The Equal Rights Amendment needs to be rewritten before it's ratified

[jmowreader]

10. This isn't the 1970s

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder

Until 1973, the American Psychological Association's DSM manual (the book that lists all the "approved" mental illnesses) listed "homosexuality" as a mental disorder. At that year's convention they held a vote as to whether they believed homosexuality was a mental disorder...3,810 said it was (5,854 said it was not) so "homosexuality" became "sexual orientation disturbance." It took until 1987 for being gay to stop being "mentally ill."

It took the World Health Organization until 1992 to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases manual...it was changed to "ego-dystonic sexual orientation." (EDSO sufferers wish their orientation were different than it is because of "associated psychological and behavioral disorders."

So...in the time when the ERA was being debated, gay people were both insane and physically sick - at least in the eyes of the medical profession. That, fortunately, is no longer the case.

Debating about whether we'd need to go through the whole ratification process again is an academic exercise at best; the ERA was one of nine amendments that carried a sunset clause. (Eight of them were ratified.) Since it didn't cross the 37-state threshold by then, we'll have to go all the way back to the beginning to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.