ERA - Equal Rights for Women Fraud
ERA bill HJR1014 has been filed in Arkansas House by Lindsley Smith and SJR12 in the Senate by Senator Sue Madison. The Senate Committee defeated the ERA Amendment. The House bill has not yet been brought up in the House Agenices committee.
Sponsors of the bills by Rep. Lindsley Smith (and Senator Sue Madison (SJR12), both of Fayetteville want to make you think this ERA bill is designed to be fair to women. This is just rhetoric to make men feel it a duty to vote for it in order to make men look like they are not discriminating against women. This bill has nothing to do with equality for women. Those laws are already in place.
What the amendment is really designed to do:
Promote Tax Funded Abortion, Homosexuality, and Nullify Marriage Amendments, etc.
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” is the way the amendment reads. However it does not define whether sex is what you are or what you do. Senator Sam Irvin, considered then [in 1970's] the leading legal authority in the Senate, said the only people who would profit by the Equal Rights Amendment would be the homosexuals.
If you deny a marriage license to a man and a man, you have discriminated on account of sex. All of the highest legal authorities from Harvard and Yale have all said that the equal rights amendment would okay same sex marriage.
Hawaii okayed same sex marriage based on the state's ERA. Hawaii had to pass another Constitutional amendment saying in effect, "No, we didn't mean that.
A Judge in Iowa used ERA language to overturn Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2007. http://arkjournal.com/2007/09/iowa-gay-marriage-era-implications.html
In Maryland the Court said I am coming down boldly and 100% on ERA, and they threw out the state marriage law. That case was appealed but I don't know the result of that appeal.
It can be used by activist judges to strike down all state marriage amendments and statutory bans, including Arkansas’ constitutional amendment.
I am sure it could be used by an activist judge to nullify our ban on homosexual adoption ban that we won in our last election too.
ERA has been used as the legal basis for court-mandated, Government Funded Abortions. A Connecticut Superior Court held that the state ERA required public funding of abortions.
"Since only women become pregnant, discrimination against pregnancy by not funding abortions . . . is sex-oriented discrimination . . . . The Court concludes that the regulation that restricts the funding for abortions. . violates Connecticut's Equal Rights Amendment." (Doe v. Maher, 515 A. 2d 134, 162 (Conn. Super. Ct. 1986). Only one state court, Pennsylvania's, has said that its state ERA does not require public funding for abortions.
The argument of the feminists is abortion is something that happens only to women; therefore, if you deny any rights or any funding on abortion, you have discriminated on account of sex within the meaning of the Equal Rights Amendment.
New Mexico's ERA law is same as wording for the ERA amendment. New Mexico said that it is discrimination to deny funding for abortion in New Mexico.
ERA pretends to help women, but it does nothing for women; and the proponents of the measure were not able to show any benefit, any correction of law that the Equal Rights Amendment will do. In 2007 in Arkansas during testimony, its sponsor, Lindsley Smith, and now Senator Joyce Elliott were asked repeatedly to give even one specific benefit or correction that the ERA could make for women. They failed to give even one that was not proven to be an obvious smokescreen by the opponents of the bill.
See this link for the transcription of Phyllis Schlafly's testimony against this bill in the Arkansas House in 2007 for many other unbelievable negative consequences of this ERA Amendment: http://www.wpaag.org/ERA%20-%20Schlafly%20Testimony%20in%20AR%202-7-07.htm
Sponsors of the bills by Rep. Lindsley Smith (and Senator Sue Madison (SJR12), both of Fayetteville want to make you think this ERA bill is designed to be fair to women. This is just rhetoric to make men feel it a duty to vote for it in order to make men look like they are not discriminating against women. This bill has nothing to do with equality for women. Those laws are already in place.
What the amendment is really designed to do:
Promote Tax Funded Abortion, Homosexuality, and Nullify Marriage Amendments, etc.
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” is the way the amendment reads. However it does not define whether sex is what you are or what you do. Senator Sam Irvin, considered then [in 1970's] the leading legal authority in the Senate, said the only people who would profit by the Equal Rights Amendment would be the homosexuals.
If you deny a marriage license to a man and a man, you have discriminated on account of sex. All of the highest legal authorities from Harvard and Yale have all said that the equal rights amendment would okay same sex marriage.
