Anyone know why the church was

[BYU71]

against the Equal Rights Amendment. No one seems to have a reason over on CB.

I remember I was against it because of the church and conservatives in general didn't like it. However, there are conservative issues the church doesn't back, like immigration for example.

Anyone remember what the deal was with the ERA. If it would have messed up things like it has college athletics, then I guess it was a good think it never passed.

[Indy Coug]

I was too young to remember much of the fight, but could it have anything to do with a fear that the ERA would result in forcing the church to ordain women to the priesthood?

[BYU71]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

I was too young to remember much of the fight, but could it have anything to do with a fear that the ERA would result in forcing the church to ordain women to the priesthood?

I don't think so. The Civil Rights act didn't force the church to let blacks hold the Priesthood. I really think it didn't like the idea of women in the work force and this was kind of a blessing on it. However, that is a guess as I don't remember for sure.

[MikeWaters]

I think they argued about unitended consequences, like forcing women to be in a draft.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I think they argued about unitended consequences, like forcing women to be in a draft.

Or worse, uni-sex bathrooms.

I actually was intrigued with that idea at the time.

[BYU71]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I think they argued about unitended consequences, like forcing women to be in a draft.

My guess is we were and to some extent still are a patriarchal society. I don't remember when women started giving prayers in Sacrament Meeting, but I will bet it was in the 70's.

Of course we know the honor code is inspired, but women had to wear skirts when I attended BYU.

I think it was just the fact women weren't considered equal.

[pelagius]

First Presidency Statement 1976

From its beginnings, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has affirmed the exalted role of woman in our society.

In 1842, when women's organizations were little known, the Prophet Joseph Smith established the women's organization of the Church, the Relief Society, as a companion body of the priesthood. The Relief Society continues to function today as a vibrant, worldwide organization aimed at strengthening motherhood and broadening women's earning and involvement in religious, compassionate, cultural, educational, and community pursuits.

In Utah, where our Church is headquartered, women received the right to vote in 1870, fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted the right nationally.

There have been injustices for women before the law and in society generally. These we deplore.

There are additional rights to which women are entitled.

However, we firmly believe that the Equal Rights Amendment is not the answer.

While the motives of its supporters may be praiseworthy, ERA as blanket attempt to help women could indeed bring them far more restraints and repressions. We fear it will even stifle many God-given feminine instincts.

It would strike at the family, humankind's basic institution. ERA would bring ambiguity and possibly invite extensive litigation.

Passage of ERA, some legal authorities contend, could nullify many cumulated benefits to women in present statutes.

We recognize men and women as equally important before the Lord, but with differences biologically, emotionally, and in other ways.

ERA, we believe, does not recognize these differences. There are better means for giving women, and men, the rights they deserve.42

Famous Talk
The Equal Rights Amendment, By Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Council of the Twelve, Ensign 1977

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vg...____&hideNav=1

When I was in junior high school we had a mandatory health class. There was a chapter in our textbook on contagious diseases which included the account of an incident that had occurred in the early part of the century. The events recorded were these:

The children came home one day and reported that the neighbor child had the chicken pox. The mother was upset! The matter of trying to keep her children from being exposed was a nuisance. Often they caught the disease anyway.

About the time one would be recovering, another would come down with it, and by the time the disease had run its course from one to another, that telltale chicken pox sign would be in their window for weeks.

Finally, determining that this could be resolved in another way, she called on her neighbor.

“I’m sending my children over,” she said. “They might just as well all get the chicken pox at once and then we’ll be done with it. They will be immunized thereafter and won’t have to put up with that for the rest of their lives. We can solve this problem once and for all.

“I’ll send them over to play and perhaps they could have a meal with your child. I wouldn’t even care if they ate off the same dishes.”

And so it was done. Some days later, after the normal incubation time for the disease, her children showed signs that the plan was indeed working. They were irritable, and fevered, and the rest.

