It was a conservative campaign of lies similar to death panels. People who were for it were for it, people who were against it were against it, and anyone too stupid to have an opinion was influenced by the lies.
Then why did they sign the petition? Would you sign a petition if you had no idea what it was about?
Oh, a lot of people do that. Often they do so just to please the person asking you to sign the petition, or to get rid of him or her. Signing a petition doesn’t cost you anything, but refusing to sign it will either give you a bad conscience because you think you should be supporting what might be a good cause, or will expose you to annoying “But how can you be against this?” question from the person who asked you to sign. And some people simply dislike denying others a favour.
In fact, I think that accounts for more signatures on all these petitions which circulate each day than actual conscious decision-making about the issue does.
As to the OP: I have no idea about the historical background of that proposed amendment, but I second what Northern Piper said: Horizontal application of constitutional rights might be an issue. Traditionally, constitutional rights are binding on the government and its institutions only, not on other corporations or individuals since these others are protected, but not obligated, by these rights. Individuals and corporations may thus merrily abrogate free speech or discriminate on all sorts of grounds the government would never be allowed to discriminate on. I know that in some respects, horizontal application of constitutional rights has been adopted judicially, and there seems to be a worldwide trend in that direction, but the binding nature of these rights on private persons is still weaker than it is on the government. Maybe many people felt that the ERA could be read as a further step towards horizontal application with all sorts of annoying, and actually liberty-encroaching, effets this would have.
I miss those days when I could sit at the lunch counter and not be surrounded by colored people. Not that I have anything against them, I just believe in freedom.
Actually, this reminds me of an important point about Constitutional Rights. (Yes I know this remark was done in snark mode).
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments were suppose to guarantee that African-Americans had equal rights. However, after Reconstruction ended, African-Americans certainly did not have equal rights or equal treatment – separately or otherwise until the mid-1960s and the process was far from complete until the mid-1980s.
Lynching, separate facilities, forced segregation all took place under the 14th amendment which guaranteed all rights and privileges of citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. The fifteenth amendment guaranteed voting rights, but grandfather clauses, poll taxes, literacy tests, all white primaries, and mob rule kept African Americans from voting.
If the Thirteen, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments disappeared tomorrow, society would not revert back to its pre-1860s existence. Slavery would not be tolerated and neither would racial discrimination. The courts would not tolerate it and neither would society at large. There are many countries with strong guarantees of freedom, and they don’t have to state in their constitutions, “By the way, slavery is a no-no”. It is simply assumed.
When the ERA was first proposed in 1972, the tide against sexual discrimination was beginning to turn. Women were demanding equal treatment. It was no longer okay for businesses to discriminate against older women (like the old airline did with stewardesses) or for colleges to insist that women wouldn’t succeed in the hard sciences. No one jokes any longer that women go to college to earn their MRS.
The ERA may have been defeated, but by that time, its doctrine had already been accepted by society as a whole.
Unisex bathrooms never caught on, but coed gyms sure did. Before the '80s they were the exception rather than the rule. Even colleges often had two sets of facilities or made men and women use them at seperate times. That changed fast. Oddly while women can join the YMCA, I still got turned away by a very confused staffmember when I tried to do to the local YWCA.
And how does that apply to corporations or is more expansive than 14th/19th Amendment taken together?
I’m trying to find a cite now, but one thing used against the ERA was feminists screaming that the “Equal pay for equal work” thing would include “equal worth” as decided by Congress.
So, if congress decided that, say, a schoolteacher’s job was of “equal worth” to say, a banker’s, they could declare the jobs were of “equal worth” and just automatically raise every teacher’s salary in the country.
Whether feminists actually were calling for that or if it was a scare message from the right, that was a message I really remember from the time.
And how does that apply to corporations or is more expansive than 14th/19th Amendment taken together?
Aw come on! 
SaintCad, I’m confused now. Are you saying that the Equal Pay Act was necessary because of the 14th and 19th amendments, or are you saying that adopting the Equal Rights Amendment is unnecessary because of the 14th and 19th amendments?