Hawaii okayed same sex marriage based on the state's ERA. Hawaii had to pass another Constitutional amendment saying in effect, "No, we didn't mean that.
A Judge in Iowa used ERA language to overturn Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2007. http://arkjournal.com/2007/09/iowa-gay-marriage-era-implications.html
In Maryland the Court said I am coming down boldly and 100% on ERA, and they threw out the state marriage law. That case was appealed but I don't know the result of that appeal.
It can be used by activist judges to strike down all state marriage amendments and statutory bans, including Arkansas’ constitutional amendment.
I am sure it could be used by an activist judge to nullify our ban on homosexual adoption ban that we won in our last election too.
ERA has been used as the legal basis for court-mandated, Government Funded Abortions. A Connecticut Superior Court held that the state ERA required public funding of abortions.
"Since only women become pregnant, discrimination against pregnancy by not funding abortions . . . is sex-oriented discrimination . . . . The Court concludes that the regulation that restricts the funding for abortions. . violates Connecticut's Equal Rights Amendment." (Doe v. Maher, 515 A. 2d 134, 162 (Conn. Super. Ct. 1986). Only one state court, Pennsylvania's, has said that its state ERA does not require public funding for abortions.
The argument of the feminists is abortion is something that happens only to women; therefore, if you deny any rights or any funding on abortion, you have discriminated on account of sex within the meaning of the Equal Rights Amendment.
New Mexico's ERA law is same as wording for the ERA amendment. New Mexico said that it is discrimination to deny funding for abortion in New Mexico.
ERA pretends to help women, but it does nothing for women; and the proponents of the measure were not able to show any benefit, any correction of law that the Equal Rights Amendment will do. In 2007 in Arkansas during testimony, its sponsor, Lindsley Smith, and now Senator Joyce Elliott were asked repeatedly to give even one specific benefit or correction that the ERA could make for women. They failed to give even one that was not proven to be an obvious smokescreen by the opponents of the bill.
See this link for the transcription of Phyllis Schlafly's testimony against this bill in the Arkansas House in 2007 for many other unbelievable negative consequences of this ERA Amendment: http://www.wpaag.org/ERA%20-%20Schlafly%20Testimony%20in%20AR%202-7-07.htm
posted by Debbie Pelley at Thursday, March 05, 2009
18 Comments:
You are an ignorant person and a liar. Stop spreading your lies and hatefulness.
I agree anon 8:37.
If the law is bad because the people that enforce it will misuse it then 99.9% of laws are bad.
So I can agree that ERA is bad- but so are the other 99.9% of laws
Wow, your ERA supporters sure display your class and intelligence.
Debbie Pelley wrote a long, well-sourced column. Your response is ugly name-name calling. Can you show us some specific statement in the piece that is not factual, or are you just here to vandalize?
I have noticed that some on the other side here have a pattern. When they can't win the debate on ideas, they drive readers away by throwing such an ugly tantrum that readers are turned off.
If Debbie has the facts wrong, show how. We welcome honest debate on public policy here. If you are just here to call people ugly names, then you are cordially invited to buzz off.
I agree wtih Mark Moore 1:30, March 6. I thought if the liberals thought that kind of response was good debate, that is good enough for me too.
Everytime the conservatives put out the truth, they are accused of being liars, of hatefulness, bias, prejudice, etc. To Anonymous at 8:37 March 05: Your response itself reveals your nature and is much more hateful than the article
I wrote.
"Recently liberal political analyst for NPR and journalist Juan Williams admitted that he has found liberals to be more closely knit and close minded than conservatives. He came to that conclusion after receiving an inordinate amount of hate mail from, of all people, liberals. The hate mail was prompted by Juan Williams' disagreement with liberal policy in one area. For that, liberals blasted him and he stated that he was more maligned and attacked by liberals, whose side he is on, than he ever was by conservatives." See this link http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977616986&nav=Groupspace&grpId=3659174697241619 and this link to a you tube video of Juan Williams saying this. http://americanglob.com/2009/03/03/fox-news-juan-williams-discovers-the-viciousness-of-the-american-left/
"This episode revealed that, as Juan Williams pointed out, liberals are horrible at handling differences of opinion and that if one strays from liberal orthodoxy, liberals go haywire and become much more hateful than do conservatives." [This last paragraph written by a homosexual]
I don't get why the state should even be involved in same sex marriage. Your arguments against it are all based in religous belief, which should be separate from the political process and political manuverings should be separate from religion. If Jim wants to marry John, I don't see the problem. It doesn't affect my marriage or yours. What's the problem?
