The 14th amendment did not add rights, but it did contain language that on its face required that rights afforded to one class of Citizen must apply to all. Rights are afforded to the citizenry as a whole, not parceled out here and there. Certain rights reserved for for men and others while denied to women is profoundly antithetical to any notion of equal protection of the law.
Courts often err.
This court relied on a tortured rationalization in order to assert, as the Court did here, that the 14th Amendment meant that the equal protection of the law did not necessarily apply to any already existing inequality before the law, only to a hypothetical inequality that might be enacted in the future. In other words, at least SOME preexisting inequalities were 'grandfathered' in despite the Amendment making no such provision.
This is an obvious absurdity.
In other words, at least SOME preexisting inequalities were
‘grandfathered’ in despite the Amendment making no such provision.
That is a compelling way of putting it. But it is not absurd to be concerned over those who insist on traditions, no matter how strange they sound. Such as our last names being the father’s.
I’m forward thinking enough to think that Bristol Palin, for example, should have her last name hyphenated. She should be proud of the name, “Palin”. But what will her spouse think?