Reply to objection: For informal interaction, the relevant criteria for selection may include brute attraction on any basis. For some forms of interaction, the only relevant criterion is brute attraction on any basis. For such basically merit-free interactions, universal formal equality of opportunity still plays a regulatory role. The role consists of ruling out as inappropriate brute attraction on discriminatory grounds. The way you wear your hat, the way you sing off-key, and virtually anything else may render you eligible for someone's affection, but not your skin color, your race, your ethnic background, your social or economic status, and so on. Notice that statistical discrimination is not per se objectionable from the standpoint of formal equality of opportunity, and this holds for the wider extensions of equal opportunity as well. So selecting a friend in part on the basis of accurate stereotypes (not prejudices) about the traits of members of her salient social group, that may be predictive of likely successful and fruitful friendship, does not per se violate formal universal equality of opportunity. However, if someone's group membership traits are predictive of successful friendship with me because I have a brute or prejudiced aversion to members of certain salient social groups, hooking together for interaction on that basis offends against that wide equal opportunity norm. To sum up: Formal universal equality of opportunity is not inherently inappropriate for the assessment of people's engagement in personal and private and intimate interaction. Moreover, the norm would have substantive content in this application, and restrain the types of interaction formation in which people engage. The ideal is essentially the ideal of a social world in which people lack irrational prejudice and animus against members of other groups, and this ideal is just as attractive in private as in public settings. Just as it would be morally wrong for me to decline to write a letter of recommendation for someone for a job because I harbor hostility to his racial makeup, it would be morally wrong for me to decline an offer of friendship from the same person just from aversion to his racial makeup.