Does anyone still remember 1977? That’s the year of "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Saturday Night Fever," disco, polyester shirts and feathered hair. The dulcet tones of Shaun Cassidy launching his brief teen-idol career by covering The Crystals (“Yeah, her name was Jill…”) blared from eight-track players everywhere. It was pretty much a dead-end of cultural evolution. What on earth is Muskrat Love, anyway?

Politically and economically, it was almost as impressive. We hit the trifecta with double-digit inflation, unemployment and interest rates under President Jimmy Carter's enlightened leadership. Carter also chose that year in which to toast the unpopular Shah of Iran, earning a respect and debt of gratitude from the people of Iran that is still paying tremendous dividends. Indiana became the 35th and last state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, a movement that started with a bang, but died with a whimper two years before its seven-year ratification deadline, once people started analyzing some of the unintended consequences of its passage. This is neither the first, nor I expect will it be the last time I say, “Thank God for Phyllis Schlafly.”

Gee, I wish "Poltergeist 2" had come out nine years earlier. It would be fantastic to use “They’re back…” to segue to the main point of this article. Instead, I’ll have to use a lyric from one of the only good things to come out of 1977, “They stabbed it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.”

No, don’t worry. Disco is still rightfully and blessedly dead, duly executed by the steely knives of heterosexual male arrhythmia. I’m referring to the Equal Rights Amendment, and not the sorry bid for votes introduced and killed in every congressional term since 1982. There is an effort underway right now to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the Kansas Constitution.

The question that came to my mind upon hearing of this effort was, “Why?” What injustices would be righted with such an amendment? What rights do women not currently enjoy in our state?

The 19^th Amendment guarantees women the right to vote, women currently own 62 percent of property, women receive preferential treatment in cases of divorce, women receive “dependent wife” benefits from Social Security and there are hundreds of court cases each year awarding women damages for sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace. Don’t misunderstand; I’m absolutely in favor of all of these things. It sounds to me, though, like women should be the first in line to put an end to this effort!

Let’s think about this for a minute. If the obvious motivations don’t make any sense, we must assume that there are less obvious motivations. If women wouldn’t benefit from the Equal Rights Amendment, who would? Who is pushing hardest for its passage? After doing some Googling, it would appear that the National Organization of Women is the most vocal supporter of the amendment. Why, if its passage would likely be disadvantageous to women? We have to look at the consequences of such passage to determine the motive.

What would true gender blindness look like in practice?

• Thousands of court cases would spring up to ensure gender neutral clubs, organizations, schools, sports teams and maybe even restrooms. No one but trial lawyers would benefit from that, certainly not the National Organization of Women.
• Labor laws that protect women in heavy industry would be erased.
• Women would be required to register for the draft and would serve in combat roles.
• Dependent benefits from Social Security would be erased.
• Marriage would be defined as “two of anything,” which would serve as a motive if it were homosexual activists pushing for passage, but none of these consequences serve as motivation for NOW to press for this amendment.

Quite a list. Ah, but there’s one more.

On Nov. 25, 1998, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that the state ERA prohibited the state from restricting abortion differently from "medically necessary procedures" sought by men, and the court ordered the state to pay for abortions under the state's Medicaid program.

There you have it. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Kansas Constitution is nothing more than a money grab by the National Organization of Women to pump more public money into the already thriving abortion industry in Kansas. It’s a backdoor, stealth approach that hopes to fly below radar; much like the original ERA did in its first years.

Don’t be fooled by the packaging, dear reader. Once again, the pro-abortion forces are proposing ill-conceived and ill-thought-out legislation, the consequences of which would be nothing short of insanity, for the sole purpose of increasing their bloody profits.

I urge the members of the Kansas House to expose this amendment for the money grab it really is and to give it the boot it so rightfully deserves. 

Now, I might still have that Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster stashed away somewhere. There’s no way I would have ever intentionally thrown it out.

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Bill Sutton is the President of the Proud Catholic Voters Association of Kansas, an organization dedicated to unifying the Catholic vote to achieve a government more representative of Catholic beliefs and ideals.

The Week in Review