In either case, I disagree. You might as well say that Amendment 14 (" All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States") made Amendments 15 (race no bar to vote) and 19 (women’s suffrage) superfluous. Nevertheless, the people in this country found it necessary to add those two subsequent amendments.
[QUOTE=Saint Cad]
[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
No, because the 14th Amendment does not apply to private corporations, only to governments.
[/Quote]
And how does that apply to corporations or is more expansive than 14th/19th Amendment taken together?
[/QUOTE]
The ERA wouldn’t have applied to private businesses or corporations, either. If ratified, it would have barred the federal and state governments from discriminating on the basis of sex, but it wouldn’t have created any right of individuals against other private individuals, businesses or corporations: that’s clear from the first paragraph.
Private businesses and corporations are forbidden from discriminating based on sex because of statutes passed by Congress and the state Legislatures. Passage of the ERA wouldn’t have affected that.
The latter. The 14th and 19th would make the Equal Pay Act constitutional (probably the ICC too) but the ERA is nothing more than a cobbling together of the 14th and 19th.
And aren’t you forgetting the last line in the 14th Amendment
The 19th Amendment was necessary since the 14th specifically refers to men having the right to vote. I think it is very clear that (at least at the time passed) that the right to vote was not considered under “equal protection” hence the 15th and 19th Amendments.
And at the time that the 15th and 19th Amendments were passed, you think that things like the issues mentioned in post 26 in this thread were considered? I guess your argument is that the text of the ERA would have made its passage meaningless, but then I’m baflled by all the opposition to it. Are you saying that all those people saying the ERA would create huge changes in society (see a sample list at this page http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm ) were misinformed or uneducated?
Because they were morons, obviously, who didn’t know what “suffrage” meant. That was what caused the whole media blunder. Apparently, they thought it had something to do with oppression to women.
IIRC, it made the news and the school was pretty embarassed about it.
Editing time gone. I mean WHEN it hit the media, the school was embarassed.
(And obviously, there are going to be stupid people who’ll sign anything. Stupid people certainly aren’t all that scarce. I think that was the point of the experiment)
I think there a 2 points to be made.
-
Despite the 14th Amendment, women were still treated differently than men under the law as shown in #26. Think of it like how Blacks were treated like second class citizens until the civil rights movement despite the 14th Amendment. In this case, the ERA is pure propaganda. Incidently, legal sexual discrimination still exists. By the statutory language, in Idaho although men and women can both be guilty of abandoning their spouse, only men are penalized for it.
-
The ERA as an amendment added nothing new. Think of it this way, under a state law, a woman cannot own land in her own name. Would that law be Constitutional? If not, what amendment does it violate? A woman finds out that she makes 80% of a guy hired the same day and doing the same work. Could she sue? Would the Equal Pay Act be declared unconstitutional? Let’s say it is and the ERA passes, then is the Equal Pay Act now constitutional? In fact, can you think of a single scenerio that would be ruled in one direction with the existing constitution and differently under the ERA? Education? Driving privileges? Anything?
Saint Cad, I notice that you fail to address the issue of why this amendment was so adamantly opposed it it was meaningless.
The ERA would have added nothing new: it would have made explicit, what you claim is implicit from the 14th Amendment. To take my previous example, it would seem obvious that the 15th Amendment is implicit from the 14th Amendment, and unnecessary. But to many people at the time, it wasn’t obvious. The equality between the genders is a fundamental principle, and as such deserves to be enshrined in the US constitution. One can say “well it’s obvious from the 14th Amendment”, but that is not true since many unequal laws existed after the 14th Amendment was passed.
Either the Amendment would accomplish something, in which case it’s useful, or it accomplishes nothing, in which case it is harmless, but still enshrines a fundamental principle in the Constitution, one which is not explicit from the rest of the Constitution. In either case its adoption would be a good thing.
Change my first sentence of the second paragraph:
Wrong: The ERA would have added nothing new
Correct: The ERA would have added something new