The world has changed since 1972, when the ERA was first introduced. Some of us think it was redundant then. It’s certainly superfluous now, as columnist Steve Chapman explains:
“One supporter of the revived amendment is Democratic State Rep. Lindsley Smith of Arkansas, who told The Washington Post, ‘The question I get most frequently is, ‘Lindsley, I thought this already was in the Constitution.” What she overlooks is that, for all intents and purposes, it is.
“In the last three decades, the Supreme Court has handed down a string of decisions overturning laws that treat people differently on the basis of sex. It required the all-male Virginia Military Institute to admit females, ordered the Air Force to provide the same dependent benefits to spouses of women as it provides to spouses of men, and struck down an Oklahoma law setting a different drinking age for men and women.”
Read the whole column.