Well, let us be honest here. If you ask 16 different experts on Constitutional law what would happen if the ERA passed- you’d get 16 different opinions- ranging from “the end of America as we know it” to “Almost nothing”- and really none of us has a crystal ball.
Still the point is that the voters don’t care much for it- and it seems to be for the reasons I gave- even if they are wrong.
Tyrrell- too much work and for no purpose. Dudes here would just say that the ERA would protect those rights permanently. Oh, wait- you already said that. :rolleyes: Can you tell me a right that women don’t have now that they would have under the ERA?
quote]Could you elaborate on what you mean by recognizing “differences in humans” “in a way that will benefit us all”? We already recognize all kinds of differences – between individual humans, not arbitrarily defined groups.
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Yes I will but it may cause some discomfort to fellow dopers (consider yourself warned). We are taught sexism, racism, and homophobia* is “bad” and we must treat all people as equal, yet there is no such thing as separate but equal. This sets up a paradox which I don’t care to go into.
We do have minds of our own and we observe patterns in our lives and make discriminating choices throughout our lives (yes even YOU even if you don’t care to admit it). Most will notice a BIG difference between females and males and chose their mate according to that difference (even homosexuals do this). Some may notice different patters according to race, religion, creed, gender, and so on and choose people they wish to associate with based on that.
I believe that all people that are in a group have special skill sets that they tend to excel at, and as such it benefits all of us to recognize it.
As for having the law recognize ‘separate but equal’ is a obvious failure and or fallacy as all you have to look at is who usually gets custody of a child during disputes.
The big evolution I think is coming is the realization that different means good, as opposed to bad or inferior.
*the term homophobia is very disturbing, it is making a free will issue a disorder as the term ‘phobia’ indicates a medical issue.
The main reason the ERA was opposed? Fear of judicial activism.
From the 1950s to the '70s, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional many things that the mainstream had accepted as perfectly ok for decades or centuries: school segregation, interracial marriage, school prayer, state laws banning abortion. And all these decisions were seemingly made up out of whole cloth by radically reinterpreting the letter of the Constitution to fit a liberal/ progressive agenda.
The problem with the ERA was that it was too potentially broad. It looked and smelled like a “catchall” provision that an activist SCOTUS could use to justify damn near anything related to gender or sexuality.
I definitely support the ERA, but I’m surprised that I’m the only one who seems to see a gay marriage side effect. With the ERA ratified, won’t it be much more clearly unconstitutional to say that Bob can marry Jill, but Susan can’t?
I believe that you are right but the dissenters in this thread will claim that the states are the ones that bestow marriage rights and the ERA would only apply to the federal government.
This would be similar to the 19th amendment in which women were given the right to vote in federal elections but are still wishing that they could vote in state or local elections because the amendment doesn’t apply there. :rolleyes:
Well, you might think so, but remember that there are many constitutions in other countries which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex, but I don’t think any of them have been held to confer a right to same-sex marriage. I’m open to correction, but I think that in all countries which have same-sex marriage or civil unions, they have been introduced by legislation, not by court action. And I’d be surprised if no-one has ever tried to introduce them by court action.
Of course, the judicial decisions of other countries don’t bind the US Supreme Court or enable us to predict how it will rule, but they do indicate that it is possible to frame, and accept, an argument that a prohibition on sex discrimination does not necessarily mean that a ban on same-sex marriage must fail.
The argument would essentially be this; neither Bob nor Susan, in your example, can enter into a same-sex marriage. There is therefore no discrimination as between them.
Another way of putting the matter is to say that the heterosexual union which Bob desires with Jill is fundamentally different from the homosexual union which Susan desires with Jill; the two cases are not the same, and treating different cases differently is not inherently discriminatory.
Of course, you may not think that homosexual unions and heterosexual unions are radically different, but to succeed in this action I think you would have to show that they are essentially the same, which would not be easy.
Finally, it occurs to me that there is a danger in using a prohibition against discrimination on the grounds of sex to attack discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. The purpose of the amendment is to outlaw discrimination as between males and females; if we use it to attack differences of treatment between (say) a heterosexual man and a homosexual man, we are in essence saying that they are of different sexes (since if they are of the same sex there is no breach of the constitutional requirement), which comes close to saying - or giving others ammunition to say - that homosexual men are “not really male”.
I’ll quote the ERA. Bolding mine.
"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."
Thanks, I popped in here during the late AM hours and forget the exact wording of the ERA. That makes her point even stronger though. All it would take, IMHO, is one lawsuit against a state that allows Sussie to marry Jim but not allow Mike to marry Jim. I don’t see how the Supreme Court could find a way out of that one.
I’m surprised that no one was brought up that gay marriage was ruled a right in MA by virtue (in part) of the state’s version of the ERA. The ruling is still controversal even in light of the amendment, and other states haven’t followed suit, despite having their own ERA analogs, so it’s not obvious that a federal ERA would mandate the right to same-sex marriage, but those who feared it were right to fear the ERA.
That aside, I still haven’t seen any compelling reasons against the ERA. As has been said, I think it iwould be easier to argue that “separate but equal” is both a more reasonable and valid standard for gender disparity versus racial disparity. The only major change that hasn’t (by now) been passed by normal legislation is the draft issue, and as I think women should be held just as responsible for the nation’s defense as men, I have no problem with that.