How the hell long have we been waiting for the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified? Too damn long.
The ERA was first proposed in 1972. It states simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” In other words, your rights do not depend on your DNA.
Fifty years later, we are still waiting for it to become part of the U.S. Constitution. Two years ago Virginia voted to ratify this amendment, becoming the 38th state to do so, which means that now the ERA qualifies for inclusion in the Constitutional amendments. So why hasn’t this been made official?
Listen up, U.S. Congress. We The People – not just women and girls, but the men and boys who stand with us – are sick and tired of waiting. We are sick and tired of getting heartbreakingly close to victory. We are sick and tired of having to fight, and fight, and fight. We are sick and tired of screaming, protesting, marching, signing petitions, sending postcards and tweets and e-mails, writing letters to the editor, and countering male bovine solid bodily waste excreta.
How much longer must women wait? How much longer will male chauvinist nut jobs oppose it with ludicrous propaganda? In 1992, Pat Robertson sent a letter to the Christian Coalition in opposition to Iowa’s state ERA, claiming that the “feminist agenda” is a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Unfortunately, enough people believed this crap to prevent the ERA from passing in Iowa. How sad that evil, hateful cowards like Robertson can bamboozle people into voting against their own interests.
Why is it in everybody’s interest to ratify the ERA? To paraphrase Malcolm X, you can’t keep Woman down without staying down with her. Women have been down in the ditch for far too long. Women had to raise hell all the way past the stratosphere for decades in order to get the right to vote. Women in the US couldn’t have credit cards in their own names until 1974, take legal action against sexual harassment until 1977, or enter military combat until 2013. Spousal rape was not recognized as a crime till 1993. The average woman today earns 82 cents for every dollar the average man earns. I could go on and on and on and on.
We need to let our Congress-critters know that we are through waiting. We are not asking, not requesting, not pleading that they pass the ERA – we are demanding that they do so, and after a half century we are well within our rights to do so.
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