Dec. 13, 2003 - 22:00 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Makes This One Think

Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe wrote an article that showed up in our The Rocky Mountain News on December 13 titled, "Equal Rights Amendment sleeps among the tumult."

In part she says, "About 21 years ago, the Equal Rights Amendment crashed against a handful of legislators in North Carolina, Illinois and Florida.

I don't know the identities of the men or have in mind their quantity, but I do remember the horrified talk about such things at that time and an ongoing debate - the tassle on the hassle as it were.

The opponents had listed three horrible fates that would follow if we added women's equality to the Constitution. If there were an ERA, we would have unisex toilets, women in combat and gay marriage."

She goes on to say, "The fearful spectre of unisex toilets was always my favorite. A natural born radical, my house has always been unisex, my house already had coed bathrooms."

Just thinking about it, don't most houses have coed bathrooms ? At least the ones that have room enough to accomodate two people at once who can stay modestly shielded from each other ?

Then Ellen Goodman goes on to say, "But in the intervening years, the integrated john became a hip accessory in Ally McBeal's office and fairly common in colleges. As for women in combat, there are now 33 women generals, 212,000 women in the military, and everyone routinely talks about men and women in Iraq. There never was a law against women in combat zones and as Jessica Lynch could tell you, it has gotten harder to tell the front lines from the sidelines."

Ellen Goodman continues, "And now, the third in this trilogy: gay marriage. In the 1970's I don't think even Phyllis Schafly's Eagle Forum really believed in something as far-fetched as gay marriage. Now gay marriage may be fetched in Massachusetts and gay almost-marriage already exists in Vermont."

So, there you are. In 2003 we have unisex toilets, women in combat and gay marriage. The only thing we don't have is - ta da - the Equal Rights Amendment."

She makes a point this way. "In fact, here's another irony to toss on the riverbank of social change. In "Why We Lost the ERA," political scientist Jane Mansbridge wrote, "The campaign against the ERA succeeded because it shifted debate away from equal rights and focused it on the possibility that the ERA might bring substantive changes in women's roles and behavior," Well we got a lot of substantive changes -- a majority of mothers in the workplace -- but no constitutional status"

Ellen Goodman mentions a few things such as, "We have only 14 women in the Senate, Walmart is selling a brand new NRA magazine for gun-toting women. But it refuses to sell the morning after pill.

Aside here, thinking about it, if men got pregnant I will bet there would be morning after pill dispensers in their restrooms available for a quarter a pop -- without any prescription or trouble of any kind.

She goes on, "We narrowed the wage gap. But much of that is due to men's shrinking paychecks. We talk as if men and women are equal. But we've stopped talking about what TRUE equality would look like at home or in public."

I think she could end the article after the next bit, "How come we got the side effects without the full effects ? And how come the ERA is still hibernating ?"

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I couldn't help an interjection or two mid stream. Ellen Goodman gives her ideas on how this can be and I think they are good ones. The big question in my mind has always been as in most other things, "How can there be so much ambivalence dealing with women ? My idea is that many women and men are misdirected in their thinking and are talking about gender differences now. But real ERA hasn't made the scene yet.

Many people turn purple in the face when someone mentions "gay marriage," "unisex toilets," but our military scandal at the Airforce Academy points up that women are "in" but are second class citizens. Remember the "Tail Hook" uproar ? There are many other things about women's equality that are not being addressed and considered at this time.

Regardless of how one feels about those three items I think folks should consider TRUE equal rights for women. The nation seems to keep nibbling around the edges, gain some lose some, but in the end I don't think that women are getting a fair shake all the way around. Many are doing the same things as men, but without the rights and prerogatives of men. It truly Makes This One Think . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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