In February, a federal judge ruled the requirement for US males aged 18-25 to sign up with the Selective Service — thus making only males, and not females, eligible for a military draft — is unconstitutional.

On some level, this may seem like an entertaining comeuppance or schadenfreude to activists who have been demanding “equality” for women (including conversations within the military), just like gender-neutral PT tests in the military (which, if held to a traditional standard, might actually exclude many women if treated on an “equal” basis).

But it should not be celebrated.

This is yet another way in which the US society — at least, those who would impose their will upon it — has attempted to eliminate the distinctions between males and females. That is a tragedy. A woman should no more be thought of as the “same” as a man than a proctologist should be thought of as the “same” as a gynecologist.

Men are men, and women are women, and men and women are different (something even the military acknowledges and activists ignore when it is convenient). For now, in most places men and women can still be treated differently — legally — because they are different. Yes, that is discrimination. And it is discrimination most of society wants and values. It’s the same discrimination that would treat a male differently than a female were he to be found in a girls’ high school locker room.

From Mike Whitehead, a former Army JAG and general counsel for the Missouri Baptist Convention [emphasis added]:

The American culture has long “valued women for their special roles in society but has not historically compelled them to fight our wars,” Whitehead said. “Treating women differently in ways they are different is not invidious discrimination. Myopic views of sexual equality above all else lose sight of other cultural values we should fight to preserve.”

From R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary [emphasis added]:

…the Christian worldview is that the genders are equal — equally made in the image of God.

“But equal does not mean same, and when it comes to male and female, it also means different,” he said. “That is why a biblical understanding of the relationship between men and women and the proper roles of men and women is described as complementarianism — complementary roles when you look at men and at women, not sameness.”

This is also a warning to those who insist on making “pragmatic” arguments against moral changes (or to try to prove a point, as Duncan Hunter did with his proposal to add women to the draft). When one opposes a social change on, for example, a logistical basis — and then those logistics are overcome — it is no longer possible to defend against the change.

If one makes the argument based on the privacy of bathroom facilities, then the opposition is based on construction, not the actual moral issue.

Thus, moral arguments should be made for moral issues, regardless of practical, pragmatic, or logistical impacts.

There is a moral order, and its very fiber is weakened when men and women are assumed to be, and treated as, completely the same. This has nothing to do with value, as both men and women have equal, intrinsic, God-given value. It has everything to do with defending that value.

(Law professor Margaret Tarkington previously proposed that a draft including women might actually violate religious liberty.)

Contrary to some beliefs, it demeans the value of both men and women to prevent people from treating them as distinctly men and women.

As previously discussed by Richard Land, prior president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.  Also see the comments by the then-Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen Robert Barrow.  More at the Stars and Stripes and the Christian Post.