Posted on 02/18/2020 5:58:55 AM PST by Kaslin
One immense reason for our present political entanglements -- would it be OK to say "messes"? -- is the lately acquired political habit of addressing every possible human problem through politics.
For instance, with regard to women's rights, the Equal Rights Amendment.
We don't as a nation affirm female entitlement to opportunities long gainsaid by social convention. If patient readers will indulge an unreformed Goldwater Republican, I can't wait until we hand the White House to an American Maggie Thatcher, female and conservative to the tips of her polished nails.
What's this business, then, about dusting off the failed Equal Rights Amendment from the '70s and welding it onto the Constitution? Why not? Are we against "equality of rights under the law... on account of sex," in the language of the amendment? Of course not: not if we all agree on the meaning of "equality of rights" and of "on account of sex." Which we manifestly don't: Witness our insoluble ruckuses over abortion, sexual "consent," and "diversity" in every possible form. Not to mention the meaning of "sex," that ancient term having given way in political usage to "gender."
All we need now, it seems to ERA promoters, is a new set of legal obligations to stew and fight over -- something else for the courts to decide, to the extent today's courts ever decide anything.
The ERA had been thought dead since 1982, Congress' last deadline for ratification. Ratification didn't come: in large measure due to the anti-ERA movement organized and propelled by the formidable Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly, a political pugilist if there ever was one, rounded up so many female opponents of ERA that it became respectable, or at any rate, non-dangerous, to oppose, on common-sense grounds, a proposal with unforeseeable effects.
Likely it was the #MeToo movement that resuscitated ERA after decades during which fewer and fewer seemed to care about it. Just days ago, the U.S. House voted 232-183 to remove the 1982 deadline for ratification, Virginia's new, Democratically controlled legislature having earlier said a loud "yes" to the amendment. "It's not just about women, it's about America," said noted speech-ripper-upper Nancy Pelosi.
The speaker has a point. It is about America and the ways Americans address the problems they face. Do they make new rules to fit whatever case or cause they may confront? Do they seek something like peace and unity, or do they just not care about such apparent trifles, winning being the whole point of the exercise?
Testimony to the need for fairness and procedural order has come, to the shock of some, from Madam Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RBG, whom no one ever mistook for a vassal of the male hierarchy, suggests that there is no power in government to extend the ratification deadline. Rather, backers of the amendment need to start over, she said. Maybe they'd win, and maybe not. In any event, they would be playing according to Hoyle, a point of immeasurable importance for seekers after consensus.
Hats off to RBG. Let the equal-rights-for-women debate, if there is to be such a debate, begin anew. And let us consider the circumstances and possibilities at stake, many of them unanticipated in the early '70s, when ERA gusts began sweeping state legislatures along.
What's the genuine need for ERA? Haven't we sufficient equal rights legislation on the books? What's an amendment going to do but gin up an infinite number of federal lawsuits that will drag through the courts for decades? In the '70s, we never imagined disputes over restroom use. What new issues would ERA license judges to semi-decide? Now that many Americans, male and female, assert the "right" to choose their own "identity," their own "gender," how does this play out in constitutional terms?
We are in deep water, are we not, over questions we never saw coming our way: questions to which no federal lawsuit suit can ever afford wise and widely accepted answers.
The ERA is cold and dead. Those who desire its alleged protections owe it to their country to show why we should afford it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I don't think they can, but if they want to give it a whirl, well, that's the American way.
I,for one,could enthusiastically...*very* enthusiastically...support a female Thatcher,a female Reagan or a female Trump as President.And I’d bet the shirt on my back that many,many of my fellow Freepers would as well.
The ERA was a bad idea then and a horrendously bad idea now.
The objections to it at the time are multiplied tenfold now.
I would hesitate to make any pronouncements that the ERA is cold and dead.
The Left has been cooking this resurrection attempt for 35 years. They are going to lay awake in bed all night, every night, thinking up new clever schemes to make an end-run and have the thing “deemed” to be passed.
Remain on guard.
We already have equal rights.
Kim Forde-Mazrui column: A liberal case against the Equal Rights Amendment
https://www.richmond.com/opinion/columnists/kim-forde-mazrui-column-a-liberal-case-against-the-equal/article_a6356b64-5862-528e-a73f-e900cccf4b8e.html
They’re arguing that the original amendment on congress-critter pay lets them resurrect it, despite the deadline in the original. And the states that have rescinded as well as passed it let them argue it is still “in work”.
Absolutely. Conservatives aren’t the people-sorters. Conservatives wouldn’t care if the best candidate was a gay one-eyed Albanian if their policies were pro-freedom and they were good at pushing them.
She, whomever she is, will have my vote as long as she meets the criteria you mentioned.
Commies need not apply.
Any proponent of this bride of Frankenstein proposal should state specifically what “right” it will safeguard that is not currently recognized.
It would be enlightening to know what the current goals of this amendment are before starting this travesty over again.
Well,I'm a conservative and I'd have no problem with one eye.I'd have no problem with an "Albanian" as long as I was convinced that he/she firmly refused to use the term "Albanian-American". IOW,no hyphenated Americans need apply IMO.
As for "gay"...that goes to the heart of character and,as a result,makes one unfit for any office of influence,including elected office.
Just sayin'...
You can’t extend a deadline after it’s come and gone, even RBG agrees.
Good luck restarting, this crap won’t pass 2/3s of Congress.
Pointless amendment (there is no government discrimination against women) which would only be license for some leftist judge to interpret it to mean the government has to pay for your tampons or have women’s college football teams and garbage like that.
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