The text of the Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress in 1972 and debated/ratified/rejected by the individual States over the next ten years read as follows:
Equal Rights Amendment
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
The 1972 proposal is a slightly reworded statement dating back to 1923, when it read:
Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.
In every year from 1943 through 1972, the same Equal Rights Amendment was proposed to Congress (with the bureaucratic apparatus of Sections 2 and 3 being added at some point); it was passed by Congress only in 1972. In 1943, the wording of the amendment was:
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
You caught that? Let me make it even more obvious:
1943: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
1972: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Imma leave this here.
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The subject is women, Relief Society, the Equal Rights Amendment, and very tightly aligned topics. General complaints/gloating about the election/candidates and any other derailing of the purpose of this post will be deleted.
The only difference I’m seeing here is Correlation.
Imma follow that up with this:
“The cry which we now offer up is the cry of the ages. It is the protest of the few against the many, the argument of thought against bigotry. To-day the world is correcting the active wrongs of the last century, and is making recompense to the demon of intolerance, by being blind and deaf to the oppressed of to-day. The wonder which men feel now that their ancestors could have been so intolerant will be felt a generation hence by their sons regarding these same men.”
Emily S. Richards to the annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Washington DC, January 1889.
Wow, that’s rather stunning, given the opposition in later years.
Correlation.
Thank you for this post. It makes me feel good about us, which was exactly what I needed.
Sigh. What a difference thirty years makes…
I don’t remember reading about this gem before now, but I appreciate it and it doesn’t surprise me. Years ago I was marooned for several days with a library of old Relief Society Magazines, some going back to the 1920s. I was surprised at how many of the articles were feminist in nature.
A few weeks ago I finished reading Dave Hall’s biography of Amy Brown Lyman, A Faded Legacy: Amy Brown Lyman and Mormon Women’s Activism,1872-1959. I don’t think he mentioned the ERA. Amy and her contemporaries were remarkable women.
Extraordinary.
1895 Utah Constitution (Article 4, Section1):
That provision remains unmodified, and is remarkably similar to the proposed federal amendments. Utah’s constitutional equal rights provision has been around for 120+ years without producing all the scary things we were promised would result from the ERA.
The original 1895 constitution also had this interesting section (Article XXII, Section 2):
Art. XXII, Sec. 2 can be summed up as the Women Are People Too clause.
Or
My Husband and I are Not a Single Organism.
I love Amy Brown Lyman. Her statue should represent Utah in the National Capitol, not the inventor of TV who lived only a short time in Utah.
One difference between 1943 and 1972: In 1972, the state of Maryland passed the first law specifying that married couples have to made up of people of different sexes. Imagine being some way ahead of his time lobbyist trying to get that law passed in 1943; you would have a hard time even being understood. “You’re saying that when a couple marries, the man has to be a man, and the woman has to be a woman? You want to outlaw hen-pecked husbands and domineering wives?”
Also in that year, 1972, the US Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Minnesota had not violated the rights of two men who wanted to marry each other but were not allowed a license by a court clerk. No such cases were on the horizon in 1943.
Not seeing what that has to do with equal rights for women …
Perhaps John is saying that if you forget yourself and the importance of preserving your white male power and extend civil rights to women, next thing you know gays will be wanting civil rights too. Unstated in that line of thought is all the in-between history that happened after 1943: African Americans will want civil rights, Native Americans will want civil rights. It’s all a slippery slope. Start giving them an inch and you end up with things like a black family in the White House and a woman winning the popular vote for the election.
Where is Chicken Little when you need him?
Okay, I get it. Yeah, heaven forbid. If we draw the line at rights for women, we can keep all the others in their place.
I could explain further if that were desired, but it doesn’t appear that that would be desired.
It’s tough to do anything remotely political, like this telegram, on a blog that tries to be welcoming to all believers and friends, without straying into territory that is beyond the core of our shared religious identity.
Everyone who has commented here so far is a friend and Keepa’ninny. I’m glad to know all of you, although for most that’s in such a restricted way. Peace.
Whenever I see John Mansfield’s name attached to a comment on the Archipelago list I click on it. He always has something interesting to say in an interesting way. He never trolls, he’s not a flame thrower or an instigator, he doesn’t defame people or put anyone down, he’s just someone with a unique view of our world.
John is welcome here. I genuinely do not understand his comment about LGBT history as relevant to an artifact of Mormon support for women’s rights, and am adamantly opposed to opening Keepa to the flame war that seems likely to result if this goes any further. I am glad to post your comment complimentary to John, KLC, and both you and John — and even Puzzling — are welcome at Keepa.
Thanks, Ardis. I was sure you had context, John, but your point wasn’t clear, and a lot of the recent discussions on social media or the Bloggernacle have been (shall we say) unproductive, so I thought I’d run your comment into the ground before people started offending each other. (Look how well that worked.) On a serious note, we do appreciate you and your participation at Keepa over the years.
Just so occasional readers know, I commented under a different name so the comment would go into moderation and Ardis would have to approve it, since it was rather over the top. Strange as it might seem, my purpose was not to troll, but to support Ardis and the wonderful and thoughtful community she’s built. I apologize if my attempt to derail a derailment further derailed the conversation.