Equal Rights Amendment
During the 20th century, a contested political battle in the United States involved a proposed amendment to the Constitution commonly known as the Equal Rights Amendment. Alice Paul, a women’s suffrage leader, wrote the original text of the proposed amendment in 1923. It stated: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, had been ratified a few years before, and women’s rights activists pushed for additional legal protections with proposals like Paul’s equal rights draft. In 1972, nearly fifty years after Paul proposed the amendment, the Congress of the United States passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by a wide margin of 354 to 24 in the House of Representatives and 84 to 8 in the Senate. Per constitutional requirements, Congress sent the amendment to state legislatures for ratification before it could be added to the Constitution.
Public support for the ERA was mixed, even among those advocating for greater opportunities for women. Throughout the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s, many state legislatures voted to adopt the ERA, and yet, despite wide support in Congress, the amendment failed to achieve the required threshold of three-fourths of the states (38 at the time) voting to ratify within the extended deadline of ten years. The margin was slim, a sign of how contested the ERA had become: only three states’ ratification shy of being adopted. Many legislators and public commentators called for expanding women’s rights but not through a constitutional amendment. Others, more readily opposed to the ERA, worried that the amendment would remove specific legal protections for women already in force, like alimony, or that women could be drafted into combat roles in the military during a war. Many of those opposing the ERA were concerned that the amendment could remove a legal distinction between men and women and in turn threaten traditional gender roles and activities embraced by a large number of women.
Latter-day Saints entered this public debate from a variety of perspectives. While some agreed that the ERA was an ideal pathway toward expanding and protecting women’s rights, others believed the same ends could be accomplished through reforming specific laws. Barbara Smith, the Relief Society general president between 1974 and 1984, and several other senior Church leaders worried that the ERA could have the unintended consequence of undermining distinct privileges women already held. President Spencer W. Kimball was among those voicing concern over the broad language of the ERA, cautioning that, in future court cases, it might be interpreted in ways that would ultimately erode and injure families. These concerns led Church leaders to encourage Latter-day Saints to speak out against the amendment. They and leaders of other religious groups in the United States joined a large coalition that called on state legislatures not to ratify. They did, however, share support for some reforms championed by ERA supporters, such as “equal pay for equal work” and continuing to utilize the law to protect women’s rights and freedoms.
Related Topics: Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Movement