Remember the ERA?

There was a huge push to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, when I was in high school. I remember it as a giant controversy, but I was 15, and didn't pay much attention. Did I just assume it was the logical next step? Who knows? My memory is unreliable.

At the time, it had been ratified by 35 states (only three shy of the 38 required for national ratification!). It has been reintroduced into every Congress since, with very little fanfare. Did you know that? I didn't! After it was defeated in 1982, it was as though the country considered the matter settled for all time, and just moved on to other things.

As a teenager, I assumed it failed because there was something extreme about it, something that was really beyond the pale, something abhorrent not just to the fundamentalist who believed in strict gender roles, but to mildly conservative Americans, too. (With hindsight, I'd say "average Americans," but at the time I didn't realize that I wasn't an average American, that my political views were what would be considered leftist.). I was all for equal rights, and still am. But it wasn't like I ever READ the amendment.

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.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

Fuck you, Phyllis Schlafly.