Why is the Equal Rights Amendment still not ratified?

Published Mar 4, 2021, 2:36 PM

The United States is one of only 28 countries in the world that doesn’t have equal protection for women under the law enshrined in its constitution. There was a moment in the 70s where it came very close, but then the conservative movement was born.

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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles to be Chuck Brian over there, and Jerry's over there. The three amigos equal in every single way, shape and form. Uh. And that makes this, of course stuff you should know, which is basically its own sovereign nation of equality. M yeah, oh yeah, man, come on me thought Jerry had more power than we did. Nope, not a drop more nor drop less. Nary you drop less? Charles, Yeah, I do too. It's a nice place to be, It's a nice state to live in, you know, mentally and physically agreed. I think here at the beginning, we're gonna do a rare We're not gonna read a listener mail, but a rare front loaded listener mail alert. We got um first of all. A couple of years ago, a woman named Graine Bailey suggested the topic of the Equal Rights Amendment uh, and at the time pointed out the difference between the words suffragette and suffragist. I clearly did not read that email close enough, because it took an email last week after one of us said suffragette in a in a recent episode. Uh, and a woman named Mary malan Oscars emailed and said, hey, by the way, look it up. I mean she wasn't mean, she was very nice. That sounded like I was being not too nice. She's very nice about it. She said, you know, look it up. There's a suffragette is sort of a disparaging term rather than suffragist, and it was tagged by you know, reporters in the early nineteen hundreds a thing and I think in Britain to mock people fighting for the women's right to vote. And I didn't know that until then. I'm glad to know, so thank you Mary. Once you hear that, it's it makes total sense, you know. Well, of course, I just I don't know. I never knew that. I never thought about it. I didn't either. This is how people learn stuff. I just assumed you were making a Bowie reference in the episode. I thought it was you that said I'm pretty sure with you, all right, Well either way, let's go with you. Okay, okay, we probably both did, or more more to the point, probably was me. But either way, that was a I think, hats off to you, buddy, for for coming up with that one. Well, I'll not say it again. You know what, Oh, you won't say it anymore? No, of course not. Okay, I thought you said, well, and i'll say it again. I think that's the opposite of what you were just saying, No, I won't. So we're talking today about the Equal Rights Amendment, which, um is it represents a really like discouragingly long swath of American history. Um. But if you set if you look at the whole thing just from a historian's eye or even an anthropologist side, it's really really interesting the history of this, the Equal Rights Amendment. If you kind of look at it much more subjectively and empathetic, empathically, empathetically, it's a lot harder to swallow, but it's still interesting. Nonetheless, And the yeah, so the Equal Rights Amendment is a constitutional amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment that would give women, um equal protection under the law to men that you could not discriminate you, No, you couldn't make a law that discriminated on the basis of sex. And I'll bet there's a lot of people out there chuck that say, well, that's already in the constitution, isn't it. Because there was a poll that the AP conducted into they found that about the people they they contacted thought that there was already equal protection for for women in the constitution. That's just not the case. But the same poll found of those respondents were in favor of enshrining that protection in the Constitution. So it's kind of weird that it's not in there. If people think it's already in there, and then when they find out it's not, they're in favor of it overwhelmingly. Yeah, and been we you know, we just happen to live in a country where pent of the American public could be in favor of certain legislation and it would you know, could very possibly fall on deaf ears when it comes to our politicians. Yeah, yes, because bipartisan support has been defined in recent times as you know, what the Houses of Congress agree to, not necessarily what the public agrees to, which is a different form of bipartisanship. And to me, if you ask me, the more important one, like if the if the public generally agrees on something, go with that. It seems like since they're elected representatives in on Christ they should kind of go with that. So h yes, I can't wait. It's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of big changes around here, everybody. Yes, it should we kind of go back to the beginnings. Yes we should, because it's you know, I associate the e r A with the seventies and the Ways Live movement, as we'll see. But it goes back a lot further than that. Yeah, it does. And it's it's crazy to think that since the early nineteen twenties they've been trying to get this enshrined in the constitution and it still isn't in the year one. But that is the case. Um. The first versions of the Equal Rights Amendment were written up in the early twenties by a suffragist UH named Alice Paul. Um. Some other women, notably one Crystal Eastman, also helped out a lot, and they also helped get the Nineteenth Amendment pass, which gave women the right to vote UH in nineteen twenty and they got together and said, UM, you know, I think the next step, obviously should be just to go ahead and put this in the constitution, that women have