Equal Rights Amendment Quotes & Sayings

Almost 100 years after women secured the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment, we still do not have equal rights under the Constitution. My question for the GOP candidates: Do you support the Equal Rights Amendment? — Jane Fonda

Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly "free" state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot. — Tiffany Madison

A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment
with its redefinition of personhood
is rejected by the house of deputies: A universe where to die is to become property and to be created outwith a gift of parental DNA is to be doomed to slavery. — Charles Stross

In 2004 our forty-second president, George W. Bush, the leader of the free world, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to forever ban gay marriage
which was already illegal. In opinion polls, about 50 percent of this country said they thought Bush had the right idea. If half this country feels so threatened by two people of the same gender being in love and having sex (and, incidentally, enjoying equal protection under the law), that they turn their attention
during wartime
to blocking rights already denied to homosexuals, then all the cardio striptease classes in the world aren't going to render us sexually liberated. — Ariel Levy

When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law. — Patricia Ireland

I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken. — Betty Ford

The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party. — Gloria Steinem

I liked the name of the amendment. I couldn't help feeling uneasy that the church was opposing something with a name as beautiful as the Equal Rights Amendment. — Sonia Johnson

In matters outside the courtroom, courts have decried differential treatment between print and broadcast media. New York City mayoral candidates Mario Cuomo and Edward Koch tried to exclude selected members of the media in 1977 by limiting access to their campaign headquarters to those who had received invitations. Ruling in American Broadcasting Cos. v. Cuomo, a federal court observed, "once there is a public function, public comment, and participation by some of the media, the First Amendment requires equal access to all of the media or the rights of the First Amendment would no longer be tenable."44
In 1981, a federal court in Georgia struck down a judge's order excluding television crews from a White House press pool. The court said the order violated the press and public's First Amendment right of access to White House events. It felt television coverage "provides a comprehensive visual element and an immediacy, or simultaneous aspect, not found in print — Marjorie Cohn

As scientists linked smoking to cancer, the tobacco industry was under particularly pointed attack, which might have heightened Powell's alarmism. As a director at Philip Morris from 1964 until he joined the Supreme Court, Powell was an unabashed defender of tobacco, signing off on a series of annual reports lashing out at critics. The company's 1967 annual report, for instance, declared, "We deplore the lack of objectivity in so important a controversy ... Unfortunately the positive benefits of smoking which are so widely acknowledged are largely ignored by many reports linking cigarettes and health, and little attention is paid to the scientific reports which are favorable to smoking." Powell took umbrage at the refusal by the Federal Communications Commission to grant the tobacco companies "equal time" to respond to their critics on television and argued that the companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed. — Jane Mayer

The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated the prewar Dred Scott decision by declaring that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" were citizens. It also seemed to make a powerful statement for racial equality, severely limiting "states' rights": No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. — Howard Zinn

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state. — Michael K. Simpson

My greatest disappointment in all the projects I worked on during the White House years was the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified ... Why all the controversy and why such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago? — Rosalynn Carter

I'll do anything to pass the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], even if it means wearing babydoll nightgowns and padded bras, if that will make people less afraid. — Joan Hackett

The Mafia's involvement with gay bars is ironic on so many levels. Macho guys ruled gangland but supported a subculture for nelly queens. Most mobsters were evil sociopaths motivated only by financial self-interest but nevertheless were doing a good thing in providing social spaces for the gay community. The mob was on the wrong side of the liquor laws by serving gay folk but on the right side of the 14th Amendment in arguing for equal protection. The Mafia exploited an oppressed community but advanced the gay cause. — Phillip Crawford Jr.

I am a 5'1 petite female. My pistol is my equalizer. — Gina Loudon

There is no question that under the Equal Rights Amendment there will be debates at times, indecision at times, litigation at times. Has anyone proposed that we rescind the First Amendment on free speech because there is too much litigation over it? Has anyone suggested the same for the Fourteenth Amendment I don't suppose there has ever been a constitutional amendment with so much litigation? — Frances Farenthold

The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen. — Howard Zinn

James Madison, the author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also an author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed the government appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or at the opening ceremonies of Congress. "The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles. — Christopher Hitchens

We are going to fight to pass the long over-due Equal Rights Amendment. — Bernie Sanders

The Equal Rights Amendment would "turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock." — William Rehnquist