Equal protection for people has to exist in a context. All people are free to swim so therefore blocking your access to your house by a channel is fine because you can swim to it.
Blocking access (or just ground access) to my house but not other people's wouldn't seem to be equal treatment. Blocking such access to everyone's house would be unjust, and ridiculous, and maybe impossible, all of which in many ways might be more important points that equal treatment, but it would be equal.
The Final Solutions are fine if one doesn't care about the human cost.
I wasn't saying that the human cost doesn't matter or should not be considered, only that it wasn't the issue under debate. Its entirely reasonable to decide that a policy is equal, but creates or allows for an unconscionable human cost, so the policy shouldn't and won't be followed.
I'm not downplaying or ignoring human costs. In many cases they may be the most important concern, and I wouldn't argue otherwise.
When you making the big final decision on the actual policy issues, considering human costs is fine, and usually expected. If the issue is "Should desperately poor people be allowed to beg" (or "should they receive public benefits?" or whatever), then you need to consider human costs.
But if the issue is whether its a violation of equal treatment under the law, then those human costs are mostly irrelevant. Irrelevant does not mean unimportant. A point that has no relevance to a specific technical question may be much more important than the question. My point isn't that its less important, or even that it isn't more important, or much more important. My only point is that it doesn't settle the specific question. If its much more important, then a reasonable response might be "how cares about that question, this other issue is far more important, why don't you pay attention to it?". But "This other irrelevant issue is much more important, therefore your wrong about the issue in question", isn't a reasonable response. |