equal rights like men in all facets of life. It's worth pointing out here, UM that Um paul was a Quaker and a leader of the National Women's Party for like fifty years or something. Uh. And the reason I mentioned she was a Quaker because she actually named the amendment the Lucretia Mott Amendment, after another Quaker woman from the nineteenth century who was also a suffragists as well as an abolitionist. Yeah, if you peel back, you know, the layer of early twentieth century or nineteenth century progressive there's a about a percent chance they were a Quaker. All sorts of good stuff during It's pretty interesting. Yeah, it really is. We should do one on the Quakers for sure. Yeah. I have a friend who's a Quaker, and uh, she talks about Quaker meetings and Quaker weddings and stuff, and it all just seems so chill and peaceful. It's very appealing, right, Um. But so Lucretia Mott apparently was among what's considered the the beginning of the first wave of feminism. Where was you know, Um, not only do women need the right to vote? And this is like the eighteen thirties, eighteen forties, I think, because when she was really beginning to be active, Um, not only should women have the right to vote, but um, these people were also very frequently also abolitionists. Right, So when UM Congress started passing laws that protected the rights, that enshrined the rights of African Americans into the Constitution, into the law of the land, saying you cannot discriminate against people who based on their because their African Americans are based on their race. UM, women said, well, hey, just add sex in there, add sex, like, let's let's put that into the fourteenth Amendment. And UM, that didn't make it. It didn't make it into any of the amendments. And that was a I don't think it caused a rift or anything like that, but I think it was extremely disappointing to the suffragists who had also worked for abolition as well, that the two things couldn't go hand in hand. So, UM, African Americans started to gain civil rights decades before women did. Women gained the right to vote, UM, and women just kind of had to carry on. The suffragist movement continued on even after the abolitionist movement was successful. Yeah, and then nineteen three Alice Paul said, well, here's what we'll do, will reward this amendment that we've written. So it sounds more constitutional, I guess, And so it sounds a little more like the fourteenth Amendment, and the new version basically said equal rights. I'm sorry, equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or a bridge by the United States or by any state on account of sex. And you know, once again, this was proposed and um, you know for about thirty years in most sessions I think every session of Congress, every single one, and didn't get a lot of support. Um. And you know, it's not to say that all men in politics were against it, but it certainly was not their legislative priority, clearly. And if you have a run from n to nineteen seventy with only ten women serving in the Senate, never more than two at a time, then the writings on the wall that the e r A is is not just it's just not going to be a top priority. I know. But that's sad writing, you know what I mean, Like the fact that there weren't women, uh in Congress. It certainly doesn't let men off the hook like they can't do they can't pass this, can't possibly take up legislation that guarantees the equal rights to women because we're moon you know, like that's that's very bothersome. But there's something else in there, chuck. So from nineteen twenty three when Alice Paul first introduced that, all the way through to nine seventy, it was taken up in every session of Congress and it failed. And one of the things that stuck out to me was that there was a guy who um oversaw the House I think the House Judiciary Committee, um, and he was a Democrat from New York and he put the kai bosh on it. Emmanuel Seller. Yeah, so he put the kai bosh on. He would not let it get to a vote. And I was like, why this guy was a Democrat in New York, what was his problem? And it turns out that the opposition to the e r A, which is now very clearly amongst like it's liberals are for it, Progressives are for it, Conservatives are typically against it. Um. It used to be flip flopped where the liberals, especially New Deal liberals like Eleanor Roosevelt, were against the Equal Rights Amendment and conservatives like Eisenhower conservatives were typically in favor of it. In that bizarre yeah it is. I mean Roosevelt, she had her reasons. She wasn't just like, oh, I don't think women should have rights. I think she said, you know, she thought it would undermine workplace protections. Um. She was a part of Kennedy's commission. She chaired the commission, the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which I think the result was released posthuous posthumously that said it wasn't the ra A wasn't necessary, and she she kind of came around a little bit. She never gave a full throated endorsement, but she kind of stopped talking out against it. I think at a certain point she used to debate Alice Paul like publicly. They would, you know, have back and forth debates over you know, whether the e r A was needed and how helpful it was going to be. So, I mean, you don't like I I know that um Eleanor Roosevelt is frequently criticized as not uh out right feminist enough in a lot of ways, but she also clearly seems to have been a feminist in her own way for sure. Yeah, and we should point out to that. Emmanuel Seller in ninety two, in a very big upset, lost uh to a woman, an attorney named Elizabeth Holtzman, largely due to his opposition to the era A. So yeah. Okay. So so finally, by the early seventies, you're getting more