It is, therefore, not a word to connote inferiority or degradation but rather a relationship which belongs to God's intended order of things. Until the moment of Christ's final triumph, fallen creation is called upon to apply the art of interdependence in the sense of mutual service. This necessarily requires the existence and exercise of various roles and relationships. Because Scripture itself defines these roles and relationships, ample latitude must be reserved, also in the secular order, for the accommodation of these differences. There is, moreover, adequate power in governments to accommodate these differences at all levels, stoutly buttressed by federal and state bills of rights, and especially by the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process clauses as well as the Due Process of the Fifth Amendment, the Interstate Commerce clause, and a large body of statutes that have flowed from these constitutional guarantees.
Constitutional absolutes are dangerous in a free society.
This is an axiom of which well-meaning Christians, conscientiously committed to fairness and justice for all, are often innocently unaware, to their own and their neighbor's peril. Paradoxically enough, constitutional absolutism is not the only nemesis of free constitutional government. Where distinctions are based on real and reasonable differences for the purpose of allocating more equitably the benefits and burdens of the free society, they have uniformly been held by the courts to be not only permitted, but actually required, by considerations of due process and equal protection. We dissent from the implication that such differential treatment proceeds from patronizing and paternalistic indulgence. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the ERA contemplates the abolition of all distinctions, however humane their intention and effect, because the amendment proceeds from the assumption that a particular solicitude for women is inherently an insult to their humanity.