That afternoon word was sent to tell her that things had not gone well at the neighbor’s house. They finally had called in the doctor. It was not chicken pox at all, the doctor had told them. It was smallpox. That night the neighbor youngster died.

How often it is that our solutions become problems. This, it seems to me, is particularly true in the government. One of the major issues, perhaps the major issue, of both parties in the recent political campaign, was big government.

The bigger the government becomes the more lost we are as individuals. Somehow, always under the notion that our rights are being protected, webs are combined with threads, and threads are added to strings, and strings are fashioned into cords, and cords into ropes, and ropes into bonds.

Among the great dangers in the amendment is the fact that it would deprive lawmakers and government officials alike of the right by legal means to honor the vital differences in the roles of men and women.

Some government officials are sure to see their responsibility, not just to effect equality between men and women, but to attempt by regulation to remove all of the differences between them.

If we are subjected to the same excesses as under Title IX, men and women would be subjected to precisely the same regulations of all kinds, at all times. (Many thoughtful wives haven’t the slightest desire to be reduced to equality with their husbands.)

We cannot eliminate, through any pattern of legislation or regulation, the differences between men and women.

There are basic things that a man needs that a woman does not need. There are things that a man feels that a woman never does feel.

There are basic things that a woman needs that a man never needs, and there are things that a woman feels that a man never feels nor should he.

These differences make women, in basic needs, literally opposite from men.

A man, for instance, needs to feel protective, and yes, dominant, if you will, in leading his family. A woman needs to feel protected, in the bearing of children and in the nurturing of them.

Have you ever thought what life would be like if the needs of men and women were naturally precisely the same?

What would it be like if they both naturally needed to feel dominant all of the time, or both naturally needed to feel protected all of the time?

How disturbed and intolerable things would be.

Academic Treatment

Quinn, D. Michael, "The LDS Church's Campaign Against the Equal Rights Amendment", Journal of Mormon History 20 (2): 85–155,

http://content.lib.utah.edu/u?/jmh,14145

In scheduled workshops and voting at the Utah IWY [International Womens' Year] conference, the conservative Mormon delegates shouted down women they identified as "feminist," sometimes calling them lesbians.

Must resist urge to lecture about reading available sources.... nevermind ... that would ruin ... bring down the guard.

[MikeWaters]

Wow, I venture to say that in years forward, some will come to think of the following statement to be in the same category as Delbert Stapley's letter to George Romney.

These differences make women, in basic needs, literally opposite from men.

A man, for instance, needs to feel protective, and yes, dominant, if you will, in leading his family. A woman needs to feel protected, in the bearing of children and in the nurturing of them.

Have you ever thought what life would be like if the needs of men and women were naturally precisely the same?

What would it be like if they both naturally needed to feel dominant all of the time, or both naturally needed to feel protected all of the time?

How disturbed and intolerable things would be.

It can be argued that these words are the underpinning of the Proclamation on the family.

[pelagius]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Wow, I venture to say that in years forward, some will come to think of the following statement to be in the same category as Delbert Stapley's letter to George Romney.



It can be argued that these words are the underpinning of the Proclamation on the family.

Some of this thinking is linked directly to concerns about a unisex draft. After the preceding quote Elder Packer follows with this:

When God created male and female, He gave each important differences in physical attributes, in emotional composition, in family responsibility. We must protect and honor the vital differences in the roles of men and women, especially in respect to the family.

These issues were raised, not successfully, in the Congress. Senator Irvine introduced an amendment to the Equal Rights Amendment, which I quote:

“This article shall not impair, however, the validity of any law of the United States, nor any state, which exempts women from the compulsory military service or which is reasonably designed to promote the health, safety, privacy, education, or economic welfare of women, or to enable them to perform their duties as homemakers or mothers.”

[BYU71]

I read a question and answer session in the Ensign in 1980 provided for someone.

Buried in the answer, but I think very relevant was the effect it might have on women in the church not wanting to stay at home.

Also was the fair argument that it could embolden women in having abortions and birth control.