and more women who are starting to show up in in Congress, um, like Bella as Bug and Shirley Chisholm, and they basically said, like, this is our priority. We're going to get this. This equal Rights Amendment finally passed through Congress. And I don't know if it just happened to be like an era of kind of bipartisan sentiment um or what the deal was, but everybody finally came together and that thing got passed. Like if a piece of legislation has ever gotten passed, it was this one in a bipartisan manner. Yeah. And you know what, Uh, we'll get to how that passed. But a really big reason is because it started becoming a big deal in the media with this second wave, like you mentioned of the women's lib movement, and in no small part by a woman named Betty for Dan who wrote a book called The Feminine Mystique that in nine sold a million copies. And it's if she probably gets a at least a short following her own she was really interesting. Um. The reason she wrote this book is because she did a survey for a college reunion for her former classmates, learned that many of her former female classmates were not super happy about being homemakers and not being able to work, and center down a research rabbit hole on This kind of became her passion project because she wanted to write a magazine article, like a really in depth win. No one wanted it, so she ended up publishing it as a book called The Feminine Mystique, which kind of rocked the world of America in the early early to mid sixties. Yeah, because like in this book, she's basically saying, like this whole this whole thing, we're all we're all going along with this idea that the most the highest ideal a woman can aspire to is to be the best wife and mother she possibly can be, and that that's her identity. It is as someone's wife, as someone's mother, that she doesn't have her own identity that's independent of all of that. That is a crushing a way to live for a lot of women, not all women, as we'll see, but a lot of women. And she spoke up for a lot of them. Um, And I believe that this was kind of it was already kind of out there in pieces like people were talking about this, but Betty fre Dan like put it all together and put it on the map and got everyone talking. From what I've ever seen, like almost single handedly started the second wave of feminism. Yeah, and she put a pin in this little mini series. She was played by Tracy Ullman UH in a mini series last year called Mrs America that we're going to get to a little more in depth than a second Yeah. So, um, Betty fre Dan publishes the feminine mystique, like you said, just totally rocked everybody's world for for better or worse depending on your ideas about what the feminine mystique was about. And saying, um, but yeah, like you're saying, like that really laid the groundwork to this bipartisan um passing in Congress of UH Equal Rights Amendment in nineteen seventy two, I believe, right, Yeah, so it passes in a big way. I think you said ninety three p Ninety three point four in the House, ninety one point three in the Senate, but which I can't wrap my head around that. How did one third of a senator is that that senator cross section of New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Michigan. Uh, here's the deal, though. If you want something and shrined in the constitution, that's a big deal in this country. They don't do it willy nilly, nor should they um. But you need not only like once it passes that it's not automatic, then the state legislatures have to ratify it by a two thirds margin, which means at least thirty eight states have to ratify it. Um. And the e r A had a stipulation that said, if that isn't done in seven years, then you gotta go back to the drawing board. And that was that was not in the actual e r A. That was not in the constitutional amendment. That was past and that's going to become very important later. But it was in the legislation where that e r A the amendment was sent to the states for ratification, it said do this in seven years. Right, Okay, that's that's just like that little slight distinction makes a big difference down the road. Oh yeah, I mean the r people pushing for the e r A certainly would not have wanted an expiration date. No, And there's as far as I could tell that they haven't ever attached an expiration date to an amendment to be ratified before it was just and it was also an arbitrary period of time too, So just just chew on that, put put that wadded up piece of gum in the back of your cheek and save it for later. I wonder in the debate if they were like, well, I mean, how many years? Seven seven sounds good? Pour the Scotch. Uh. So within one year, um, thirty of the thirty eight states needed ratified it, which was super fast, and everyone was like, you know, proponents like this is great, man, it looks like this thing is gonna sail right into the constitution. Uh. And then a woman popped up named Phillis schlafe Lee and we're gonna take a break here and we'll talk about Phillis right after this. And I guess, depending on where your views are, Chuck, we should have introduced Phillis chef Lee with the the Darth Vader theme song when she made first makes her appear, Dune Dune, Dune, Dune. It's exactly right. Did you watch any of these interviews and debates, Yes, dude, you could. It's really interesting. If you have your wits about you, you could despise everything that ever came out of Philish Lafeley's mouth. It's very very easy to do. Um. She equates gay people, which I guess in the fashion of the time she calls homosexuals. She calls them perverts. Says that they should not have any rights afforded to married men and women. They shouldn't be able to adopt children. She says, really despicable. I didn't hear that