I am not the first to say it, but the nuclear family is the only human institution that can create new life, and keep that life in daily communion with its creators. The nuclear family is a near-universal bedrock in every culture in the world. A non-anthropologist would be hard-pressed to name even one nation where any other arrangement for conceiving, nurturing, and raising children into adults was considered the optimal social arrangement.
Now a decent anthropologist could name some tiny cultures where other arrangements are the norm, such as the "mother's-brothers" type where there is no father figure and the brothers of the mothers are the role models for young men. They might cite an example or two of truly communal living. So other arrangements besides the nuclear family have been tried, and the results are in. The thing is, these examples are so rare, and the cultures they produce so backward, that the exceptions serve to prove a rule: the traditional nuclear family is the superior social structure for building a healthy society.
The nuclear family forms spontaneously in all successful cultures regardless of the race or religion of the society. Other family forms which usher in the next generation (and thus continue the society) are so uncompetitive with the nuclear family as to be nearly extinct. Note that a nuclear family can take two forms: monogamous or polygamous. Of the two, cultures espousing the former have had greater success in producing advanced, healthy societies than the latter, and even in those cultures where polygamy is practiced by the upper class, monogamy is more common even if only as a result of biological necessity (male and female babies are born in about equal numbers).
Marriage is what binds men and women together to produce a nuclear family. Given the essential historical role of the nuclear family in producing a healthy and well-adjusted next generation, it is crystal clear that the state needs marriage more than marriage needs the state.
In our nation there is a culture clash of two major world-views. One is secular, naturalistic, results-oriented. The other is Christian, faith-based, theistic, and more willing to look beyond immediate results in order to make choices in agreement with their moral code.
On most issues, these two groups clash. On this issue, they shouldn't. On this issue, it does not matter whether you believe Man is the result of four billion years of evolution or you believe that Man is the creation of God Almighty. The bottom line is that same, one social arrangement is clearly the "right" one for society to uphold with the exalted recognition of "marriage" - the nuclear family.
If you believe that Man is the creation of God and that marriage is ordained of God to be between one man and one women from the Garden on then you agree that the traditional family is the best option for a healthy society. If, on the other hand, you believe we are simply the product of evolution then the evidence demands that you believe that humans evolved to be socialized from a foundation of a nuclear family.
Whether we are the creation of God or the product of evolution the bottom line here is the same: nuclear families do the best job of successfully producing a succeeding generation to continue the kind.
Marriage is an exalted status given by society to a social status that both God's law and scientific study has shown are best at sustaining a culture and its people.
Notice that marriage is not about how you "feel" about your partner. It is not about what you and your partner consider each other. Marriage is about society's sanction, approval, and recognition.
Homosexual activists want us to alter the definition of marriage, and grant that same recognition to their relationships that we previously gave to heterosexual couples who typically could create a nuclear family.
The problem for them is reality. Their relationships simply don't do the things for society that a traditional nuclear family has done for civilization. We have a collective right to self-defense, and a right to give, or withhold, or stamp of approval on relationships or conduct based on whether it is good or bad for the continued health (and even existence) of our society.
Granting exalted status to homosexual marriages does the exact opposite of what is in our self-interest. It further dilutes the honor and good-will we have traditionally given to the nuclear family. It is not in our self-interest to honor that which will further erode the institution on which civilization has depended for all of human history.
That family is already under great stress in our culture, and our social ills are multiplying accordingly. Our inner cities are testimony to what can happen when we try to replace the nuclear family with other forms of creating, nurturing, and socializing children. We have found that a mother and a caseworker are no substitute for a nuclear family.
The idea that the government could replace the father was a mistake we have yet to understand how to fix. Are we, in our great arrogance, about to make another such mistake, ignoring both the laws of God and/or the remorseless evolutionary path of our existence?
