To read the tribute to SFC Marcus Muralles, please click here
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Let It Die Already!
Let me set the scene for you. It was sometime during the '83-'84 school year, and I'm sitting in Honors Social Studies (a freshman class at Althoff Catholic High School). Somehow the topic wandered to ERA (whose deadline had passed in '82), and one of the boys in the class said to me, "you, of all people, should be in favor of that amendment." "Why?" "To help you go into space." (I had really wanted to be an astronaut.)
At that point, I asked him to tell me one thing that the ERA would do for me that isn't already in the Constitution. He sat there, thinking. Then I said, "you can't, because there's nothing new in that amendment. It's just to make women feel good and vote for candidates who supported it. It has nothing to do with equal rights for women. We already have them."
Fast forward 23 years (yikes!), and evidently some politicians don't know now what I knew at 14.
Want me to prove it? Here's the text of the ERA:
If you ask women around the country, the vast majority will probably tell you that we've come a long way, and there isn't a need for the ERA. But will NOW and the Dems in Congress listen? Of course not- they never spoke for us, and they never will.
At that point, I asked him to tell me one thing that the ERA would do for me that isn't already in the Constitution. He sat there, thinking. Then I said, "you can't, because there's nothing new in that amendment. It's just to make women feel good and vote for candidates who supported it. It has nothing to do with equal rights for women. We already have them."
Fast forward 23 years (yikes!), and evidently some politicians don't know now what I knew at 14.
Liberal Democrats in the Senate and House plan to resume "the fight for women's equality" on Tuesday, when they reintroduce the Women's Equality Amendment.They claim they want to make equal rights for women "official." As if that will change anything. It won't. Men and women have the same rights.
Sens. Ted Kennedy (Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, both of New York, plan to join Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, in making the Tuesday afternoon announcement.
Want me to prove it? 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 any state on account of sex.Have any of these politicians bothered to read any of the anti-discrimination legislation they've voted for lately? Been there, done that. There's nothing new under the sun.
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.
If you ask women around the country, the vast majority will probably tell you that we've come a long way, and there isn't a need for the ERA. But will NOW and the Dems in Congress listen? Of course not- they never spoke for us, and they never will.
