Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Respecting the individual freedom of sexual orientation as a sacred right of each human being still leaves us with two questions, the first of them being the necessity of moral choice between two (or more) groups or individuals. ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ (I am quoting from Animal Farm, a dystopian novel by George Orwell, just in case), and so the question emerges what ‘animals’ must be seen as ‘more equal’ in the brave new world of today. You cannot easily respect the rights of each minority because members of different minorities disagree on most essential matters. A sheep normally disapproves of dietitian habits of a wolf; a wolf doesn’t want to peacefully graze on a lawn. You probably would recommend to keep the two species apart, ‘to live and let others live,’ to give Jedem das Seine (which is the literal German translation of Latin suum cuique, meaning ‘to each his own’)—and to be happy with it. It doesn’t work this way because human society is made of persons interacting with each other, not self-sufficient individuals. We ‘do not live alone,’ to quote again from J. B. Priestley, and we still need each other. We cannot arrange our hair by ourselves, not any more, we need a hair stylist for that—what if the hair stylist refuses to do our hair for our wedding because it is a homosexual wedding the very thought of which is almost revolting to him who is a regular church attender? We cannot educate our children at home: firstly, because we don’t possess substantial knowledge on all school subjects; secondly, because we as parents are a very poor substitute of classmates for our children. But then, our right to give our children essential knowledge on the diversity of genders clearly violates the right of religious minorities to give no such knowledge to their children. And the other way around, our right to teach catechism to our children obviously transgresses the right of atheistic minorities to keep their children as far away from any religion as possible. Imagine that you, as a school principal, only have means to employ one new teacher, thus attending to the needs of only one minority and completely ignoring the others—maybe even insulting them. What would be your choice in this imaginary situation? What group of your students would you see as ‘more equal’ among other equals?