Until everyone has the same standing under the Constitution it means nothing. Ratify the ERA
Submitted by The Melinda on Sun, 2024-11-19 17:04.
Wording of the Equal Rights Amendment
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
At the beginning of the next session Senator Ted Kennedy will again introduce a 'start over' Equal Rights Amendment. He has reintroduced the bill every year. We can make it unnecessary for him to do it sooner than most Americans could believe. I am a Republican woman and while there are many points on which I have disagreed with Ted Kennedy on this we are of one mind.
Now that the 109th Congress is fated to fade into a distant nightmare and the 110th Congress will bring to Washington more women than have ever before served it is time to get serious about ratifying the ERA. Make no mistake, the Equal Rights Amendment has never been more essential not just to women but to the entire fabric of our society. Now, we all know the value of freedom because we came so close to losing it.
You may think that women and men are equal under the law. You are wrong; although the American people from both genders, every age group and part of the country overwhelmingly believe in equal rights for male and female citizens, still, the Constitution, the highest law in the land, contains no wording that extends fully equal citizens' rights to women. It should never have been necessary to specify that women are members of humanity, but it is because all past generations have failed to do the right thing. They left that to us.
Equality is nothing more than a provisional privilege conferred by legislation until the ERA, amending to the existing Constitution, is ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures.
A newly passed ERA was sent to the states from Congress in 1972 and everyone believed that it would be ratified by the required 38 states quickly but instead it became a political football linked to issues that have nothing to do with simple equality. Women like Phyllis Schlafly have made careers of opposing the equality that was promised to all Americans in 1776.
What happened instead was a series of laws that assert 'fairness', many passed on the state level. Women had struggled just to get the vote for 150 years and they compromised. That was a mistake.
Today women hang their trust that their rights are protected on privileges conferred by legislators – but each of these laws can be overturned through the actions of the Supreme Court; Without the clear and specific backing of the federal Constitution all laws improving women's rights and opportunities can be overturned. If you ever doubted the need for ratification the crew just booted from Congress should have demonstrated to you just how fragile these rights can be.
Consider the present make up of the Supreme Court; taking over the institutions of America was far too easy for the Bush NeoCon Administration. Who is to say it cannot happen again? We need to take action now to ensure the rights of women.
A few women continued to work tirelessly.
In 2000 a retired research psychologist in Central New Jersey, was asked to speak to a group of Girl Scouts on equality for women. Jennifer Macleod, the speaker, was still active in the local chapter of NOW she cofounded in 1969. She spoke to the troop and, enthused and ready for more, the girls asked for a project they could undertake related to the ERA. Jennifer, an expert in survey research, made up a short questionnaire and showed the girls how polling must be done to accurately reflect the opinions of those polled.
There were three questions. Jennifer expected the Girl Scouts, polling their classmates, teachers, and parents, to find a range of opinions on equality for women. Instead, they found close to unanimous support for the idea that all of us are born possessed of inherent rights, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence.
Buoyed by this knowledge, Jennifer and a group of associates raised the money to have a national survey professionally conducted in July 2001, among American adults all across the country. The findings? 96% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?"; 88% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?"; and, demonstrating a public lack of knowledge, 72% mistakenly answered "yes" to the question, "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" The results were similar for both men and women, and in all age groups, educational levels, regions of the country, racial categories, and household composition.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe the ERA has already been ratified. Let's make that a reality now.
Three State Strategy
The Constitution, in setting forth how amendments can be made, said NOTHING about any time limits -- although, as was the case for several amendments, a time limit can if desired be included in the body of a proposed amendment. The 1972 Congress, in passing the ERA -- which, fully intentionally, contains no mention of any time limit -- chose to attach a 7-year ratification time limit separate from the amendment itself. Then, when the 1979 Congress extended the time limit by 3 years, that set the precedent such that any Congress can legitimately vote to change such a time limit.
How could equality ever fail to be relevant? In an era when women are serving in the military in roles that expose them to combat the arguments that they are frail and must be protected fail to persuade Americans. It was not women's weaknesses that moved men to deny them their inherent rights, it was the habit of control.
