It may come as a surprise to some, but the human rights of anyone who is not a straight cis-male are not guaranteed by the United States.
The Constitution Only Protects Straight Cis-Men
As recently as 2010, one of the highest legal authorities in the land, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (may he spend an eternity in hell playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in an endless Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) stated that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation:
“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.”
The Constitution does not guarantee full human rights to women, or anyone else in the LGBTQIA community. While the 14th amendment has been interpreted by some to protect women and the queer community, US law offers no guarantee that those rights will continue. The civil rights that women and LGBTQIA people currently enjoy can be erased on the whim of judges and lawmakers, and have already been erased on many occasions:
- Transgender civil rights in the US are under direct attack, with North Carolina already making it illegal for transgender people to use the bathroom, and Michigan potentially passing a similar pro-discrimination bill.
- While the supreme court has legalized gay marriage, gay rights are far from guaranteed. On the contrary, several states (including those same human stains in North Carolina) are now passing “religious freedom” laws that legalize discrimination against the queer community. Hate crime laws are also a mess across the country, and five states don’t even have them!
- The right to abortion has been continually chipped away at by the Courts and by legislatures, to the point that abortion is effectively illegal for poor women in many parts of the country.
- And if a certain toupee-wearing, rome-burning-in-human-form, misogynist wank-puffin is elected president, I can guarantee you that even more rights of women and the LGBTQIA community will be stripped away.
- In 2011 the Supreme Court threw out the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in US history, siding with Wal-Mart against 1.5 million female employees. A decision that would have gone differently had the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) been part of the constitution.
An Amendment is the Only Way to Protect the Basic Human Rights of All
These bigoted lawmakers and justices have shown us that the only way to secure basic human rights for women and LGBTQIA people is to write it into the constitution.
But getting those civil rights into the constitution will be a hard fight. The first Equal Rights Amendment was introduced to congress every year for nearly 50 years before it was finally ratified! But even then it was eventually stymied by conservative lies from perennial assholes like Phyllis Schlafly, and ultimately fell 3 states short of ratification in 1982.
Time For a New Equal Rights Amendment
[Recommended background music: Born This Way]
But the need for an Equal Rights Amendment has never gone away, and now is a perfect time to both re-ignite the fight for the ERA while updating the amendment for the modern era.
And it only takes the addition of four words:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex, gender, or sexual orientation.”
– The 1972 Equal Rights Amendment, with the new addition emphasized.
Gender and sexual orientation were barely on the public radar when the ERA was first introduced in 1972 1. In the 44 years since then, we have considerably expanded our understanding of the complexities of gender and human sexuality, making it high time to build a bigger tent around the ERA. By expanding the ERA to include gender and sexuality, we can block the current legal backlash against gay and transgender rights while expanding the political muscle needed to get this amendment past the bigoted lawmakers who continue to deny civil rights to over half the US population.
In a time when gay marriage is finally legal and the US may elect its first female president, it’s time to follow this march of progress to its logical conclusion, and pass a fully inclusive Equal Rights Amendment!
ERA FAQ – The Expanded Edition
The Equal Rights Amendment website has a comprehensive FAQ page, but it is for the original amendment and does not cover questions that may arise from a newly expanded ERA. So allow me to add a few more items to their FAQ:
Q. But what about women being added the Draft?! Or Social Security benefits being denied to widows?! Or jailing men for holding the door open for women?!!1! Or…
A. Just hold on for a moment! Most of these questions are rooted in the conservative FUD campaign launched against the original Equal Rights Amendment.
For one thing, women are already likely to be added to the draft even without the ERA becoming law. And governmental programs like Social Security would only have to change to gender-neutral language to comply with a new ERA, a change that Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself helped enact back in 1975!
The truth is that social progress has never been advanced by trying to preserve benevolent sexism. Most attempts to treat men and women (or anyone else in the LGBTQIA spectrum) differently under the law end up being used to deny human rights under the guise of preserving them. For example, that same Social Security program (the ones conservatives threatened would withhold benefits from women should the ERA pass) has been discriminating against women for over 75 years! Instead of holding on to the scraps afforded to women under the current discriminatory system, the new ERA would make such discrimination illegal while also opening up Social Security benefits to non-cis, non-straight couples!
Q. But what about public restrooms?!!1!
A. The new ERA would finally allow transpeople to use the bathroom of their choice nationwide. But most importantly…and this is a point that the mass media gets wrong all the time…it would NOT allow predatory cis-men to use the women’s restrooms, not even while cross-dressing.
Let me make this as clear as possible: The separation of men and women in bathrooms is a matter of public safety. The separation of transpeople from the bathroom that matches the gender they live every day is not. When it comes to bathrooms, and life in general, cis-men are the true danger to women!
Q-E-fucking-D.
There are practical solutions to the transgender bathroom debate that protect civil rights and expand bathroom access for all. I posted my own solution over a year ago: Liberate the Men’s Room!
But the new ERA would make the Equality Act the law of the land and provide a legal foundation to eliminating the rape kit backlog, actions that would do far more to keep women safe than having pervy misogynist lawmakers police public restrooms.
Q. Sounds great! Where Do I Sign Up?
A. Unfortunately I have not yet seen a movement to start a new, inclusive ERA, and I’m just a part-time blogger with no political resources. So for now, spread the word to others! And let’s home that this spark of an idea can turn into a movement.