But our political culture consciously values freedom more than any other, even within the English-speaking world; so deviations from that ideal are more noticeable here.
I’d call that an astute observation.
Certainly the federal government discriminated on the basis of sex. And though some things are much better for women than they were thirty-five years ago, the federal government still discriminates. Women are ineligible for certain combat roles in the military, for example. Discrimination based on qualifications is one thing. Discrimination based on gender is another.
But the ERA goes further. It doesn’t allow individual states to discriminate.
In the 1970’s there were unbelievable laws that worked against women and men. Women weren’t allowed to teach beyond the fifth month of pregnancy. Men weren’t allowed to take paternity leave. Often women could have credit only in their husband’s names. If there was a divorce, they had no record of credit.
What would happen to laws banning same sex marriage? Adoption by same sex partners?
The deepest discrimination isn’t a matter of law though. It’s so ingrained that it is taken as “the way things are supposed to be.” Would most men ever accept a Supreme Court with eight females and one male? Two hundred and thirty years without a male President or Vice President?
I recall Jerry Falwell, in his famous Penthouse interview ( :o he was not informed at the time where the interview would be published), citing that as an objection to the ERA. “The ERA would put sex into the Constitution, not women! What if two homosexuals stand up and say they want to get married?”
BTW: In the course of that interview, Falwell dissed Jimmy Carter for granting an interview to Playboy, “a magazine that did not deserve his time of day,” in 1976. Which must have added to his later embarrassment! 
OTOH, together with our antinomianism and suspicion of government, we have had a strain of meddlesom moral puritanism in our culture few Western societies can match, and which has often dragooned the law into its service. Prohibition is a striking example. The tension between these poles . . . is at least one of the things that account for the OP.
Oh, I know, it makes me barbaric, ignorant, and backwards to not see the sexes as identical in capabilities in every regard, but in this case, discrimination based on qualification and discrimination based on gender have about a 99% overlap.
While that sucks, it’s not an issue of federal discrimination.
Currently, the states have the freedom to decide for themselves what to do about the issue. Steps have been taken to make SSM specifically legal or illegal in several states. A federal amendment could prevent that process from happening.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
I never thought of it that way, but now that you mention it, it sounds like a good theory to me.
I have no idea how that happened. One of the hamsters probably ought to exercise that one freedom a little less, I think.
You don’t have to agree with the Libs, but they DO fit your hypothesis. If big government makes us less free, then we’ve definately become less and less free. Both as the powers of the state to do more and more and more in secret and without check expand, as does its budget and its demands over our lives.
Since most women aren’t as strong as men it’s OK to limit the opportunities of those who are?
Well, the Constitution does guarantee equal protection under the law.
A friend of my sister was a WAVE during WWII. Her husband was in the merchant marine and was torpedoed on the run to Murmansk. He was in the icy water quite a long time before rescue and it left him mentally retarded, among other health problems. The mental retardation necessitated her becoming is legal guardian. When they applied for a VA loan on a house it was refused because her husband couldn’t sign the papers. She was the vet, not him, and was his legal guardian. I believe they took the matter to court and got the VA’s regulation overturned, but they shouldn’t have been put through that ringer.
Let us instead talk about “freedom” (liberty) as defined by the DoI: Our inalienable right of “(peaceful) pursuit of happiness”. Let us talk about “freedom” as defined by our constitution: that same inalienable right (by definition) retained by the people.
We do not need another amendment; we need only prosecute the politicians and their “activist” judges that violate our one and all inclusive and inalienable right. The one that constitutions are instituted to secure.
**We value freedom; they (tyrants) do not. ** Unfortunately for us and the world, they still hold US hostage.
Peace only through Liberty
r~
P.S. Doesn’t this conspiracy for the violation of our civil rights fall under the Ricco statutes?
Fair enough. I’m just going to retract my assertion. Because it’d clearly lead to a hijack, and we’ve got plenty of other threads on the subject.
Lesson: The freedom of states (subunits in a federal system) sometimes is in conflict with the freedom of individuals.
But we should have learned that from the Civil Rights movement.