In 1999 the ERA Campaign Network went to work to help obtain ratification in at least three more not-yet-ratified states.
Vigorous ratification drives are well underway in Illinois (which came very close to ratification in 2004), Florida and Missouri, with many of the other not-yet-ratified states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and Georgia are building support for their own ratification drives. Perhaps the legislators in three of these states now understand ust how important our rights are. Now that we have seen a Congress and President commit the treason of negating the 4th Amendment the time to be patient is over. Now we can demand action from Democrats and the Republicans who are now distancing themselves from the corrupt Bush Administration.
The states that are not yet ratified are:
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.
Contact the ERA Campaign Coordinators in the unratified states. They need help lobbying their legislators and money for building media campaigns. They are all veterans who have poured their lives into this issue. Help them so they can ensure the inherent rights of ALL Americans.
Your daughters and grand-daughters will be able to take their freedom for granted, and that is the best legacy anyone can have.
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Equal Rights
I would be significantly more interested in this issue had I not been divorced in 2004. Up until that time, I would have agreed that women had a disadvantage in the eyes of the law. Now I know the truth: it is men who are discriminated against.
In April of 2004, I lived in a 2800-square-foot home on a 2.3-acre country lot. I had investments, savings, a 401K, and two beautiful daughters whom I was very close to.
A year later, as a result of the divorce, I lived in an 800-square-foot rental home with a rent of $450 a month, had no investments, 401K, no interest in the marital home, and engage in creative bill-paying -- and still don't pay my bills on time. I have over $40K in debt. I earn a good living (my ex earns about $30K more than I do), but only take home about $24K. My beautiful daughters live 500 miles away because my abusive ex -- who was arrested for assaulting me and still obtained custody -- decided she didn't want to live near me any more.
All of this is possible because the law massively and unabashedly discriminates against men. I have had three attorneys in the last two years, one of them female, and all have told me outright that white men are discriminated against, and I should always expect the law to do so as long as women can vote.
You want me to care about equal right for women, fine, I have one caveat: women have to care about equal rights for men. If the law considers a man who assaults his wife to be a safety risk with respect to his children, then the same should be considered of women. If the law believes that gainfully-employed, well-to-do men should provide child support to their children to the point where they live in poverty, then the same should apply to women. If the law believes that a woman has the right to abscond with the children for any reason, then a man should have the same right.
Since women don't want equal rights under the present law, I see no reason why I should want equal rights for them.
All Humans are Created Equal
Okay, before this goes down the wrong rabbit hole before 20 reads and starts a flame war, let me just say that you both are right.
Humans have equal rights.
Nothing less, nothing more. It is just as bad to have the current judicial system still punishing men during divorce because women at one point had no other recourse as it is to not specifically spell out that woman have the same rights as men.
Both activities of justice should be supported, so Dakota, please post a link to an organization(s) that tries to solve the inequalities of the divorce system, so they can get some exposure too.
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My personal preference would be a Constitutional Amendment stipulating that all references in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc., to he, she, man, men, and all other variations, are references to anyone in the species "human," and as such all humans are created equal.
My two cents, now please play nice,
MJ
Why now giving women their rights created injustice for all
When any of us allow the dispassionate understanding of individual rights to be subverted in the pursuit of advantage then it is wrong. The system under which we live is a mine field of statutes. (I do not call them laws because Law is a term that properly refers to something like the speed of light.)
Flame wars on issues that use personal examples are incendiary, sad, and not to the point. What that commenter is saying is that because one female wronged him he will not help someone else who happens to be female. Your choice, but short sighted since, presumably, you do not expect some other female to make restitution to you for your asserted losses.
The present system of law is used by the least ethical to their advantage. It also generates a huge profit for the attorneys, courts, and other professionals who benefit when there is conflict. Notice who it was who created the system. Most legislators are white males and they are the ones who voted for the statutes under which you sufferings took place.
