STOP! Equal Rights Amendment

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I received this in the mail today. It is a flyer against the Equal Rights Amendment.

I can't believe how much support the anti-ERA people have. Everyone in my class was shocked that the ERA wasn't ratified before. Do they have a point?

ERA would require women to be equally assigned to all combat positions in the military (and to be drafted if Rep. Charles Rangel succeeds in his bill to reinstate the draft).

Well, it has been my long-held and poorly thought out belief that women should be included in the draft if the sexes are treated equally under the law.

ERA would legalize same-sex marriages.

Would it really? That would be awesome!

Don’t take a chance on ERA mischief – or on what activist judges can do to interpret ERA.

lol. This makes them sound like moronic conservatives.

 

[WildCat]

I can't believe how much support the anti-ERA people have.

Because it was redundant. The Constitution already applies equally to either sex.

Everyone in my class was shocked that the ERA wasn't ratified before. Do they have a point?

Do they not require you to learn about the Constitution in your state?

And whoever wrote that flyer was an idiot.

 

[mr rosewater]

Amendment 14, do women want rights above men?

 

[carlvs]

Because it was redundant. The Constitution already applies equally to either sex.

Quite right - just as we did not need to have the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments added because blacks were already mentioned in the Constitution...

 

[WildCat]

Quite right - just as we did not need to have the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments added because blacks were already mentioned in the Constitution...

Sadly, blacks weren't considered "people" by many at that point in our history. The same cannot be said of women today.

The ERA is a solution in search of a problem.

 

[skeptifem]

Sadly, blacks weren't considered "people" by many at that point in our history. The same cannot be said of women today.

evidence? oh wait, its pretty much impossible to prove that. I think you are incorrect though. i dont think its a coincidence that women are the victims of most violent crimes.

 

[WildCat]

evidence? oh wait, its pretty much impossible to prove that. I think you are incorrect though. i dont think its a coincidence that women are the victims of most violent crimes.

Non-sequitur.

 

[skeptifem]

Because it was redundant. The Constitution already applies equally to either sex.

i dont understand- are you saying there is no need for more laws to promote equality because there are a lot of things that arent equal as they are now.

 

[skeptifem]

Non-sequitur.

I dont think its fair to state an unverifiable opinion as a fact, especially when there are every day events that suggest the opposite. thats all i was trying to say.

 

[WildCat]

I dont think its fair to state an unverifiable opinion as a fact, especially when there are every day events that suggest the opposite. thats all i was trying to say.

We're talking about equal rights in the eyes of the law. Women have that, you showing evidence that some individuals feel different is not applicable.

 

[Alt+F4]

I received this in the mail today. It is a flyer against the Equal Rights Amendment.

You've had email since 1982....cool!

Seriously though, isn't this dead horse totally decayed?

 

[Dr Adequate]

Because it was redundant. The Constitution already applies equally to either sex.

The anti-ERA people have a lot of support ... because the ERA has no effect whatsoever?

What?

 

[Steven Howard]

The proposed Amendment in question is quite short:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

A lot of people now say that this is redundant, that the Fourteenth Amendment's "equal protection" clause applies to sex. For a century courts routinely held that this was not the case, but in 1971's Reed v. Reed the Supreme Court found that the section of Idaho's probate code giving men precedence over women in administering estates was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Let's take a quick look, though, at the most recent (to my recollection, anyway) sex discrimination case to reach the Supreme Court: United States v. Virginia, in which the court held that Virginia could not exclude women from the Virginia Military Institute.

Just looking at the end result -- Virginia lost -- might lead us to conclude that therefore the Fourteenth Amendment does prohibit sex discrimination on the part of the government. But reading further, we see that the court actually ruled that governments may discriminate solely on the basis of sex as long as they have a really good reason. (Or, in the actual words of the court, quoting from earlier opinions, an "exceedingly persuasive justification.") The court in this case didn't find Virginia's justification exceedingly persuasive -- persuasive maybe, but not exceedingly so. The court goes on to specify what sort of justification would be exceedingly persuasive: sex discrimination has to serve "important governmental objectives", and can't be based on "overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females."

All of which is perfectly reasonable, and I don't have a problem in principle with the court's decision, but it's important to note that the majority opinion explicitly points out that: "The heightened review standard our precedent establishes does not make sex a proscribed classification" (as race and national origin are).

The ERA, obviously, would make sex a proscribed classification. Whether that's a good or bad idea is a topic on which intelligent and reasonable persons may disagree, but it's just plain incorrect to say that the ERA would be redundant with the current interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Also, I can remember the campaign against the ERA, and their argument wasn't that the ERA would be redundant.

Their arguments were much more along the lines of the flyer in the OP. We can't have the Feds taking control away from the States--surely the States have a right to enact discriminatory laws. . . .

I remember reading a Phyllis Schlafly opinion piece about women in the military. She made an argument that somehow there was different morality between men and women--it's OK for men to kill, but not for women.

The ERA was not defeated because people thought it was legally innocuous or redundant.

 

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

Did you get an E-mail about the last episode of M*A*S*H too?

 

[Dancing David]

I would hope that they start the whole process over again. they should not just try to revieve the last amendment. Follow the rules. Saying that there should be no discrimination based upon gender needs to go through the whole process again.

The eagle Fdorum, isn't that Phyliss Schafley?

 

[brodski]

evidence? oh wait, its pretty much impossible to prove that. I think you are incorrect though. i dont think its a coincidence that women are the victims of most violent crimes.

Well the fact that they where only considered 3/5ths of a "person" for census purposes shows that each individual black American slave was not considered a "person" by the constitution. Although collectively I suppose they were considered "people", just a lesser form of person.

 

[brodski]

The anti-ERA people have a lot of support ... because the ERA has no effect whatsoever?

What?

Americans tend to be very protective of their constitution, taking a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach. Which seems reasonable to me, the whole point of “rights” being enshrined in a codified constitution is that it makes it difficult for eth majority to take away (or alter) the “rights” of others.

Only 27 amendments in almost 220 years, (one of which does nothing except repel another amendment and ten of which where passed simultaneously soon after the signing and are generally considered for all practical purposes to be part of the original document) - demonstrates just how seriously US citizens take changing their constitution.
Given this I can see plenty of people objecting to an amendment, and objecting very strongly, just on the grounds that it would have no effect whatsoever.