In conclusion, homosexual marriage is not about the "rights" of the homosexuals. If the Christians and the Founders are correct, our rights come from God, and while one may have a "right" to sin, no one has a "right" for state approval of their sin.
If the secularists are correct then there is no such things as "rights". Man, not created in Gods image but only a cosmic accident, has no inherent rights. He is only what evolution has shaped him to be- a creature whose best chance for success comes by being reared in a nuclear family.
A more rational view of a "right" is the right to self-defense. And we are defending ourselves and our civilization by rejecting the idea of elevating homosexual relationships to the elevated status. The debauched cultures of western Europe are now under siege by Muslim peoples who are inferior to them in nearly every cultural aspect except that they have not lost sight of the necessity of channeling sex toward marriage, and marriage toward family.
The times we are in, when our nuclear families are failing, is the worst of all possible times to make them even less honored by society and the state. To say that it takes nothing away from traditional marriage by extending the same honor and recognition to homosexual couples is akin to saying it takes nothing away from the sex you have with your wife if you have sex with someone else. Removing the exclusivity of the status of the relationship does indeed lessen it.
I urge my fellow citizens who are still rational enough to follow reason instead of emotion and strong enough to defend their loved ones rather than sacrifice the future of their descendants for PC to stay strong in opposition of this mad plan to redefine marriage. This is not about what militant homosexuals feel or how strongly they feel it. It is about truth, it is about justice, and it is about defending civilization.
It took me a bit to run through your argument against same sex marriage, and your argument is well crafted. It is probably one of the better arguments I have read from a conservative base. I do, however, have some problems with your thesis:
1. You begin with the argument that the main purpose of marriage is to procreate and to create a nuclear family. If this is the case, then are marriages between men and women that do not produce children also null and void? What of marriages that happen later in life, when both partners are beyond childbearing years? It seems to me that marriage is about more than just birthing and raising children.
2. This brings me to the second point you raise. That marriage is, "about society's sanction, approval, and recognition." Allow me to quote a friend of mine whose marriage right now hangs in the ballance in California:
" I cried today. Stupid. I was at my dentist's (he's a friend and came to our wedding) and he cheerfully said, "How's married life treating you?" and I replied, waaay too seriously, "good for as long as it lasts," and then he wanted to know about the court case, and if we'd heard whether our marriage would last, and when we would KNOW, and how we are doing, etc etc and I had to go through it all again.I walked out to the car afterwards and got in and cried tears of anger and frustration--not at my dear dentist, but at feeling I'm living betwixt and between, unresolved, at being A Thing whose fate is decided by courts and how the Prop8 people took my euphoric feeling that finally I was a Real Married Person with a real place in society, like everyone else, and they threw me back into the gutter and kicked me back into being an unwanted outsider.And then I dried my eyes and went to work and tried, yet again, to get past it."
It is about status. It's about recognizing the humanity of those who we have cast to the margins because of who they love. As your argument progresses, you state that it is not about the rights of LGBT people, and yet I find an air of superiority in your "voice". What justice is there in denying two consenting adults who love and are committed exclusively to eachother the ability to care for eachother and to deny them the social privledges we grant othe couples that do the same? This is not justice.
3. You must also realize that the definition of marriage has changed over the centuries as well. In biblical times, marriage was soley for procreation, and worked more as a property exchange than a relationship. Look at most fundamential Islamic countries and you will see the attitude of our biblical forefathers. In fact, it wasn't until the Council of Trent in 1545 that marriage moved from being a "private affair" into being something sanctioned by the Church, eventually becoming a sacriment.
4. You also stress the importance of having both male and female roles in the raising of children. Unfortunately, most sociologists will tell you that there is just not enough evidence out there to support your assumption that a same sex couple is any less capable or desirable in raising children as an opposite sex couple. In fact, from what I myself have witnessed in my own church, same sex couples can and do make excellent parents. All the children I have seen from these relationships are happy, well adjusted individuals that are secure and well loved.