Man or women, it does not matter because as Libertarians we are seeking solutions that are not based in state or federal law but allow individuals to make their own agreements. I refer you to such alternatives as Stephen Safranek's True Marriage approach which allows individuals to write their own well thought out, community supported, and mutually beneficial marriage contracts.
If legislatures were never allowed to write law that truncated the inherent rights of women then they might not have become used to using statutes to tinker with our lives. But as it is even Libertarians accept the bizarre idea that it is alright to pass laws that modify what the individual can do. In California married women did not get the right to control their own earnings until 1953. Marital rape was not a crime until the 1980s. If you accept injustice when it harms others then why do your expect outrage when you are impacted? All legislation used to mandate how we live our lives is just plain wrong. But this is the world sent in motion when the rights of women were ignored and legislation was used to mandate what privileges they would be permitted.
I wish that had never happened. Then the brilliance of women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and countless others could have been used in other arenas. Or reformers like Parker Pillsbury could have spent his life involved in business instead of working first for Abolition and then for Suffrage. But that is not what happened. You have to start from where you are.
What happened instead was that ten generations of women struggled to achieve the vote. In that time legislatures, and I agree with Mark Twain that no one is safe while the legislature is in session, have busily been carving up the autonomy of our rights to create avenues for their own profit.
Who had taught them by example that the appropriate tool was statute? You are talking about people who did not even possess the right to vote or own property, remember.
How many Libertarians understand what it took in committment to achieve for women a place in the world of business? It did not happen automatically. Women who struggled to get an education were eager and happy to have jobs that paid 1/3 what a man with the same education would earn. That is why they could have a job at all in the mid 1800s. It was a quiet revolution that took place because they kept at it. Marriage was nothing less than serfdom for a woman. Some few women were able to marry men who understood and respected the inherent rights ignored by the State. This is an example.
May 1st Text from Lucy Stone Marriage: The following was signed by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell prior to their May 1, 2024 marriage. The Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who performed the marriage, not only read the statement at the ceremony, but also distributed it to other ministers as a model that he urged other couples to follow.
While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband:
1. The custody of the wife's person.
2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.
3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots.
4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.
5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband.
6. Finally, against the whole system by which "the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage," so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property.
We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power...
My name is Melinda Pillsbury-Foster because I took the names of two lines of my family who put doing the right thing for future generations over their own immediate self interest. Benjamin L. Pillsbury, my great-great-grandfather and his wife Mary Jane Sargent, used their homestead in New Hampshire as a stop on the Underground Railroad. That was an actionable offense. They ran the first high school and Benjamin was superintendent. The school educated both girls and boys. Their son, Harlin, married Harriet Foster, from Andover, Mass., with a similar agreement to the one above. Harriet was one of the first women physicians in the United States, graduating from the Women's Infirmary of NY in 1880. She ran clinics for women in California, educating on such subjects as birth control. That could get you jailed. too, back then.
After the long, hard march towards freedom women learned the lessons that were taught them both by those who opposed their struggle for their proper rights and those who failed to stand up for the principle that they possessed those rights. They used legislation to simulate affirmation of the inherent rights denied them because THAT was possible.
None of it is our fault but it remains for us to decide what happens now. Ratify the ERA; rescind all legislation that intrudes on peaceful, individual action. Until we are all free no one is.
The Melinda
Legislation Is Never the Answer
Melinda, I respect that until fifty or so years ago, women really were (at best) second-class citizens in the eyes of law and society both. I respect that it took a great deal of effort and sacrifice to change this. I also respect that you personally -- and libertarian women in general -- have as a goal that every individual be judged on their own merits regardless of group affiliation: even when that affiliation is something as intrinsic as gender.
My point is that libertarian women (and libertarian men, for that matter) are an extraordinary minority. The overwhelming majority of women are disinterested in equality, but are instead concerned with maximizing benefit to themselves under the law.
Were all other points of law equal, I would whole-heartedly be interested in an ERA, assuming it did nothing more than explicitly guarantee Constitutional protection to all individuals. However, considering how the law presently stands, any changes to the Constitution could only result in further discrimination against men.