one. She says a lot of very despicable stuff. Um, and her whole viewpoint is despicable to a lot of people. But there are very few people walking around out there who have the poise and self possession to go into the lions den and speak for whatever she was convinced of was right. Um, that's you. She has to be credited to at least that degree. No matter what you think about her mind, she was she had a lot of poise, I guess you could say. And it's really kind of something to watch because I saw this one. Did you see the the Good Morning American debate from nine seventy between her and for Dan Yeah? Man, And it's like it's really clear what a skilled debater she was and how rattled she could get somebody. Yeah. Uh, I mean she clearly. I felt bad for for Dan. She was doing a good job, but she was she was getting piste off and you could tell that she just liked to get under people's skin while she just remained perfectly, you know, erect in her seat with perfect posture. And uh, that Mrs. America series, which it was on our list and I'm gonna bump it back up to next in line now to watch. But she was played, um really really well judging from just the the accent and the mannerisms by Cate Blanchett. It can do no wrong. Yeah, I want to see that series too, um, but yes, she so. If you see those two debating, it's like a st in contrast, where Philis chaff Lee she Laughlely is um basically sitting there at tea time at the country club before the polo match. And Betty fre Dan, if you put like a beret in sunglasses on a French cigarette in her mouth, she's like sitting at the beating at cafe, like listening to a poetry jam or something like this. Just these two totally contrasting personalities. Be A Cheffly debated her under the table, and it's not like Betty fre Dan was was an intellectual slouch by any measure. But it's just Philish Laughly could rattle anybody. Anybody, she could rattle Santa Claus. I'm just gonna say it. Yeah, I mean, she kind of made herself out to be just this homemaker. Um. She would enter when she introduced herself at engagement, she would thank her husband for letting her come there. But when you kind of peek behind the curtain, she had a master's in political science, she had a law degree. She ran for Congress when she was twenty seven years old and lost. And she was um, sort of pre nineteen eighties, a big part in at the very least, I don't even think they called it the Christian Right at the time, that kind of organizing what would later become the Christian Right movement. Yeah, you can make a really good case that Philish laughy um laid the groundwork for the current Republican Party in every way from from Reagan onward to today. Um and and yeah, she basically said like, I'm just a housewife from St. Louis, proud housewife, wife and mother of six from St. Louis. Um And in a lot of ways she was like she made reference to law school during her debate to Betty for Dan and she sounded like she was in law school then, so it seems like she was just a woman who said, I don't agree with this, and I'm going to put a stop to it, and stood in front of this unstoppable title wave and stopped it. She stopped it. She stopped the E r A from being ratified by the states right at the eleventh and a half hour before it was ever passed and ratified by the thirty eight states. You said they got thirty states in the first year. By seven they were up the thirty five states. They just needed three more, three more states, and the whole thing was going to become the law of the Lane. And Philish Slafely got in the way of that almost single handedly at first. Yeah, and you know she launched her her group was called stop e r A, which you know, we obsess about acronyms. It's sort of annoying when the first letter of an acronym is the actual acronym. But stop ere A stood first, stop taking our privileges. And her argument, you know, she was like, and she used this to her advantage in those debates, like see how angry these feminists are She's she kind of coin that term. I think about the angry women's Live movement. These angry feminists, they us want they wanted to throw down everything that makes us a female and everything that makes us women, and they want to just set fire to it. And before you know what, women are going to be able to be drafted in the armed forces. Never happened. Uh, you know, they're they're not going to be separate bathrooms or locker rooms anymore from this point on. Not true. That started to happen more in recent years, wrapped up same sex marriage. I mean we'll we'll get to that. How she kind of co opted gay rights and um, reproductive rights into all this just to sort of coalesce that movement. Uh, and said, you know, women are going to lose their right to alimony and child support. Never happened. And just the life as we know it, in the family as we know it. And this is something fifty years on. All this stuff is still so relevant, like the dissolution of what you know, people think was the perfect family in nineteen fifty basically yeah, because I mean so she was a troll, like a a proto troll. But like the kind. You didn't do it online, you did it in person. But her her points were coherent and understandable to people who agreed with her, and they were that like, yeah, like the man's role is to provide for and take care of the woman, and the woman provides like the domestic labor, and that's just the division of labor between the sexes. And if if we have the c r A, that's going to go away, and then there's going to be all this other horrible stuff of that's going to break down the fabric of society and do we really want that? And so by by taking the argument away from the idea of whether women have a fundamental human right to equal protection under