In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville warned that it would be the tendency of a democratic people to drift toward egalitarianism even to the point of making the sexes not only equal, but alike—and this is exactly what is happening with the issue of women in the military. It’s not about treating women equally, but about treating men and women as if they’re the same.

“One can easily conceive that in thus striving to equalize one sex with the other,” Tocqueville wrote, “one degrades them both; and that from this coarse mixture of nature’s works, only weak men and disreputable women can ever emerge.”

By transfiguring women into men and vice versa, we are corrupting both. Men won’t be challenged to be at their best because they will be expected to be something they’re not, and women the same. We are at our finest as human beings when we are true to who we are, to the identities we have been given by our Creator. Part of that identity is being a man or a woman and respecting the power and strength of each within our particular context.

The dog who is forever trying to be a cat, and the cat who longs to be a dog, is in denial of nature and chasing an illusion that only leads to frustration, defeat, and despair. How is that an improvement for society?