I mean let's face facts: most of the vocal supporters of the ERA aren't interested in equal rights: they're interested in more rights under the law.
Women don't need more rights under the present law to be equal to men. They need dramatically fewer rights.
While I agree that esoterically, as a human being, men and women have equal rights (i.e. the freedom to do anything they wish provided that it not initiate force against any other individual), the present system of law impoverishes men in favor of women.
In my opinion, it's always best to strike at the root of the problem, and the root in this case is quite simple: remove government entirely from the marriage business. Allow religious marriages to fall under the 1st Amendment -- in which case, government clearly has no business in it at all. Other marriages can be handled by personal contract not requiring government intervention except to ensure the terms of the contract are upheld by both parties.
In such a circumstance, I would be in favor of an ERA -- again, provided that it only state that Constitutional protection not exclude any gender. Under the present system, I simply can't back an ERA. It would only encourage more discrimination against men.
I don't mean to be condescending, Melinda, but I suspect that your gender may blind you to just how bad it is for men (and their children), particularly in divorce. I certainly wouldn't have believed it had I not been through a divorce myself. Since then, I've done a lot of comparing of notes with other divorced men and discovered that my experience is by no means unique -- and furthermore, I have the testimony of three attornies who stated outright that the law explicitly discriminates against men, so I better get used to it.
The present system is horribly discriminatory. Until that's changed, any additional legislation at any level -- including an ERA -- will simply be used as an opportunity for further discrimination.
Want me to support an ERA? Fine: get rid of the current discrimination and I'll be happy to.
What you do does not matter.
Dakota, you are coming from the viewpoint that what you do matters. It doesn't. If you do not support the ERA that will not impact its ratification. Ratification is going to happen. Eliminating the precedent that government can use legislation to modify and limit our rights was wrong in 1787;it is wrong today. For the last several years I have worked to point out the logical fallacy to women who, when they saw it understood perfectly well. But they had to 'get it.' None of them thought using the State to exact privileges was more important than their inherent rights.
Ths issue is the universal nature of our rights and demonstrating that truth for all people. Given what you demonstrate through words about your character and values I am not surprised you expect to be 'paid off' for just doing the right thing.
The only thing you are accomplishing is defining yourself as someone who sits on his rear unless he is personally benefited immediately. Short sighted of you, like most of the nonparticipants of the original Revolution. The reason the DAR is incredibly picky about documentation is that EVERYONE afterwards would have liked to have been a supporter. That was also the reason Parker Pillsbury wrote, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles. None of those wanna bes in my family. We did the time.
Since, clearly, you became a Libertarian to burnish your own bottom line, so to speak, then you are not about freedom, you just want to benefit if benefits are to be had. That is not an argument that anyone need respect; the world is well supplied with that kind of 'Libertarian activist.' Regrettably,many Libertarians have managed to marginalize themselves politically in just this way. By not leading from the moral high ground you send a message all people understand. Frankly, I do not waste time on people who are not about freedom for everyone. But I remember who those people are. Never trust them in a real fight - and they try to write their names in afterwards. The Melinda
Kate and Ray - A short story
Dakota,
I ran across this, and thought of you.
Kate and Ray - A short story
I'm hoping your situation never gets this bad.
Best Regards,
MJ
Selective Service
Being the proud father of 2 teenage boys I have been forced to examine the practice of "legislated discrimination" against my sons. I've always taught my children that men and women are equals but it appears that this is not the truth. My son turned 18 on Jan 18th just rec'd his form for the Selective Service. It has never made sense to me why women fight for equal rights but never mention the Selective Service laws in our country.
The penality for young men not registering within 90 days of their 18th birthday is $250,000 and a 5 year jail sentence, the inability to obtain federal aid for education, obtain a drivers permit or hold a federal job. Are 18 year old females put in this position? Perhpaps Ted K. would like to put this issue into his legislation for equal rights for US citizens.
I would love to hear a feminist point of view on this issue.