the law as men, which is who disagrees with that? Nobody disagrees with that, uh, and mixing it up with all these other what ifs and potential social outcomes and the ruin of the family, gay men teaching your children at school, Um, that is what can alidated people into a movement behind fellish laughly. And it was it was really underhanded, but it worked really really well and it still works today. Like she came up with that from what I can tell. Yeah, in seventy three, when Roevie Wade passed, she was again savvy enough to say, well, here's something else I can I can seize on, and I can wrap this up like there's a there's a whole. There's a really large block of voters who are conservative Christians who you know, we've never really intermingled politics like that before. And so let's wrap this up in pro choice. Let's wrap it up with gay rights, big culture war issues of the time to kind of rally and like I said, coalescence group together in order to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. And like you said it, you know it worked in a big, big way. And uh, I can't wait to watch that TV show. I can't either, And I don't want to suck all the oxygen away from Betty for Dan and the other feminists. But um, I was saying that Phillish Laughley was a troll, a proto troll. And if you read some of the stuff that she said in public, sometimes she sounds like a spokesperson for the Taliban. Like she said things like, um that that sexual harassment on the job was not a problem for virtuous women, like you know exactly, um or, and that the Adam bomb was a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God. Just things that would drive any any liberal or progressive, especially a feminist, up the wall. And in fact, Betty for Dan in this very famous debate from three years before that Good Morning America appearance that you and I saw um, she said, uh, you're you're, you're like you should be burned at the stake for for betraying your your gender, any favors and stuff like that, because that just allowed Laughley to say, see there exactly, that's exactly right. But she could just get under your skin like that. So fast forward many many years too kind of now almost Uh. In seventeen, after about forty years of not much movement, UH, Nevada became the first New state to ratify the e r A, thanks in no small part to State Senator Pat Spearman, and she said, this bill is about a quality period umen. Just a few years ago Illinois UM came aboard as well. And now it's back up to thirty seven. Did we mention that five of the states d ratified or rescinded their ratification. I don't think we did. We did not, and I think that's an important point here. Yeah, Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, and South Dakota be very part of your legislatures. After nineteen seventy seven, they um de ratified or de certified, not de certified. They rescinded it. They did. They said, this is based on there's actually precedence for that. Ohio and New Jersey both rescinded their support for the Fourteenth Amendment once their legislatures changed control to um white supremacists. Basically in the nineteenth century, they said, we take back our our vote for the fourteenth Amendment. It also said a president though that Congress ignored that and still counted Ohio and New Jersey as having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment because they did officially, right, So it goes back up to thirty five. Then, uh, Illinois made at thirty seven in January of last year. It's crazy that it took this long. Virginia finally became the thirty eight state, and so proponents of the e r A said, all right, we got there, that's the thirty eight um. This thing should have never had an expiration date to begin with. That's dumb. Whoever said seven years? And then Porto Scotch. Uh, they should be burned at the stake. And um, they said, let's just get this thing done. And they said, you know what, back in seventy seven amendment was passed but not ratified it until two hundred years later, two hundred and two years, so like there's precedent there, and that was about prohibiting the law raising or lowering taxes for congressional salaries from taking effect until their next term, like big, big stuff. Not knocking it. It's it's important, I guess. But they said, you know that was done, so this thing shouldn't have had an expiration date to begin with. Opponents say, well, no, there was an expiration date, so we have to honor it. And uh, that's you know, that's the deal. Sorry. And there was even a three year extension that brought it up too, and by the time that extension was running out and it did not look like anything was going to move or happen. There no more states were going to move to ratify it. Even the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups basically through in the talent said it's done. We the e r A lost this time. It's not gone forever, but this amazing immense again tidal weight, this with just the momentum of a freight train running through the country is now dead just a few years after, which is just nuts that that happened. It's just crazy. But that's that's the fact that now thirty eight states have officially voted in favor of ratifying. It set off a flurry of lawsuits here in the United States, and when Virginia became the last one in and basically everybody in anyone suing the National Archives and Records Administration UM to either certify and put it into the National Archives or the National Record that UM that this is now a part of the Constitution, or to not do that. And it's totally up in the air of what that's going to be. But apparently, UM, a lot of people, not everyone, because there's plenty of people are like, it's official. Now take all the