New Drive Afoot to Pass Equal Rights Amendment By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name — the Women’s Equality Amendment — and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session. …

The amendment consists of 52 words and has one key line: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination.

Although more states are considering ratifying the ERA now than at any other time in the past 25 years, activists still face serious hurdles. Every statewide officeholder in Arkansas endorsed the amendment this year, but the bill stalled in committee last week after Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly came to Little Rock to testify against the measure. [mjh: Schlafly is proof the good die young.]

In the 1970s, Schlafly and others argued that the ERA would lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms. Today, she warns lawmakers that its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows. …

The ERA, originally introduced in Congress in 1923, gained popularity in the mid-1960s. In March 1972, it cleared the first of two hurdles: passing both chambers of Congress by the required two-thirds vote.

Thirty state legislatures ratified it the next year. Congress extended by three years its seven-year deadline for ratification, but the decade passed without approval by the required 38 states. ERA backers have since introduced the resolution in every Congress, but only now do they believe they have a realistic chance of success.

Legal scholars debate whether the 35 state votes to ratify the amendment are still valid.

In 1997, three professors argued in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law that the ERA remained viable because in 1992 the Madison Amendment — which affects congressional pay raises — became the 27th constitutional amendment 203 years after it first won congressional approval. Under that precedent, advocates say, the ERA should become part of the Constitution once three-quarters of the states ratify it, no matter how long that takes. …
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The Amendment In Question

The text of the Equal Rights Amendment, as proposed in 1972 by the 92nd Congress, and as published in Volume 86 of U.S. Statutes at Large (Pages 1523-1524), reads as follows:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

I’ve supported the ERA from the beginning. People like Schlafly and Anita Bryant should be enough to discredit the opposition.

As an aside and a plate-of-shrimp, my longtime companion, MR, ‘discovered’ the 27th Amendment a couple of months ago — she who carries a well-thumbed copy of the Constitution with her much of the time (alá Senator Sam Irvin). MR was quizzing a young friend in preparation for a high school test on the Constitution and threw in what she thought would be a trick question: What’s the 27th Amendment? To which she received the unexpected but correct answer. I don’t know how we missed the passage of an amendment to the Constitution. We were probably busy celebrating the periodic downfall of the Republican Party. (Their success is always their undoing — note to Democrats.) mjh

Intolerable Darfur

Western leaders are again saying the slaughter is unacceptable. Will they again do nothing?

EUROPEAN UNION leaders spoke out strongly on Darfur at a summit in Berlin on Sunday. “The situation,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, “is intolerable. . . . The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable.” “The suffering is unbearable,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I want to state frankly that we have to consider stronger sanctions.”

It took less than 24 hours for the backing down to start. “You have to make sure that you do not raise expectations that cannot be met,” an E.U. spokesman in Brussels told the Associated Press. Officials cited the usual obstacles: the resistance of U.N. Security Council member China to sanctions; the unwillingness of Arab and other Islamic governments to support steps against the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir; the difficulty of military operations in an area the size of France.

Those are the excuses that Western governments — including the Bush administration, which labeled the killing in Darfur “genocide” in 2004 — have used for several years to explain the lack of effective action. Meanwhile, the slaughter goes on: According to the United Nations the death toll in Darfur exceeds 200,000, while more than 2 million have been driven from their homes — including 86,000 this year.

China’s inexcusable defense of the regime continues, as does that of Arab governments that portray themselves as partners of the West. On Saturday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flatly rejected a request by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that he do more to pressure Mr. Bashir. “The issue is not pressure,” said Mr. Mubarak’s foreign minister.

In fact, more pressure is exactly what is needed. In addition to overseeing a renewed rampage by government-backed militias in Darfur, Mr. Bashir has reneged on an agreement to allow U.N. peacekeepers to join a tiny African Union force in the province. That position won’t change unless either the regime’s supply of arms or its oil-fueled economic boom is threatened.

Britain is said to be preparing a new Security Council resolution. But if the European Union leaders mean what they say, they don’t need to wait for the Security Council. E.U. sanctions against Sudan are relatively light; they could be extended to cover trade and investment. Mr. Blair spoke of imposing a no-fly zone to impede air attacks in Darfur. That’s an operation that would necessarily be carried out by Western powers, which could undertake it without U.N. sanction, as they did in Kosovo. If the situation in Darfur is “intolerable” and “unbearable” — and it is — Western governments should stop delaying the remedies that lie in their hands.

I think there is a serious flaw in this piece of art (Uproar hits Fla. Confederate flag show – Yahoo! News). The formal gallows invokes a false image — who did the Confederates hang in such a way or by whom were they so executed? No, the proper way to hang a Confederate flag is from a tree limb. Perhaps it should be stretched over the bloody face of a dead man. There should be a crowd at his feet, half of whom are enraged and the other half of whom look like they are at the county fair. mjh

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.

http://www.boscarol.com/nina/html/where/strangefruit.html

Billie Holiday sings Strange Fruit