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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Women. Judging from bathroom signs, basically men who've swallowed a trapezoid. It's been an especially rough few years in America for women, from abortion bans, to the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice with resting beer face, to the election of a president who thinks of their genitals as handles. Although, to be fair, to balance it all out, women did also get this.

Speaker 2

00:24

You are not seeing things. McDonald's iconic golden arches have been flipped upside down and turned into a W for women.

Speaker 1

00:33

Oh, nice going, Wook-Donald's. And really, why did you stop there? The golden arches are so versatile, aren't they?

Speaker 1

00:41

Yes, you can flip them upside down for women, but you can also turn them on their side for eunuchs, and turn them on their other side into a 3 for the actual number of rats you need to make 1 McRib. Now, I'm not saying that rats are in the McRib, I'm saying they make them. It's disgusting, but in a different way. This week, this week saw a historic milestone, because Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, which enshrined in the Constitution women's right to vote, which is both a long time, and when you think about it, not nearly long enough.

Speaker 1

01:15

In an ideal world, women would have been guaranteed the right to vote for a lot longer than Kirk Douglas has been breathing. But... But tonight, I want to focus on a milestone for gender equality that we haven't actually achieved yet, the Equal Rights Amendment. It's something that's been under consideration for a while.

Speaker 3

01:31

The struggle for an equal rights amendment traces back to 1923, when feminist Alice Paul wrote the words that became ERA.

Speaker 4

01:38

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Speaker 1

01:48

And that's basically it. The core of the Equal Rights Amendment is just 24 words long, and the idea behind it is broadly popular. In fact, according to advocates, 80% of us think it's already in the Constitution.

Speaker 1

02:00

It's 1 of those things that's so obvious, you assume we already have it. It's like when you see baking soda at the store. You think, I don't need to buy baking soda. I definitely already have baking soda.

Speaker 1

02:10

It's a staple. And then you get home, and you're baking a cake, and you reach in the cupboard for baking soda, and you realize, fuck, women still aren't guaranteed equal rights under the Constitution. And there was actually a time when the ERA had a lot of momentum. It sailed through Congress in 1972 with 84 senators voting for it, despite a few of their colleagues' objections.

Speaker 5

02:31

Male opponents in the Senate called it the unisex amendment. They said it would destroy traditional man-woman relationships. The Senate wasn't swayed.

Speaker 5

02:40

And tonight, after a 49-year struggle, a constitutional amendment appears on the way, proclaiming once and for all that women have all the same rights as that other sex.

Speaker 1

02:52

Wait. That other sex? That sounds like what you say when you've somehow forgotten the word men. Women have the same rights as, what are they called?

Speaker 1

03:01

Swollen boys? Two-legged horses with jobs? Shaved bears who fart? Someone help me here, please.

Speaker 1

03:08

Having passed the House and the Senate, the only remaining obstacle was for 38 states to ratify it. And that is where the holdup has been. We never quite crossed that threshold, although we are tantalizingly close. 37 states have ratified it over the years, so we're just 1 away.

Speaker 1

03:25

And if you live in 1 of the states that's holding out, that can be pretty dispiriting, as these Florida residents found out.

Speaker 3

03:31

Florida is 1 of the holdouts.

Speaker 6

03:34

Oh, my God. Why? I'm so tired of living here.

Speaker 1

03:37

Yeah. Yeah, of course you are. Of course you are. Of course you're tired of living in Florida.

Speaker 1

03:45

Nothing makes sense there. The laws, the alligators, not even the weather. Everyone in that clip is dressed for an entirely different season. Mid-May, late October, and September 13th, 1992.

Speaker 1

03:59

The fact is, though, we have never been closer to the ERA being enshrined in our Constitution. And just 6 weeks ago, there were even hearings in Congress on this very subject. So tonight, we thought it might be a good time to ask, why is it taking so long to pass the ERA? What would it mean if we did?

Speaker 1

04:15

And how can we finally get it done? And let's start from the beginning. When Congress passed the ERA, many saw it as part of an overall movement towards justice, as 1 supporter expressed at the time, albeit in less than ideal terms.

Speaker 6

04:27

This is equal rights for all people of every sex, every color, every race. I don't care if they're homos or what. Wow.