b s away, and this is an official law of the land. UM. There are plenty of people who are proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment who say we need to start over again. And one of those people, UM was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who said it needs to be voted on again. We need to pick up again. Basically from square one. Yeah, and I think and we'll talk about all this stuff. But I think there have been so many laws enacted since then that do protect so many of these rights. I think people like RBG were like, you know what, let's start over, let's rewrite it for the modern times, UM, making sure everything is in there that we still need and yeah, and and revote on it. And you know, I think that's reasonable, So do that. So let's let's take a break, UM, and then we'll talk come back and talk about those questions like do we need the R and what would happen if we did pass the R? How about that sounds good? Alright, Chuck. So you made mention of like a lot of laws that have been created since the since UM the e R A was UM passed I guess by Congress, uh, and even before then that protect women as a as a form of what's called the protective class in the United States. They're protective classes that include UM races, religions, UM, sex, UH, the sexual orientation UH, and gender identity. Is becoming a protected class. And if you're a member of a protected class, it means that if there's a law that excludes you from something, whether intentionally or not, that law is considered discriminatory and you can file a lawsuit against it, and then the courts have to apply different um tests to it to see just how discriminatory it is or if it's discriminatory at all, and whether or not it should be struck down or overruled um. And the reason that sex is a protected class even without the Equal Rights Amendment is thanks very much largely to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was an absolute legal pioneer in figuring out how to get women the protections under the law um that they were looking for with the equal Equal Rights Amendment without the Equal Rights Amendment being part of the constitution. Yeah, I mean, I think people that say that we don't need the e r A. And it's a very fine line between saying I'm against the r A and saying I don't think we need the e r A. It's it all falls under the same banner ultimately. But people that say we don't need the r A, say, you know, we got the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, and race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. You can't hire and fire peer higher and fire people based on that. That applies to pay and benefits to there's also the Equal Pay Act of nineteen sixty three that say there should be equal pay for equal work. That's didn't you know, in practice hasn't worked out that way because there's still a wage gap. We did a good episode on that. Yeah, that was a good one. Violence Against Women Act of nineteen UH saying here Federal resources for Domestic and Sexual violence. Um, and you like prevention and prosecution of that counseling and UH, this one however, and you know, put a pin in this one, because this is one that is used also for people that say we do need the A R A because that one expired and is still hung up and has not gotten congressional reauthorization since twenty nineteen because of politics. The Violence Against Women Act. Yeah, and then Title nine is the last one in nineteen seventy two. Uh. Title nine is the one you hear about mostly in college athletics that says, I mean, it says a lot of things, but in terms of college athletics, that had the biggest impact, saying you gotta have the same amount of women's sports as men's sports. Uh, in the same like accommodations and UH, scholarships and all that stuff. And then so like, we don't need the e r A because we have all these things. So yeah, so you have law, and then you also have case law too. That UM basically hinges on the fourteenth Amendment, which says that a citizen of the United States can't be discriminated against or or is do equal protection under the law UM by the States and by the US. And that was written in the in in um past, in the Fourteenth Amendment in the wake of slavery. It was meant to UM basically make free recently freed African Americans full citizens in the United States. But it doesn't specify on the basis of race or on the basis of religion. It just says, if you're a U. S citizen, you get equal protection under the law. And so Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the reasons she's such a legal pioneer here in this respect is because she's the one who figured out how to argue that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to sex as well. And the whole thing about legal stuff and this is all new to me. But but it's really kind of interesting is that depending on how enshrined classes a protected group is in law. Um, the more protected it is, the stricter the scrutiny that judges are going to apply to determining whether a law is discriminatory or not. And the most the most scrutiny you can apply to something, it's called strict scrutiny, and that's typically reserved for things that are protected by the Constitution. And that means that if you have a law that even remotely steps on the rights of one of those protected classes, it's probably an illegal, discriminatory law. Yeah, how does that work with how does that work in practice? Does that mean they just spend more time or like what what does that even mean? So? I think what it means is that you if you pass a law, and let's say that I pass a law and it accidentally discriminates against your ability to get your hands on oatmeal. I can get all the oatmeal I want, but you