Equal Rights amendment

Straha

Banned
Equal Rights Amendment passes, is incorporated into US Constitution, 1974.
Consequences? Heres what I think would happen: The culture war is worse than now and got there faster. Carter's presidency is even more of a domestic disaster. The two main parties are more narrowly partisan than today. The plague on both your houses center party dates from John Anderson's 1980 independents rather than Ross Perot's late male menopause in 1992. Libertarians are a noticeable minor national party - 5-12% of the vote, members of the house plus an occassional senator. Greens, feminists and old peace + freedom black / red popular front dance an old combine and divide jig around 10-18%. Crossendorsement is national, not just a NYS thing. Federal courts are even more blatently packed by ideologues. Social engineering ammendments are still attempted ( failure of the ERA marked the end of the trend), but none pass. The DC gridlock is much worse and the press much more blatent. The actual societal effect is minimal expect to make the distrust between the sexes worse and the trial lawyers richer.
 
Surprisingly Little Difference

There would be some wailing and gnashing of teeth by social conservatives but it would be transient. With a fairly conservative Supreme Court the new Amendment would be used very sparingly and would make suprisingly little difference. After a while the Social Conservatives would realize this (well most of them).

The Libertarians remain the Party of Frivolous Affectation utterly impotent to make the slightest dent in public policy. The Greens don't see much improvement either.

One slight difference. The military would like to return toa draft but only if it's male only. They absolutely positively want nothing to do with a unisex draft. Currently they doubt if they can get away with a male only draft but fantasize that somehow they might. An enacted Equal Rights Amendment would remove all hope from their minds on this score.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
for whom ?

Equal rights for women ? For minorities ? Foir gays ? Or for all peope irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation ?

Grey Wolf
 
Here's the text of the ERA:

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.

From http://www.usconstitution.net/constamfail.html

So it's only about sex, I guess.
 
ERA would have minimal effect, IMO. That's because all of its provisions were essentially in effect anyway, by the time it was voted on. All it would do is reiterate them, and unify them into a federal level, rather than the hodgepodge of state and federal laws that it is. Like many laws, it would simply make explicit what had already been in existence.
 
Top