Phyllis Schlafly.
The room goes dark when her name is mentioned. A woman moans in disgust.
After 1972, after 35 of the needed 38 states had ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis Schlafly, mother, dedicated Catholic, attorney, steeped forward to say, "The ERA is wrong." She listed a myriad of reasons why. The number one reason of opponents was the ambiguity of the amendment which in its entirety reads:
The ERA was first introduced by Alice Paul in 1923. Within her own organization was opposition to the ERA. There was fear that protections put in place specifically for women and not for men would be lost. It was determined by a Muller investigation that women needed protection against long hours and jobs that required physical strength beyond the natural capacities of an average women.
They had children at home to tend, they had pregnancies that needed protection.
Opponents led by Schlafly were also concerned that passage of the ERA would legalize gay marriage. In 2019, it's difficult to understand the opposition and not shoot accusations of hate, but I do not believe opponents were haters. They lived at a time when marriage was clearly understood to be a heterosexual contract between man and woman. It had been for 1000s of years. To bring a turn about would take time. Indeed it did, when people were ready, and not forced by legislation. Those years were valuable in bringing about acceptance, love and understanding.
In Brown v Board of education (1954), school segregation was abolished once and for all, but desegregation didn't take place in most parts of the United States until the 1970s. And still, in Boston, in 1974, forced integration caused rioting.
The children who were immediately segregated were accompanied by federal Marshals, were protected by the National Guard.
Can we legislate culture? Can we legislate hate? Can we legislate tolerance?
Does culture control legislation or does legislation control culture? It takes a little bit of both. It takes time.
In the meantime, people suffer. They suffer when laws are turned in favor of the oppressed, the oppressed suffer until laws are changed in favor of the oppressed.
So when the New York Times writes about Phyllis Schlafly and the readers comments are filled with hate for this woman, it's what I expect. They judge her from the perspective of 2019. They don't take into account all the social changes that had to shift.
We judge our founding fathers for not resolving the issue of slavery in 1789. People suffered because they put off the issue, but could it have been resolved at the time? The compromise at the constitutional convention shows it couldn't.
So it took courage on my part, in a class of Phyllis Schlafly haters, when asked, to admit she was a woman of courage. I would do the same for the founding fathers, but I couldn't do the same for the people who threw tomatoes at the black children who courageously endured the first days of desegregation. I have to ask myself why.
Is it based upon principles? Was Schlafly basing her actions upon principles? As a Christian woman she would have been wrong if her fear of gay marriage was motivated by hate for gay people. She saw a threat to a principle. The signers of the constitution, many who saw the insidious evil of slavery--understood the principle of birthing a nation required compromise. It's always wrong to sacrifice the freedom of human beings, but we can't transport ourselves back to the 18th century to truly understand.
The fight against desegregation was based on flawed principle, and the time had come, long overdue after two hundred years of injustice. The people who fought against equal education in 1954 were not standing for or safeguarding principle. They were nursing hate.
The dissenters in the Supreme Court gay marriage case, Obergefell v Hodges, and there were four dissenters, did so not because they were against gay marriage. They dissented because of principle. They didn't believe the decision should be made by nine people. They believed that each state should have ratified their own amendment/acceptance of gay marriage, and in time they believed all 50 states would have done so in their own time.
The difficulty is that principles are not always shared. Personal peculiarities and prejudices get in the way. We question what those principles are based upon. It used to be they were shared under Judeo-Christian traditions, but those traditions are continually diluted and losing strength.
Whether Phyllis Schlafly was right or wrong, we will never know. Her predictions as to the consequences of the ERA are inconsequential because the amendment has never passed. Most of the inequality the ERA was meant to protect has been resolved by Supreme Court decisions and legislation, by changes in culture, by time. Yet, each year it is brought up again for ratification. It still has supporters, it still has naysayers.
Almost 100 years later, after its prime, the ERA causes us to stop and ponder, to question our own principles, to confront our own prejudices-- still.