can't. Let's say, in the Constitution, Chuck is specifically protected under the law. That means that this law that prevents you from getting oatmeal, that's a discriminatory law. And so it's going to be really easy for you to bring a lawsuit and for a judge to say, like there's even a little bit of discrimination here. This law is illegal because it's discriminated against Chuck and he's it says in the Constitution you can't discriminate against Chuck. It just means that that the standards for that law um to stand. Uh, like everyone else on the planet basically has to benefit from you not getting oatmeal for some reason, and that that that's just not how laws work. So it would be really easy for you to to bring a lawsuit and get that law overturned because it discriminates it because you're a protected class. Now, if it's just like everybody likes Chuck, but it doesn't say in the Constitution that you can't be discriminated against, they're going to use a slightly less strict test to determine whether the thing is is a discriminatory law or not. And so maybe yeah, it generally um promotes oatmeal use among other people, among all people, but there's some other people who don't get it too. That doesn't really matter because you know, it's not enshrined to the Constitution. So it's almost like degrees and once you're in the Constitution as you as a protected class, like it is really difficult to discriminate against you. And that's one reason why people say, no, we need this, we need this in the constitution because women, uh and sex and gender even should be a protected class. You should not be able to discriminate against somebody based on that. Yeah, I mean that's the main um. That is the main argument for proponents of the r A is saying, no, let's make this of the real deal. Um there. You know, cases can be overturned, laws can be reversed, Executive actions can have devastating impacts, um. And and only being enshrined in the Constitution will make this like like you said, just so locked down and protected that people can't mess with it anymore. I think we've seen in recent years that you know, precedent can be argued and laws can be overturned, and it's like, sure, we have all these laws that passed since the r A first came uh was ratified you know, in the nineteen seventies. But it doesn't take much, you know, especially when you look at a very imbalanced Supreme Court when Pete for people to kind of worry that these these things can be taken away. Yeah. And I mean, like there was a famous quote from antonin Scalia when he was alive and Ajustice on the Supreme Court basically saying like, no, the Constitution most decidedly does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sex. And you know, when when you hear Supreme Court justice saying that, it's like, well, you know, how many cases is it gonna take before he rules like, no, you can totally discriminate against somebody on the basis of sex if it's in the constitution. It doesn't matter what Anton and its school or any other justice thinks. It's in the constitution, So that that level of protection, like you were saying, would be, it's just a totally different level of protection than you know, customarily we we don't discriminate. It's no, you can't discriminate. That's the difference between those two things. Yeah, and not just reversing laws, but passing new laws that maybe violate violate that equal treatment under the law. Uh. And you know some other things that that that constitutionally um could come into play if if it were to go through is something like the Pink tax I. Don't think we've ever done a show on the Pink tax I. Don't think so either. But this is you know, this is the notion that like you know, from everything that like similar products for men and women, uh, they charge women more than they do for men for these products. UM to stuff like you know, menstrual equality or equity. Basically you know, tampons, uh, pads other menstruation products should not be taxed anymore. They should be like treated like any other essential item. Yeah. And then so so there are a lot of things, a lot of protections that it would afford. One thing that frequently is UM cited as as UM protecting women against is like violence, like say, domestic violence. From what I read, it probably wouldn't UM because it protects against being discriminated against by the law. It doesn't necessarily afford protection from like an individual person or something like that, necessarily a company, although being in trined in the constitution, you could really sue a company's pants off for discriminating against you. UM. But there are there are some things that would do, some things that wouldn't do, and then there's some things up in the air. And one of the reasons why this is still such a cultural UM flashpoint still today in is because now more than ever UM it has become equated with taxpayer funded abortion. And the reasoning behind people who oppose the e r A because they think it's basically tantamount too just completely repealing any restrictions on abortion. Abortion from that point on is only women can get abortions, and so if there's a law against abortion, there's a law that's discriminating against women. Therefore you can't have laws regulating abortions. And so that's why, especially with the Christian right, it's still such a flash point today, and that's why starting from scratch again is going to be no easier than it was back in nineteen two. Yeah, now you're probably right. Uh, it's pretty frustrating though to get to that thirty eight state threshold, and because of some dumb, arbitrary expiration date placed on it, it's still being held up in the year yeah, in the year one. And then also, the United States has an