Tactics change as the
advocates of the so-called
Equal Rights Amendment continue
to make war on the American family.
Behind
The War
On Women
by Jean Belsante and Rita Mahan 1975
• WOMEN'S LIB activists have
lately begun to rea lize that their pet
project, the Equal Rights Amendment
(E .R.A.) , is in trouble. Although
E.R.A. was ratified by the Senate and
House of Representatives in 1972 after
having been rejected by every Congress
since 1923, it must still be confirmed
by 38 states in order to become the
27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
To date, 34 states have ratified
this Amendment, two have rescinded,
and further passage of E.R.A. is pres ently
in doubt. So a new strategy has
been adopted - the push for establishment
of E.R.A. on the state level by
referendum . Voters in some states are
now being asked to go to the polls to
November 12, 1975
decide whether the controversial
E.R.A. should be added to their state
constitutions. The measure had been
slipped by in 15 states until last week,
when the battle was joined by Conservatives
and both New York and New
Jersey rejected state E.R.A. referenda.
The E.R.A. promoters consistently
trill on the theme that this legislation
will bring equal pay for equal work.
But that guarantee already exists under
such laws as the Equal Pay Act,
the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968,
the Equal Opportunity Employment
Act of 1972, and current interpretations
of the 5th, 14th, and 19th
Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
As we shall see, E.R.A. pretends to
improve the status of women but, in
reality, it takes away the rights that
women now possess.
Radical Consequences
Rarely publicized is the maze of
more ominous and far-reaching consequences
that will be realized, should
E.R.A. be passed, including the fact
that it will nullify thousands of state
laws in America that currently protect
women and insure an orderly society.
For example:
• E.R.A. will eliminate privacy
between the sexes in such areas as
public rest rooms, prisons, reformatories,
schools, and the military.
Those who favor E.R.A. claim that
a constitutional "right of privacy" will
prevent this from happening. However,
Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart has stated, "I can find no such
general right of privacy in the Bill of
Rights, in any other part of the Constitution,
or in any case ever decided by
this Court."
The E.R.A. supporters often cite the
ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut,
handed down in 1965, which they say
supports a citizen's right of privacy.
But this ruling dealt only with the use
of contraceptives by a married couple,
and as the attorney general of Virginia
has stated, this decision relates only to
sanctity of the marital relationship
and nothing more.
Further, only four months after the
E.R.A. was proposed by Congress as
the intended 27th Amendment, the
U.S . Department of Labor presented
in the Federal Register for July 15,
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1972, an E.R.A.-based directive proposing:
"All provisions relating to separate
facilities based on sex are eliminated.
Separate facilities for each sex
have no basis in sanitation standards."
• E.R.A. will subject young
women at the age of 18 years to the
draft, should one be reinstated.
Although there is no military draft
in the United States at the moment,
such a draft for military service could
be reinstated on a moment's notice.
The E.R.A. would put women on warships,
subject them to combat duty,
and could ultimately result in some
being placed in the P.O.W. camps of
brutal enemies.
• E.R.A. will strike down sodomy
and seduction laws; statutory rape,
prostitution, and obscenity laws;
and, it will eliminate adultery laws
that the courts judge to contain sex
discriminatory provisions.
All of this has been substantiated in
detail by pro-E.R.A. scholars in the
Yale Law Journal for April 1971, and
again in its January 1973 number.
• E.R.A. will give equal rights to
homosexuals to marry, adopt children,
teach in public schools, and
serve in the Armed Forces.
Since E.R.A.'s passage in Colorado,
for example, Assistant District Attorney
William Wise has ruled that
homosexual marriages are legal there
under E.R.A.
• E.R.A. will wipe out many protective
labor laws which currently
benefit women.
Those who favor E.R.A. contend
that protective laws will be extended
The Review Of The NEWS
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Donald Wood - Ozark Sunbeam
to men also, but the facts show otherwise.
Take California, for example,
where the Bank of America was giving
taxi rides to its female employees who
had to work after dark - a thoughtful
gesture to protect the women against
rapes and muggings. A state court,
citing sex discrimination, ruled that
the bank was discriminating against
male employees and the bank stopped
furnishing these taxi rides .
• E.R.A. will invalidate all state
laws which require a husband to
support his wife and children.