5. Again, though thinly veiled, you couch religious arguments into the discussion. By using religious arguments in a secular law discussion, you are in effect taking down the wall of separation of Church and State. Whether you agree that this is a constitutional mandate or not, the wall is there to protect both the government and its citizens from religious domination and to protect the religious institution and its adherents from government. What LGBT men and women are asking for, and what I believe they deserve, is to be afforded the same status as heterosexuals in our society. For instance, in our own great state, a man or woman can be fired for being in a same sex relationship, and they are not afforded any of the benefits of married heterosexual couples. While this may seem shocking to you, most same sex couples I have been aquainted with have been together for a long time. In fact, the youngest relationship is five years, with the longest being over twenty years and counting. These partners are not allowed to assist doctors in medical decisions, and are not entitled to any pension, or social security benifits of heterosexual couples that have been married for less time. This is a travesty!
As I stated previously, granting the "right to marry" to same sex couples in no way denigrates marriage. My own marriage is not affected by these things, and neither has the marriage of any heterosexual couple been in a state where the right has been extended, or in Canada, where same sex marriage has been legal for years.
You present another straw-man argument in comparing homosexual marriage to "having sex with someone else". Marriage, regardless of who is involved is a commitment between two people to be mutually exclusive in their sexual lives. This holds true for both same sex and opposite sex couples. Again you are trying to intergect religion into a secular debate.
In short, if marriage is to be sanctioned by the government, and certain privledges are to be granted, these should be granted to two consenting adults regardless of their sexual preference or identity. If, on the other hand, marriage is a religious institution, then the State needs to be removed from the equation and all privldges to that regard should be revoked. To do otherwise is discriminating against a class of people.
The kind of Institutionalism displayed gere is rather strange, given the scorn for institutions generally, on neocon blogs, especially those claiming to be Anglican...
Goran,
We don't claim to be Anglican here, although we like Anglicans. We are the furthest thing from Neocons, at least I am. I was a paid spokesman for the Ron Paul campaign if that is any clue where I am on that.
AH,
When I get a little time I would not mind attempting a response. Before I do though, can you tell me what church near Rogers Arkansas has not one but SEVERAL co-habiting homosexuals who are raising children?
My friend, I would, but that much would invade their privacy and open our church up to protests that would be harmful to the families in question. Suffice to say, our church is not the only one with families that consist of two moms or two dads. There are some denominations that believe that God's grace extends to all people regardless of who they are or who they love. Go check out just about any Episcopal church in NW Arkansas. In fact, stay for coffee, meet the people you are demonizing. I encourage it. You may be enlightened.
Ron Paul... isn't that Libertarian? Same difference over here ;=)
What amazes me is that as a human being somehow you assume you have a right to decide another human being's right to equality?
Whatever higher being gave us both life created us as equals. We were given the gift of free will for ourselves - not over another.
Perfect example of the irrationality of the supporters of homosexual marriage. You don't have a "right" to my approval. You don't have a "right" to my neighbor's approval. If you did, our wishes in the matter would mean nothing. And marriage is just that, it is societies stamp of approval on the family form we as a group believe are wholesome, praiseworthty, and good for our society.
What you call yourselves is your business, what we call you is all of our business. It is non-sensesical for you to speak of free will of the individual as being homosexual advocates telling everybody else what they have to honor as marriage.
It seems to me the discussion has veered away from a discussion about the Equal Rights Amendment with regrds to whether it will or will not grant gay marriages. To a discussion of whether or not gay marriages should be permitted.
Those who claim that the ERA would legalize gay marriages claim that they don't know the meaning of the word "sex' in the Amendment. Those who make such a claim are either deliberately misleading or they don't know the difference between a noun and a verb.
The ERA is patterned after the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote. Both Amendments end with the words "...on account of sex." Clearly the word "sex" is a noun in each of them and can refer only to the sex or gender one is. In no way does it refer to sexual activity.
I have been working for the Equal Rights Amendment for over 30 years. I continue to do so because I want judges and legislators to take discrimination on account of my gender as seriously as they take discrimination on account of race.
It seems to me that only people who feel inferior on some level are the one who are passionate about restricting others regarding ERA, Gay Marriage etc.
No one is asking for you to like some of the proposed laws Mark, we are asking you and everyone else, to be fair based on the laws of man.
The way things currently are in this country, every time the pledge is recited we are participating in hypocrisy.
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