What Is an Equality Union?
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For most of human history, we have gathered in tribes. We built our communities around the things that set us apart — our religions, our politics, our nations, our bloodlines. These bonds can give us purpose and belonging. But they also draw a line, and everyone on the far side of that line becomes a stranger.
There is another way to gather. Not around what divides us, but around the one truth that holds every living person inside it: you are my equal, and I am yours. This is the idea at the heart of an equality union, and it is the creed of the Temple of the Groovy Eye.
An Equality Union Is a Community Built on a Principle, Not an Identity
An equality union is a community bound together by a shared principle rather than a shared identity. Its members do not look alike. They come from different cultures, carry different histories, and live different lives. What unites them is not sameness — it is agreement on a single foundation: every person is created equal, and that equality is the sacred ground everything else is built upon.
Most organizations exist to win something. Businesses pursue profit. Parties pursue power. Advocacy groups pursue a cause. The Temple of the Groovy Eye exists for something larger and simpler — to declare, and live, the sacred truth of human equality, and the natural rights we were all born with.
Why Shared Values Bind Us Deeper Than Sameness
People who speak different languages and carry different pasts can still become family when they stand on the same ground. Shared values — fairness, honesty, compassion, mutual respect — give us a common language and a way through our disagreements without ever losing sight of one another.
This is the quiet genius of an egalitarian philosophy: it does not ask us to be the same. Groovy Eyes see that equality is not sameness. The diversity of our species is not a problem to be managed — it is an evolutionary achievement, a glorious crown. When we begin from mutual respect, our differences stop being walls and start being pathways to friendship and new understanding.
Equality Is the Foundation of Temple of the Groovy Eye
Temple of the Groovy Eye was built as an equality union around a single declaration:
“You are my equal. And I am yours.”
We call it our Declaration of Truth. It is the creed beneath everything we do — how we think, how we treat one another, how we meet the world. It insists that no person is born superior and no person is born inferior, and it asks us to build a culture upon that truth.
Not Your Grandfather’s Religion
If you wanted to call Temple of the Groovy Eye a religion, you would not be wrong — though it is a word we use sparingly, knowing the weight and the wounds it carries. We are not your grandfather’s religion. We gather around no god and promise no afterlife. We keep little hierarchy and have no interest in conformity.
What we hold sacred is here and now: this present moment, the person standing in front of you, and the equal dignity each of us was born with. We are not exclusionary. We call this our single religious duty. From this: all else. Keep your faith or bring none at all — equality is for everybody.
Belief Must Become Action
A philosophy that stays in the mind changes nothing. Equality dreamed is not equality lived. Our spoken language is the clothing of ideas. So we ask our members to step beyond agreement and into practice, speak the Declaration to those around you — because honor is an attractive force and will always inspire others.
Change rarely arrives all at once. It begins small and compounds: a conversation held with kindness, an act of inclusion, a creative work that makes someone think, marriage vows begun with the exchange, “You are my equal. And I am yours.” Membership in our egalitarian community is not a label you wear — it is the daily, ground-up work of building a world where the Big Lie of natural-born inferiority finds no foothold ever again. If we do this, it will work!
How to Participate in an Equality Union
An equality union is only as alive as the people inside it. There are several ways to add your voice to ours at the Temple of the Groovy Eye.
Become a Member and Connect Through Creative Expression
Join the community — it’s free — and connect through our Groovy Penpal Program, writing to others who share a commitment to human dignity. Contribute your art, essays, poetry, and stories to the Groovy Eye Journal — creative work is how a philosophy breathes, and how it reaches the people that argument alone never could. Join our Zoom gatherings slated to begin this summer.
Become Ordained
For those ready to carry the mission further, ordination is the next step. As an ordained member, you become TOGE clergy with the legal authority to officiate equality-based TOGE marriages — where individuals speak our Declaration of Truth before their vows. You can make equality real and public, the building block and stable foundation of every union you officiate.
A Home for Those Who Believe in Equality
If you believe equality should be the foundation of how we live, connect, and build, there is a place for you here. Join an equality organization founded on one unshakable truth, learn more about who we are, and help us raise a compassionate, honorable, equal world — one relationship at a time.
Equality is sacred. And it is our birthright. We are here to declare it.