I would assume it’s implied by either Title II or Title III of the Civil Rights Act.
All right, you can change my post #17 to say “So even after the 19th Amendment there was need of laws to guarantee both sexes equal rights.”
What is feminist fruitcakery?
Those horrible dessert confections imposed upon us by well-meaning wimmenfolk at Christmas time, and used for doorstops by most people?
P.S. My post 21 was supposed to be a reply to post 19.
How much of an impact do you think Phyllis Schlafly had?
Somewhere I have a legal self-help book from circa 1970. There were still alot of laws treating men & women differently when it was written. For example there were different minimum ages for marriage (eg males had to be at least 14 to marry with parental consent and 21 without, but females only had to be 12 with parental conset and 18 without). Some states also had different drinking ages for men and women (it was lower for women).
According to the family law chapter some states made alimony automatic for for women (unless she was deemed “at fault” in the divorce), but (even in theory) did not allow a man to claim alimony from his wife unless he was “crippled” and would otherwise become a public charge. Also a husband could be held liable for any of his wifes debts, but not vice versa. It advised men seperating from their wives to place a notice in local newspapers warning local merchants to extend credit to his estranged wife to avoid this.
That was anothe issue, credit. It was all but impossible for a married woman to obtain credit in her own name. Even if both spouses worked (& even if the wife had a higher salary) mortgages would be based on the husband’s income alone (“because the wife could stop working at any moment”). In some states a married woman wasn’t even allowed to open a bank account in her own name. Her husband had to give permission.
So if that act forbids race-segregated bathrooms by dint of forbidding “discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin”, then couldn’t the Amendment plausibly be read to forbid sex-segregated bathrooms by forbidding sex-based discrimination or segregation?
I would assume that it wouldn’t happen, seeing as how unisex bathrooms are rare in the US, even though many states guarantee equal rights to women. Do you know of any states where this has become an issue?
Women already got everything they wanted, so why take a chance to lose the extra benefits? When we are already MORE than equal… why go back to just equal?
I don’t think that video shows what you think it does.
I remember the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). ERA was originally supported by both parties and looked like a shoe in. At the time, there was a lot of legal discrimination against women.
For example, in Texas, all property was community property, but in marriage, the husband had complete control over the funds and could do whatever he wished. If he got into debt, it was his wife’s debt too. If his wife died, he had full access to her safety deposit box, but not the other way around. If the husband died, the wife had to get a court order to open the safety deposit box.
There were laws that limited what jobs women could have, and women were very likely to get paid less than a man for an equivalent job.
The ERA originally had fairly easy passage, then came the campaign. Suddenly, conservatives saw the ERA as a threat to American society. It would encourage lesbianism, tear apart the family. Women would no longer be on a pedestal. Marriage would fall apart. The sky would fall. People would stop believing in God. Communists would take over. The Catholic church would be forced to elect a woman as Pope.
With the scare tactics, opposition to the ERA rose. Several states that had earlier passed the ERA rescinded their passage. The deadline for approving the ERA passed with just three states short, and Congress extended the deadline. That actually increased the opposition to the amendment. Once Reagan was elected, the ERA was given up for dead. Women were protected and their special status in society was preserved! Now shut up and get me a beer.
In the end, it really made little difference. Women were given equal rights at work by Congressional statute and many legal scholars now say it can’t really be taken away. Women now serve in the military – something opponents of the ERA said would happen if it passed. The Supreme Court has ruled that women and men should be treated equally before the law in most circumstances.
There are groups trying to employ what they call the three state strategy. The idea is that it really doesn’t matter that the amendment wasn’t passed in the time line. If three more states approve it, it’ll be passed anyway. I’m not 100% sure of the legal standing. After all, we passed the 27th amendment in 1992 and it was introduced in 1789.
I personally would rather assume amendments have an implied lifetime – maybe 20 years. Otherwise, we could suddenly find amendments passed that were implemented back in the 19th century. These include the Title of Nobilities amendment which gets a lot of right wing press now. (Pass it and all lawyers will lose their citizenship!). Heck, as far as I know, the Corwin amendment which would prohibit Congress from interfering with slavery in the states is still alive and kicking.
Now that I think of it, there was another amendment introduced at the same time of the 27th amendment. This regulated the number of Congressional representatives to a maximum of 1 per 50,000 voters. If that passed, there would be over 5,500 members of Congress.
