> people are treated fairly and given equal opportunity regardless of who they are. I also agree with channeling most of our resources toward developing those who have shown to be exceptional

Mutually exclusive. When mother wolf feeds her strongest pup and ignores the weak pups she's ruthlessly discriminating and it is the best for the survival of their species. I work as a math and physics teacher and I discriminate between my students. I give extra more challenging assignments to my smartest students and I make time to help them in the evenings. As a result my students are winning National and International Olympiads, five years in row in math and 2 years in row in physics my students are making it to the National Olympiad teams. That's the result of my focus on the most promising students.
> with women being a part of our military and so many other things that were typically done by men of course it creates challenges. I'm not saying women shouldn't be in any particular line of work

Women absolutely should be discriminated against being in military for two main reasons.

1. Women are physically inferior to men. Women who pass physical tests do so by bare minimum. Let me explain. Let's say you have a physical test. For the sake of keeping it simple, let's say the passing score is 6. A lot of women will pass this test by doing 6 or 7, which is in itself is not really problem. The problem is what happens after, when they get in the military. These women are already at their physical peak and no matter how much they train, they will never get to 9-10. Meanwhile, many men who passed the initial screening with 6-7 will become bigger, stronger, faster. When I did my military service(mandatory in my country) I saw this with my own eyes. Many weak men that had no prior training whatsoever surpassed women, who were coming from military academies after years of education and training, within few months. By accepting women into military you are settling with physical mediocrity and giving up on those who potentially could reach much higher physical prowess.
2. Women drop out of military with much higher rate, most within five years. This is true, at least in my country, don't know how it is in US or other western countries. Main two reasons they give 1. they get married and 2. stress of the work. So, government spends 5 years feeding, training, educating women in military academies and most of them drop out of military within 5 years. That's huge waste of resources, negative ROI frankly speaking. Government should stop accepting women in military.

ps. I hope mods will allow this discussion to continue at least for couple of days and allow people to debate against my points.

Since my post isn't getting approved I will post it here.

I want to have a honest debate with you about equality of opportunity and discrimination as I believe almost everybody, including philosophers, gets it wrong or so my impression. My viewpoint: men(including women obviously) are not created equal and should be actively discriminated for or against for your own benefit or/and for the benefit of society.

1. Men are not created equal
   We have different genetics, height, brain size, health, talents and etc. etc.
2. Men exert different amount of effort with varying constancy in their pursuits. Self-evident and confirmed by observation in real world.
3. Therefore, even if everything else(circumstances usually out of control of the individual) is equal, outcomes will not be equal. This is the best outcome for everybody as we come to enjoy fruits of the most talented and hardworking(Michael Jordan, CR7...).
4. We have limited resources. Limited space, money, teachers... and even teachers have limited amount of time.
5. As we know that different individuals will produce different results we should invest our limited resources mainly into the most talented, hardworking and dependable people as they will yield the best results. Investing into average or mediocre people will give only mediocre results. Not only it's not useful, it's harmful as it diverts valuable resources from the most talented and hardworking people.

Basically this. This is just proof of concept, one might have more reasons to discriminate. I believe the idea that we shouldn't discriminate is very harmful. From my own life experience, quality of your life will be greatly determined by your ability to discriminate. You should try to keep smart, talented, hardworking, trustworthy people close to you and give no chance to people who lack those attributes. Real world agrees with me. Universities admit the best students, coaches accept to train only the most talented and dog breeders breed only the dogs with best qualities. But, I'm curious what you all have to say.