“Equality” never means identicality in the political context. It instead means equal value or equal worth.
That’s what we’re talking about. Requiring a religious day of rest every Friday, or every Saturday, or every Sunday, are indeed practices of equal worth. FGM is not of equal worth with those.
It means people are of equal worth. In liberal democracies you don’t have to show that any kind of behaviour is of worth before you do it, you have to show that is does no harm and has consent.
That’s what we’re talking about. Requiring a religious day of rest every Friday, or every Saturday, or every Sunday, are indeed practices of equal worth. FGM is not of equal worth with those.
It means people are of equal worth. In liberal democracies you don’t have to show that any kind of behaviour is of worth before you do it, you have to show that is does no harm and has consent.
That works until you start getting into details of exactly what constitutes “harm” and “consent”.
In the overwhelming majority of the cases the distinction is clear-cut; it’s just that the ones where it isn’t tend to be much more salient.
And those are precisely the type of cases that gradually cause attitudes to change.