She was the dominant factor behind the defeat of the ERA. I just turned 50, and the defeat of the ERA was very early in my political consciousness. She, more than any other person, made it an issue and defeated it. She was the anti-Maude.
Yep. What’s more, the husband had access to his wife’s account, whether she wanted to allow it or not. He could allow or deny her access to his account, though. In real life, it was fairly common for women to sign checks with their husband’s name, even if they weren’t on the account.
My grandmother had some real estate of her own. Or so she thought. It turned out that her husband could and did sell it without her permission, or even telling her about it. She had counted on the income and the sales proceeds for a certain amount of money, and she found out that he’d sold it. And it was legal, because he was her husband, and legally, he was allowed to make all financial and legal decisions in the marriage, without consulting her. See, women were considered to be sub adults…they could make some decisions, but they were all featherheads, and needed the firm hand of a male guiding their decisions. And, supposedly, Texas HAD a state ERA.
Exactly.
I think many people realized an ERA would nullify many internal biases that already exist in the courts, and hence hurt women. Reminds me of an old saying: “Be careful what you wish for… it might come true.”
Yes it does. It’s an illustration of people’s lack of reasoning when picking a side in a political issue.
But wouldn’t those have been covered by the 14th Amendment and equal 't protection and in fact aren’t sexual discrimination lawsuits filed as a 14th Amendment violation?
No, because the 14th Amendment does not apply to private corporations, only to governments.
Did you read my link? They didn’t know what “suffrage” was.
That’s right. That’s my point. They have as much sense as the people who think women shouldn’t have the right to vote.
And what would those benefits be exactly? Getting paid less for doing the same job. Having your husband get a big debt and after divorce, having your wages garnished?
There were two biggies that were always mentioned: Alimony and the draft. But, the original purpose of alimony was originally created because women weren’t suppose to be in the workforce, thus couldn’t have an income. In a day and age where women are more than capable of working, does this concept still hold?
Besides, there is nothing that says alimony can’t be applied in a gender neutral way. All you have to do is apply to the spouse who makes less income and may have sacrificed their ability to earn income in order to support the other spouse.
Imagine a situation where one spouse drops out of college, so the other spouse can go to law school. But after law school, they get divorced. One spouse can now join a law firm and make $200,000 per year, the other is stuck in a series of menial jobs.
Does it matter if the spouse who went to law school was the husband or wife? If the wife was the one who went to law school, would it be fair for the husband to give his well-to-do wife 1/2 of his Walmart salary because the law says that the husband gives his wife alimony?
The other is the draft, but we haven’t had a draft since the end of the Vietnam war. In fact, the military is currently against a draft because a volunteer military is better trained and more motivated. And, women are doing just fine in almost all positions in the military. There may still be a ban on women taking “front line” positions, but we’ve moved beyond trench warfare year ago and its hard to decide exactly where the front line position ends and where one begins. The first Gulf War was the first war where women served in large numbers and a few were even taken as prisoners of war.
There were originally some concerns about how the public would react to women fighting in the war, but in the end, most of the public not only supported women solders, but were proud of them. There were no calls after the first Gulf War to restrict women’s role in the military. In fact, the opposite happened, and rules and regulations were loosened allowing women to take more and more roles.
What if there is a draft? The military’s current position is that they rather not have one and they don’t see one in the foreseeable future. That could change if a major war did happen, but it would require massive public support. It would have to be a situation much like World War II. And, it is very likely that if such an occasion does happen, the public, the military, and the policy leaders would all probably support drafting women too.
There are those who talk about the original intent when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Well, the original intent of our Forefathers was to pretty much have a government much like a country club. The Senate’s original purpose was to represent the very well to do class. And, I am sure all those slave holding founding fathers never had an intention that a man like Obama would be president.
The Constitution is an evolving document, and we interpret it much as a reflection of our society. 40 years ago, we thought women needed protection because they were the weaker sex. Discriminatory laws abound. Women were natural homemakers as God intended. They couldn’t handle the stress of a daily job. It would mess up their …whatever… baby making machines.
Believe it or not, I remember being in high school and that argument came up whether we should allow the girls to play full court basketball. They might fall and injure their womb. Then they’d never have a baby and live a fulfilling life. We can laugh about it now, but I remember the school board hearings. I remember girls in our school agreeing with this very sentiment.
I doubt the ERA is needed now. Our society simply wouldn’t accept the discrimination that women faced back when I was a kid. Unless the Supreme Court makes some cockamamy decision that allows gross sexual discrimination, the lack of the ERA is no longer an issue.