It resteth not, neither on the sabbath nor holy days, but toileth all the hours that the Lord may send, by the light of the guttering candle and in the heat of the midday sun, in the rising tide of floodwater, and over the parched earth of a summer's drought. It sleutheth and it slaveth when other, lesser folk slumber in their beds or tan beneath azure skies. It beith the Equality Authority, and its watch knoweth neither hour nor season.
Last Sunday, the Sunday Independent lampooned the Equality Council's fining Ryanair u8,000 for its advertisement looking for a young dynamic professional. That very day, the Equality Council issued a stern rebuke to the journalist responsible, Brendan O'Connor, for his impertinence. For the Equality Council snaps up the Sunday newspapers on Saturday night, still warmly glowing from the press's inky kiss, eagerly searching for a pretext to be offended; and of course it inevitably is, just as prudes will invariably find indecency on a blank wall or deep on the darkest ocean bed.
So now we know: the Equality Council casts its censorious, busybody eyes, not just over advertisements looking for evidence that the risible new god of egalitarianism is not being worshipped with sufficient zeal, but it also trawls through editorial copy, looking for signs of theological dissent from the new state creed: egalitarianism.
Egalitarian priesthood
Egalitarianism is like any other religion, and its officers like any priests. Its existence depends not on evidence of the mind, but on blind faith, and its priests invoke higher, divine authority to justify their actions. Logic and common-sense do not apply to the creed of egalitarianism, any more than they do to notions such as transubstantiation or divine grace. So for the adherents of equality, the existence of a vast body of evidence proving the profound error of their beliefs is simply irrelevant.
How are two people "equal"? What does the term mean? In every single feature of our lives, we set about proving how unequal we all are. Careers are the very definition of inequality. We do not expect equal skills from a gardener or a gynaecologist; when our electrical wiring goes, we not call in our solicitor to fix it. And when we want a person with a particular skill or quality, it makes sense to specify that in any advertisement we take out.
Ideal advertisement
"Wanted: A Person To Do A Job," might stand as the Equality Council's ideal advertisement when the advertiser is actually looking for a blonde laptop dancer with big breasts - but that's because it won't have to process the applications from a retired schoolmistress in Kingstown, a toothless street-sweeper in Birr, or a 20-stone bricklayer with a builder's bum you could park a wheelbarrow in, and thousands of others.
So: why should Ryanair not ask for a young dynamic professional, in seeking a particular employee? Is it wrong to insist that the person is dynamic? What about us sloths? Are we not being discriminated against here? And the term professional - does it not discriminate against those of us who are resolutely and determinedly unprofessional? But of course, the egalitarian agenda does not oppose discrimination against those qualities, but solely on grounds of age, sex and race, as if the three were related.
They are not of course. I would no more expect Ryanair to employ me as cabin crew than I would expect Nasa to nominate me for space travel. Why? Age. Nor would I expect my application to join the Poor Clares to be warmly received. Why? Sex. But I would expect a black man's application to join the Garda Siochana, the Army, the civil service or this newspaper to be treated identically to that of a white person, because we consider his race is irrelevant.
Discrimination
Is it? It's not actually. I wouldn't want to be a black garda on duty in Kilbarrack. Why? Because of the abuse I'd get. Should we appease racists? No, absolutely not. Why not? Most of all, because we regard discrimination on grounds of race an abomination: and most of us - including myself - do so, not because of clear logic, but as a matter of faith. Logically, it might make sense not to make the enforcement of law and order in Kilbarrack more problematical by employing black gardai there. But as a matter of principle, I prefer to have those problems rather than discriminate against black people. Is that logical? No. Matter of faith? Yes.
But is faith invariably right? Is it so very wrong to discriminate against a Swede who wants to be a waiter in an ethnic Ethiopian restaurant? Is it wrong for the Dance Theatre of Harlem to choose only black dancers? Is it wrong for a regiment of Ghurkas to insist on Nepalese mountain-men only? Is it wrong for New Zealand Maoris to have their own rugby team? Maybe these are the exceptions which prove the rule. For the most part, you're not naturally disqualified from a job because of your race (though a black garda might have trouble operating undercover in Kilbarrack).
But you are by sex and you are by age. It is idiocy to maintain that women-soldiers can be fully integrated into combat units of armies, or that the middle aged have the stamina of the young. Only the inquisitional dogma of the new state church of egalitarianism, unsustained by logic or by evidence, but enforced by a grim and unsmiling priesthood with apparently arbitrary legal powers, insists otherwise.
Bah.