Already the effects of E.R.A. on
wives can be seen. For example,
in Colorado the law that required
a husband to support his wife and
family was declared unconstitutional
after the state E.R.A . was ratified
in 1972. On June 8, 1973, in
November 12, 1975
the case of Colorado v. Elliott , the
judge threw out a charge of felony
non -support against Larry Elliott,
ruling that wives are not legally entitled
to financial support from their
husbands under E.R.A . In Pennsylvania,
where voters approved a
state E.R.A. in 1971, there has been
more of th e same. On December 19,
1973, in the case of Weigand v . Weigand
, the wife lost her lawsuit for a
legal separation, lawyer fees, court
costs, and support money during the
trial. All of these had been available
to wives under previous Pennsylvania
laws, but E.R.A. had wiped
them out.
Given the above consequences of
E.R.A., we could soon expect increasing
rates of divorce and desertio
n, social di srupti on, and moral
3
chaos. And, further, since men
would be relieved of the primary
responsibility of supporting their
families, it is entirely possible that
the destruction of the conventional
American family would follow.
Who Supports E.R.A.?
Unknown to many is the fact that a
major thrust behind E.R.A. is an organizational
network of militant
atheists laboring to abolish the traditional
Judeo-Christian code of morality
upon which America was founded .
This network is directed by an antiGod
leadership that manipulates such
organizations as the International
Humanist And Ethical Union, the
American Humanist Association, the
American Ethical Union, and the Unitarian-
Universalist Association. These
are part of a coalition of scores of
atheistic front groups working together
to promote common radical goals.
Within its own circles this movement
is known as Humanism . It is an ideology
t hat denies God, deifies man instead,
and has as its target the destruction
of Christianity and all institutionalized
religion. For a shocking perspective
of Humanist beliefs, including a
description of how they strive for control
of our traditional institutions, especially
our churches and church
groups, see Humanist Manifestos I and
II, available at most public libraries.
Among the openly declared objectives
of Humanism, some of which
have already been achieved, are the
removal of Bible reading and prayer in
the schools; the teaching of the evolu-
4
tionary theory of man's origin as fact;
and, the promotion of sex education,
drugs, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality,
pornography, and Women's
Liberation.
Spearheading the movement for
E.R.A. passage are two major Humanist
fronts: the National Organization
for Women (N.O.W.) and the American
Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.),
which have formed statewide coalitions
with other like-minded groups.
Discussing the Women's Liberation
movement, N.O.W. official Warren
Farrell explained in the New York
Sunday News for June 25, 1972, that
"Ultimately, this is a humanist movement
. . . ." The founder and first
president of N.O.W. was Betty Friedan,
a recipient of the Humanist Of
The Year award for 1975 and signer of
Humanist Manifesto II. Other prominent
Humanists in the Women's Lib
movement include Gloria Steinem,
Margaret Mead, Alice Rossi, Gina Allen,
* Miriam Allen deFord, Florynce
Kennedy, and Del Martin and Phyllis
Lyon, both admitted lesbians.
Not surprisingly, Women's Lib is
deeply entrenched in the promotion of
homosexuality and, particularly, lesbianism.
So much so, in fact, that two
weeks ago N.O.W. formally endorsed
so-called "lesbian rights" at its annual
convention. Also noteworthy is the fact
that N.O.W. leadership was among the
inner core of Humanist activists who
"Gina Allen serves on the board of the
Ameri can Humanist Association and is also
a member ofN.O.W.'s National Task Force
on Sexuality.
The Revle. OfThe IIEWS
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launched the successful campaign to
legalize abortion on demand.
Like N.O.W., the A.C.L.U. was also
founded in large part by Humanists.
Just to name a few: Professor John
Dewey, Clarence Darrow, Roger Baldwin,
Norman Thomas, and Jane Addams
(also a founder of the League of
Women Voters). This is not to minimize
the fact that the founders and
leaders of the A.C.L.U . included such
radicals as William Z. Foster, former
head of the Communist Party, and
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party,
U.S.A. As of 1961, the top 15 past and
current leaders of the A.C.L.U. had a
combined record of over 1,000 Communist
Front affiliations and citations.
