But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion, that men and women are legally clothed in the same civil and political powers. [emphasis added]28 All bodies may be considered equal, but their civil covering is not. With Roberts, the court appears to be confirming equality before the law based on the commonality of naked bodies, but it immediately delimits that universality by subsuming the biological body in the social body—or, more accurately, social ornamentation.
