Reject or Rescind the Equal Rights Amendment
What follows is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared in the March 13, 1974 issue of The Review of The News, a precursor to The New American. When reading it, please keep in mind when it was written — 1974. Many decades before maintaining separate bathroom and locker-room facilities for men and women became controversial, Dan Smoot warned that making any such distinctions between the sexes would be obliterated — under the innocuous-sounding Equal Rights Amendment. That the cultural subversion Smoot warned against has advanced as far as it has — without the ERA — is a testament to his ability to detect the destructive designs behind the revolutionary agenda of which adoption of the ERA is a crucial part.
The idealizing of women — honoring them, especially mothers, as if on a pedestal — has always been an obvious fact of American life. It may appear to be mere ritualism in the daily routine of individual women. Yet, it is basic, not only in our romantic concept of what life ought to be like, but in our living. It has profoundly influenced our moral codes, our laws, our customs, all of our institutions, and even our taste; and it has given women a special status which they do not enjoy elsewhere.
Nonetheless, politicians have long been under intermittent pressure to adopt an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, to protect women by outlawing sexual discrimination. For decades Congress resisted, or ignored, the pressure. Then, on March 22, 1972, both houses of Congress, by large majorities, passed and submitted to the states for ratification a proposed Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.). Within two hours, Hawaii had ratified it. New Hampshire and Nebraska ratified the next day. Within two months, ten other states had ratified: Iowa, Idaho, Delaware, Kansas, Texas, Maryland, Tennessee, Alaska, Rhode Island, and New Jersey — in that order.
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