The room goes dark when her name is mentioned. A woman moans in disgust.
After 1972, after 35 of the needed 38 states had ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis Schlafly, mother, dedicated Catholic, attorney, steeped forward to say, "The ERA is wrong." She listed a myriad of reasons why. The number one reason of opponents was the ambiguity of the amendment which in its entirety reads:
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 ERA was first introduced by Alice Paul in 1923. Within her own organization was opposition to the ERA. There was fear that protections put in place specifically for women and not for men would be lost. It was determined by a Muller investigation that women needed protection against long hours and jobs that required physical strength beyond the natural capacities of an average women.
They had children at home to tend, they had pregnancies that needed protection.
Opponents led by Schlafly were also concerned that passage of the ERA would legalize gay marriage. In 2019, it's difficult to understand the opposition and not shoot accusations of hate, but I do not believe opponents were haters. They lived at a time when marriage was clearly understood to be a heterosexual contract between man and woman. It had been for 1000s of years. To bring a turn about would take time. Indeed it did, when people were ready, and not forced by legislation. Those years were valuable in bringing about acceptance, love and understanding.
In Brown v Board of education (1954), school segregation was abolished once and for all, but desegregation didn't take place in most parts of the United States until the 1970s. And still, in Boston, in 1974, forced integration caused rioting.
The children who were immediately segregated were accompanied by federal Marshals, were protected by the National Guard.
Can we legislate culture? Can we legislate hate? Can we legislate tolerance?
Does culture control legislation or does legislation control culture? It takes a little bit of both. It takes time.
In the meantime, people suffer. They suffer when laws are turned in favor of the oppressed, the oppressed suffer until laws are changed in favor of the oppressed.
So when the New York Times writes about Phyllis Schlafly and the readers comments are filled with hate for this woman, it's what I expect. They judge her from the perspective of 2019. They don't take into account all the social changes that had to shift.
We judge our founding fathers for not resolving the issue of slavery in 1789. People suffered because they put off the issue, but could it have been resolved at the time? The compromise at the constitutional convention shows it couldn't.
So it took courage on my part, in a class of Phyllis Schlafly haters, when asked, to admit she was a woman of courage. I would do the same for the founding fathers, but I couldn't do the same for the people who threw tomatoes at the black children who courageously endured the first days of desegregation. I have to ask myself why.
Is it based upon principles? Was Schlafly basing her actions upon principles? As a Christian woman she would have been wrong if her fear of gay marriage was motivated by hate for gay people. She saw a threat to a principle. The signers of the constitution, many who saw the insidious evil of slavery--understood the principle of birthing a nation required compromise. It's always wrong to sacrifice the freedom of human beings, but we can't transport ourselves back to the 18th century to truly understand.
The fight against desegregation was based on flawed principle, and the time had come, long overdue after two hundred years of injustice. The people who fought against equal education in 1954 were not standing for or safeguarding principle. They were nursing hate.
The dissenters in the Supreme Court gay marriage case, Obergefell v Hodges, and there were four dissenters, did so not because they were against gay marriage. They dissented because of principle. They didn't believe the decision should be made by nine people. They believed that each state should have ratified their own amendment/acceptance of gay marriage, and in time they believed all 50 states would have done so in their own time.
The difficulty is that principles are not always shared. Personal peculiarities and prejudices get in the way. We question what those principles are based upon. It used to be they were shared under Judeo-Christian traditions, but those traditions are continually diluted and losing strength.
Whether Phyllis Schlafly was right or wrong, we will never know. Her predictions as to the consequences of the ERA are inconsequential because the amendment has never passed. Most of the inequality the ERA was meant to protect has been resolved by Supreme Court decisions and legislation, by changes in culture, by time. Yet, each year it is brought up again for ratification. It still has supporters, it still has naysayers.
Almost 100 years later, after its prime, the ERA causes us to stop and ponder, to question our own principles, to confront our own prejudices-- still.
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