ideals and our goals.

Some of us are not born equal. There are babies born with drug addictions, brain damage, genetic conditions...all of these set them apart from the rest of the population. Equality is nothing more than an ideal stating that we should all deserve the same treatment...but all of us do not recieve equal treatment. For example, gender influences the course of our lives more than any other force. Women today still recieve, on average, less money than men and occupy less of the work force. While this is beginning to level out, the gap remains. The idea that women need to stay home with children and be homemakers, while outmoded, still clings to our views regardless of how many times we claim that it does not.

In terms of sexuality, it is still more acceptable for men to have had multiple partners than for a woman to sleep around. The terminology differs. A man that beds many women is a stud, but a woman that beds many men is a whore. Even in our mondern society, such titles persist and such labels remain as a testament to just how 'equal' everyone is. Slang terms for those different dominate our speech. We as humans seek for a way to put others below us. Slavery is a prime example. Not just the enslavement of African-Americans either, but slavery as a concept dating back to the Phonecians. We as humans always attempt to be the best, to come out on top. There can be no equality because not everyone can sit at the top of the mountain. So we play king of the hill on a social, cultural, and spiritual scale. Every group finds a way to slander another, to bring them that much farther down.

Equality is a farce. A pretty ideal and nothing more. It's almost laughable how tightly we cling to this ideal in modern society. We justify and convince ourselves that we are equal. It helps us sleep at night. So we will go on purporting this equality while behind the scenes and in the dark corners of our minds we will continue to classify and categorize everyone we meet, taking note on just how different they are from ourselves and secretly, subconciously, finding reasons to be better than that.

The strive for equality is equally painful. If you have ever read the story Harrison Bergeron you would understand what I mean. In that story the government tries to make all people equal. The strong were equipped with more weight, the intellegent weren't allowed to think. etc. That story shows how any full strive for equallity is bad, because even though it can help a large group of people, it doesn't justify the destruction of the opposing factor. Here is a link to the story. http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Equality is impossible to obtain due to the simple fact of human nature. We are never satisfied and are always looking for an excuse to have more and and the words not fair are so general as to encompass anything.