It's time to make History Virginia & Ratify the ERA!
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in
Staunton, Virginia. In 1912 became president of of the United States.
On the day before Wilson’s inauguration in March 1913, the
Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and
local suffrage groups organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., to bring
the question of women’s suffrage to the forefront of national and presidential
attention. More than half a million people marched in the parade, which also
met large numbers of protesters.
It is said that when Wilson arrived in town, he found the
streets empty of welcoming crowds and was told that everyone was on
Pennsylvania Avenue watching the parade.
A true progressive reformer in many respects, Wilson was
unsympathetic to women’s struggle to gain the vote, although Congress
ultimately passed the Nineteenth Amendment during his second term... and now on
January 9, 2019, Virginia will make history. 12 days to go for ratification of
the #EqualRightsAmendment.
The text of the proposed amendment stated that “Equality of
rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
any State on account of sex” and further that “the Congress shall have the
power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
The amendment was first introduced to Congress in 1923,
shortly after women in the United States were granted the right to vote, and it
was finally approved by the U.S. Senate 49 years later, in March 1972. It was
then submitted to the state legislatures for ratification within seven years
but, despite a deadline extension to June 1982, was not ratified by the requisite
majority of 38 states. It would have become the 27th Amendment to the
Constitution.
With only one more state needed to ratify the Equal Rights
Amendment, support is sweeping our state. A recent poll by the Wason Center for
Public Policy at Christopher Newport University found that 81 percent of
Virginians, across party lines, support ratification of the federal Equal
Rights Amendment. This is higher than any other issue polled.
All over Virginia, county boards of supervisors and city
councils have been passing resolutions urging our General Assembly to ratify --
Powhatan, Shenandoah, Blacksburg, Montgomery, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Page,
Virginia Beach, Fairfax, Albemarle, Charlottesville and more. Thanks to the
VAratifyERA bus tour and the nonpartisan group of lawmakers supporting
ratification, thousands of signatures are being gathered on a petition.
Del. Mark Cole, R-88th, stated his opposition to ERA
ratification because a ratification deadline had passed. However, the deadline
is not included in the amendment submitted to the states. There is no precedent for a fully ratified
amendment being excluded from the Constitution.
The deadline may be reasonably challenged in court because Article V of
the Constitution does not expressly authorize Congress to impose deadlines.
Nevada (2017) and Illinois (2018) have ratified the ERA.
We need a universal statement that as a country, we do not
tolerate sex discrimination harming our families. The Fifth and 14th Amendments
do not fully protect us because under Supreme Court cases, sex discrimination
does not receive as high a level of judicial scrutiny as discrimination based
on race, religion or national origin.
One
more state is needed to ratify the ERA. It’s time for Virginia to do our part:
Let's make history.
History
— Equal Rights Amendment
Women's
Suffrage Turning Points: 1913 – 1917
Remembering
the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 - American Memory
Today
in History, Woodrow Wilson. Library of Congress
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