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Notes -
Biden wants a constitutional crisis, apparently.
Well, that's editorializing, but like, seriously--WTF?
He's got chutzpah, I guess (or, realistically, one of his staffers does). Never have I seen such a nakedly partisan attempt to create mass confusion concerning American constitutional law, nor such an inducement for left wing justices to defect from the rule of law. It is perhaps the single least professional, most embarrassing thing a sitting President has done in, like, six or seven weeks.
Just to get this out up front: no. The Equal Rights Amendment has not been ratified, and is not the law of the land. When asked for comment by CNN, the U.S. archives referred the station to previous statements from the U.S. archivist that
The President has no particular role in the ratification process anyway, so his opinion is legally meaningless. Certainly his appeal to the "American Bar Association" (an especially left wing advocacy group) is meaningless. But it's a signal, and the message is clear: time to ignore the law, precedent, history, and any possible position of compromise and coexistence. Watching the outgoing administration slap the "defect" button as rapidly as possible does not bode well for the next four years. At best, it's an inducement for the Trump administration to play tit-for-tat. At worst, I don't know--civil war?
The fact that the CNN article is still pushing this wild "pre-emptive pardons" stuff is also concerning, but illegitimately announcing an Amendment to the Constitution has surely got to be the most brazen lame duck move in American history. This is banana republic levels of absurdity.
I believe the ERA, which would apply strict scrutiny for sex-based discrimination, same as the level for race, instead of intermediate scrutiny which is used now, is very much a "careful what you wish" situation for its cheerleaders on the left generally. As strict scrutiny is an almost impossibly high bar, meaning common female-centric societal advantages advantages build into the law or policies become illegal: the draft, sex-based crime initiatives, female-focused jobs and skills initiatives, affirmative-action (theoretically already dead), etc.
But I could be wrong.
In this thread the phrase "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" came up. And this is one of those cases where it applies. Were the ERA to pass, all sexes would be equal, but some sexes would be more equal than others. Through a combination of procedural trickery and sophistry, measures which favor women would remain legal, while measures which favor men would become Constitutionally illegal. Since neither conservatives nor leftists want to draft women, court cases requiring that would face impossible barriers.
Yeah, one only needs to look at the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality to see how this would play out.
Jesus. In a 42 page document, beginning on page 7, men aren't mentioned till page 9:
In total, men are mentioned a grand total of 11 times in 42 pages, and with only two exceptions those instances reference men purely to illustrate the comparative plight of women.
42 pages. 11 mentions. 1 positive mention.
That 'positive' mention is the one I give above, where it's suggested that men need help to liberate them from their masculinity. The other mention is neutral, stating that the commission will work with men to, of course, help women.
How many times are transgender women mentioned?
Trans people (generally) twice, and trans women (specifically) three times. I could've missed some because it was a simple ctrl+F.
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