Reply #41: If that had been the case, it wouldn't have been fought over for almost a century.

[freshwest]

Here is a link that shows the long history of the movement. It really set many interests against each other, most with good intent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment

My recollection of the last drive to get it enacted brought out opposition from the religious right in the 1980s when it was finally given up on. That was also a period when many union people left the Democratic Party to vote for Reagan. They were his first victims.

Part of the reason it couldn't get the support needed was the incredible backlash from conservatives about all the 'rights' that were being demanded and granted in the 1960s and 1970s for:

Blacks, browns, women, gays, natives, children, prisoners, the accused, the farmworkers, immigrants, whistle blowers, dissenters, animals, workers, alternative religions, health care, welfare, clean air and water, heck, the planet itself.

So this one thing, that they could defeat they did. The churches went against it and other rights and became more politicized as they also deified Raygun. IMHO, there were NO valid legal reasons to deny this amendment. If there had been protection for women, would they be fighting for rights still?

One of the arguments put forth by Phyllis Schafly was that it would break up the family and that women would be forced to serve in the armed forces and raped. The lack of the ERA didn't prevent any of those things happening:

When Bush The Elder was in office they shipped off both husbands and wives for Gulf War One and some children actually ended up in child welfare services if the families couldn't take them in. Talk about equal rights, huh?

Even in WW2 they didn't take all of the brothers in a family to make sure the early incident where a family lost their sons in battle wouldn't be repeated. But then, that was with a Democratic POTUS and not a GOP one.

And NOT passing the ERA has spared a lot of female soldiers from being raped, huh?

Okay, I don't have nice memories of Raygun's reign. But the media was intense with all the televangelists ranting against the sanctity of motherhood and being homemakers all that claptrap while they were cutting the wages of the men so both parents had to work. And broke up families. Rant over.