VA House and Senate Pass Moot ERA
Yesterday, the Senate passed the House version of the so-called Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by a vote of 27-12-1, and the House passed the Senate version 58-40. These votes complete the charade that’s been going on in Virginia for several years where the liberal left has attempted to convince Virginians that the ERA is about equal rights rather than abortion. It marks the end of a discussion in which proponents falsely tell our next generation of girls that the law doesn’t protect them in employment, help them achieve elected office, or allow them to be in leadership positions.
What’s unfortunate is that proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have claimed that all of society’s ills will go away with the passage of this Amendment. What they fail to realize is that even where women have incidences of mistreatment, the law is not devoid of justice. Because women’s equal rights are fully protected in the US Constitution under the 5th and 14th amendments, and under both federal and state law, women who have inequality in pay or employment should settle the matters in court rather than restore the vague, outdated language of the past. It’s far easier to pass more words in a new law than to do the hard work of holding men accountable for their actions and raising the next generation of boys to respect women.
The fact that a female Speaker of the House and female Senate Pro Tempore didn't need the ERA to rise to their current positions of power is more evidence that the ERA is simply unnecessary. Strong, successful women don't need an outdated, vague symbolic bill to be successful.
Just two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice informed the national Archivist that the ERA is not properly before the states and thus any vote of ratification is NOT considered valid. Of course, passage of the ERA in Virginia will lead to years of litigation, ultimately to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, already underway is litigation by states that have ratified and subsequently rescinded their ratification within the legal deadline decades ago.
If the ERA were somehow deemed legally valid, the true impact of its passage would be to roll back the gains made by women in employment and athletics, and cement legal abortion into the U.S. Constitution. Those who voted against abortion on demand bills already before the General Assembly, but vote for the ERA, are counting on their voters not connecting the dots. The entire point of the ERA is to carve abortion on demand into the Constitution. The entire point of the ERA is to carve abortion on demand into the Constitution.
The Equal Rights Amendment is opposed by every major pro-life organization in the country because true equality cannot rest on the notion of sameness in which abortion is a necessary ingredient of women being considered identical to men. A twenty-first century notion of equality continues to embrace the uniqueness of womanhood and would never expect women to look and function just like men in order to receive the same employment opportunities and pay. A modern notion of equality between genders would never erase the entire notion of gender to accomplish fairness in athletics. The Equal Rights Amendment may sound benign but it’s a Trojan horse to accomplish many of the liberal left’s ideals.