obligation is like basically the leader of the free world to join the rest of the Western nations in in enshrining equal protection and the law for bisex um. I guess the United States is one of only twenty eight countries in the world that doesn't guarantee gender equality, one of chuck and a hundred percent of the countries that have written their constitution since nineteen fifty have included some guarantee of gender equality in those constitutions. So it's kind of sad that we don't have that still to this day. Yeah, and if you look around the country this, you know, Dave Ruse helped us out with this article, and he points out stuff like, you know, if you go to Nepal, their Supreme Court struck Donalogu exempting marital rape from criminal prosecution because of its e er a clause. UH. In Tanzania, UH, the Court of Appeal struck down a law that allowed a fifteen year old girls to be married without parental consent, while boys only had to be at eighteen. So, you know, when you look at countries around the world that are are seemingly ahead of the USA and in terms of equal protection, is just it's it's baffling and disappointing. Baffling, is right. Yeah, do you got anything else? I got nothing else. It's good stuff. I have one more thing. If you're give me another second, you're ready. So when I was researching this, my head was just spinning again and again and again. Um and It reminded me of something that I read recently, and that is as really easy to get bounced around from one outrage to another, to one thing, to care about this issue, and then oh wait what about this issue? And I saw some advice somewhere I don't remember where, but it was, if you want to affect change, pick one issue and dedicate yourself to it. And that doesn't mean that you don't care about all the other issues that you do care about. It's just this one issue is your specialty. You're an expert in it, and you're probably going to get further going like that. You're probably going to be able to see more change doing that than you would just kind of bouncing from issue to issue to issue. So I mean, if this like really got to you and you really want to do something about it, make the make getting the e R A past your specialty, you know totally. Okay, Well, thanks for letting me stand on the soapbox for a second. And since I'm getting off of my soapbox and Chuck is putting it up in the soapbox caddy that we keep here in the studio, UM, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this a ninja in the Connecticut for us. Nice? Did you read this one? No? I haven't. This is kind of crazy. It's long, but it's worth it. Hey, guys. When I was about seven, my mom married the man I called dad, and we promptly moved from Texas to Connecticut, where we used to go camping a lot. On one trip or I'll out in the woods midnight, rolls around and go to bed. About an hour later, I heard my tent on zipping and my dad started shaking my foot, saying, come out here, there's an effing ninja. So I throw on some slippers in my jacket, but grudgingly trudge out to see a kid, you not a ninja sitting next to the fire pit. I remember actually shaking my head in disbelief to reaffirm this wasn't some very strange dream. And now when I say there was a ninja, I mean full black garb with a slit to see through. This dude had twin swords on his back, throwing stars, tiger claws for climbing, grapple hooks, all the tools. Apparently, my dad saw him rolling out of a bush and I had to see what was going on. The story behind this guy was he was a national a National guardsman and also ran a jew kindo and ninajut So do jo and Rhode Island as his main gig. We sit for the next couple of hours and this guy is just showing a stuff like how fast you can climb a tree or how to throw a star. The night progresses and he asked if we were familiar with Bruce Lee, as an average fan of Enter the Dragon from around eight. I said yes, and he asked if I'd ever seen his one inch punch. Excitedly, I said sure, I have. And then his name is Brian Ninsha, he said Brian then asked if he could demonstrate it on me, a pudgy twelve year old. I said no, thanks, I'm good and I explicitly did not want to fly backwards with any force uh. And he said no, no, I'll do it with an open palm so it doesn't hurt. I give in. He positions me safely away from the fire pit with my back facing the tent, about seven ft away from anything. Uh. Never trust anyone by the way whose instruction is okay, Now just stand there while I hit you. Uh. He inhales deeply does the flath hand against my stern um, just like can kill Bill. Then in an instant, I saw his muscles tense up as he audibly exhaled sharply and hit my chest open handed. I go airborne and hit my tailbone next on a tent steak seven ft behind me, and can't really walk without crutches for a couple of weeks. Kids at school never believe me when prodding about why I was on crutches, because who would believe a kid that says I had to run in with a ninja in the middle of the woods. Uh. That is from Drew Carroll and shaying Cheyenne Wyoming, Shyenne, Wyoming. That is a great, great story. That was a magnificent listener mail. I mean, hats off for that one. Thank you. And if you're Brian and you're out there, I want to hear what happened to you. Yeah, Uh, he's probably He's like, I've been doing a ten year bid for beating a kid up in the woods, but the kids said I could hit him. Oh boy. Well, if you want to get in touch with this like Drew and try to top Drew zie a listener mail. Drew, by the way, is the current listener male Champion. UM, we want to see if you can do it. You can send us an email, wrap it up spanking on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

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