Over the years, the American Civil
Liberties Union has maintained a
steady influx of Humanist leadership
that includes Ramsey Clark, Karl
Menninger, Stuart Chase, Erich
Fromm, S.LE.C.U.S. director Harriet
Pilpel, and radical attorney William
Kunstler. Having aided Humanist
Madalyn Murray (O'Hair) in her crusade
to remove prayer and Bible reading
from public schools, the A.C.L.U.
has more recently directed its efforts to
such Humanist objectives as the legalization
of marijuana, abortion,
pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality.
Of interest is the fact that one of the
major financial supporters of the
A.C.L.U. is Humanist Hugh Hefner's
Playboy Foundation, which has also
made substantial cash payments to the
E.R.A . campaign.
November 12, 1975
Is It A Red Game?
Literature being widely circulated
by E.R.A. supporters states (with no
proof or documentation) that the
E.R.A. is opposed by the Communist
Party. This statement is misleading. In
1970, U.S. Communist Party Secretary
Gus Hall declared in the February issue
of Political Affairs:
For us Communists . . . the entire
cornerstone of the entire struggle . . .
rests on the relationship between the
fight for the liberation of women and
the class struggle, the tie-in between
the forces of women's liberation and
the working class . . . . the struggle
for women's liberation must be uniquely
tied to the struggle against U.S.
imperialism.
An editorial in a March 1974 issue of
The Call, a Marxist-Leninist newspaper,
strongly urged ratification of
E.R.A., contending: " 1974 should be
the year in which the ERA becomes
law .. . . SUPPORT THE ERA!"
In fact, the roots of the entire Women's
Liberation movement extend as
far back as The Communist Manifesto,
wherein Marx and Engels denounced
the institution of the family. Writing
in his Letters From Afar, Lenin explained
the principle:
If we do not draw women into public
activity, into the militia, into political
life; if we do not tear women away from
the deadening atmosphere of household
and kitchen; then it is impossible
to secure real freedom, it is impossible
5
even to build democracy let alone socialism.
And in November of 1918, Lenin
to ld the first All-Russian Congress of
Women Workers: "It has been observed
in the experience of all liberation
movements that the success of a
revolution depends on the extent to
which women take part in it." That is:
Wherever it is possible to radicalize the
women, as through Women's Lib and
the E.R.A., Communist revolution is a
serious possibility. Over the years, a
recurrent theme in Communist literature
stresses that the experience of all
Communist liberation movements
shows that the success of revolution
depends on the extent to which women
take part, and urges that women cannot
assume a true revolutionary role
unless they are relieved of their primary
responsibilities in the home. This
is intrinsic to all Socialist societies,
including that of Red China where
Communist Party leadership has been
hitting at the liberation theme in response
to Mao's command that "to
build a great socialist society, it is of
the utmost importance to arouse the
broad masses of women to join in productive
activity."
Main revolutionary purposes of the
Women's Lib movement are to take
women out of the home , restructure
their thinking in favor of an atheistic,
Socialist ideology , and mobilize them
into a powerful political lobby that can
be used for Communist revolutionary
purposes. It should, therefore, come as
no surprise to discover that riding the
crest of the original wave of feminist
agitators in America during the early
1900s were such radical Socialists as
Crystal Eastman, Henrietta Rodman,
and Margaret Sanger; and such Marxists
as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Jane
Addams, Kate Richards O'Hare, and
Rose Pastor Stokes.
The Socialist threads in the tapestry
of the Women's Lib movement
have become increasingly visible in the
contemporary writings of such activists
as Simone de Beauvoir, Shirley
Chisholm, and Bernadette Devlin. As
Women's Lib activist June Sochen has
openly acknowledged in her book
Movers And Shakers:
.. . Most women's lib groups accept
both the class and sex analysis of
the women's dilemma in American society;
that is, they share with the
Marxist-Leninist perspective of the
evils of a capitalistic society . . . .
The drive for so-called Women's
Liberation is clearly pro-Communist,
anti-family, and anti-American - but
it is primarily anti-God. Atheism is the
common bond that links the Communist
and Humanist movements together
in this revolutionary assault on
Western civilization. The Equal Rights
Amendment will "liberate" women :
liberate them from the cherished
place they hold in the divine plan
of God's universe, reduce them to physical
and spiritual bondage, and destroy
them as preservers of the heart of
our society -the traditional American
family. • •
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