The ERA: IT Serves You 'Rights'

Instead of lobbying for special rights in the face of growing opposition, the Left is promoting legislation that would quietly usher in their agenda through the back door at the state level.

Arkansas is facing a powerful challenge by anti-family groups lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which, until recently, was a largely irrelevant piece of feminist propaganda dating back to the early 1970s. Now, state Rep. Lindsley Smith (D) is dusting off the amendment in a campaign to "protect women," when in fact, the U.S. Constitution already does so. Smith is pushing her state to ratify the ERA, which seeks not to end discrimination, injustice, or chauvinism, but to undermine motherhood, traditional sexuality, and innate gender differences.

The ERA specifically states that there can be no discrimination based on "sex," language which has since been used in the courts as an argument to legalize same-sex marriage in such states as Maryland, Hawaii and New Mexico. Now the Left, desperate to find some way around public opposition to homosexual marriage, hopes to revive the amendment under the guise of "female oppression." As the state's Republican Assembly points out, the ERA is problematic because it surrenders more rights than it confers. If approved, the ERA could forfeit: women's rights by requiring them to serve in the military; voters' rights by allowing the courts to interpret whether the ERA nullifies the state's marriage protection amendment; and the right to life by requiring the state to pay for abortions as it would for any other "medical procedure."