Speaker 1

04:37

That speech was a real rollercoaster. So inspirational, only to fall at the last second there. It's the equivalent of Martin Luther King arguing children should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, even the dirty Catholics.

Speaker 1

04:51

Oh, Dr. King. You really could have done without that last bit. The ERA was passed with a deadline of 1979 to get the 38 states needed.

Speaker 1

05:03

And that initially seemed like it was gonna be no problem. It was endorsed by Democrats and Republicans, including President Nixon, and within a year, 30 states had ratified it. Hawaii did so just 32 minutes after Congress approved it. That's unbelievably fast.

Speaker 1

05:18

Especially considering that, according to wholepigroast.com, it can take Hawaiians 12 hours just to roast a pig. Which is, in and of itself, ridiculous. I can roast a pig in just 4 seconds. I'll show you.

Speaker 1

05:31

Hey, pig, you're mom fucks pigs. Put an apple in your mouth, you've been roasted! Roasted! I've roasted you!

Speaker 1

05:39

You stupid pig. But all that momentum came to a crushing halt, which many historians credit to just 1 woman, Phyllis Schlafly. If you've never heard of her, congratulations. But she founded a group called Stop ERA, and she was all over the media in the 70s, spreading fear about the ERA.

Speaker 1

05:59

Some of what she argued it would do, like lead to women being included in the military draft, was absolutely possible. But a lot was bullshit, like claiming it would outlaw sex-segregated bathrooms, and then there was also this nonsense.

Speaker 6

06:12

Under our system, in case of the breakup of marriage, the mother gets her children, in most cases. Now, who wants to trade that in for a so-called equality, whereby each parent gets 1 child?

Speaker 7

06:24

Well, I don't think the Equal Rights Amendment says that either. In case of a divorce, each parent gets 1 child.

Speaker 6

06:29

It says that you've got to interpret things absolutely equally.

Speaker 1

06:32

That's right. That's right. Now, if 1 of the children is better than the other 1, the Equal Rights Amendment says you have to cut off a little bit of the first 1 and give it to the second 1, because everything's got to be exactly equal from now on.

Speaker 1

06:44

So you've got to give your son his sister's big toe. The ERA says that. That's a fact. Now, obviously, that is not what equal rights means.

Speaker 1

06:52

It's not that everything has to end up exactly equal. It's just the law cannot disadvantage you based on gender. But that didn't matter to Schlafly. She was basically a pre-internet internet troll, gleefully greeting audiences with lines like this.

Speaker 6

07:06

I would like to thank my husband Fred for letting me come today. I love to say that because it irritates the women's livers more than anything that I say.

Speaker 1

07:17

Okay, that thank you to Fred is entirely unnecessary for 2 reasons. 1, wives are not propertied their husbands, and 2, I'm not sure how big a sacrifice it was for Fred to spend a few hours not hanging out with Phyllis Schlafly. If I had to guess, Fred was absolutely okay with Phyllis getting out of the house for the day, the night even.

Speaker 1

07:37

I mean, where is this rally? If it's more than 10 minutes away, it might make sense just to stay over. And if it's any later in the week than, say, Wednesday, At that point, just stay the weekend, Phyllis. No thank you necessary.

Speaker 1

07:48

Don't even mention it or anything else to Fred ever again. Schlafly became a major player in the rise of the religious right, rallying conservatives to oppose the ERA. And 1 of the most galvanizing tentpoles of their argument was that the ERA would expand access to abortion. In fact, when 3 first ladies came together at a pro-ERA women's conference, Schlafly organized a protest rally featuring this ferocious speech from a Republican congressman.

Speaker 3

08:15

And the greatest tragedy of all was to see 3 former first ladies of this nation approving of sexual perversion and the murder of young people in their mothers' wombs. What a disgrace!

Speaker 1

08:30

Okay, so that was a lot. And first, the ERA doesn't say anything about abortion or any other policy. All it says is that men and women have to be treated equally under the law.

Speaker 1

08:41

And second, if your view on abortion requires that men and women not be explicitly equal, you may want to rethink your view on abortion. If someone stood up at a city council meeting and said, passing this law against animal torture would make it impossible to run my pizza parlor, then holy shit! Their pizza parlor never should have existed in the fucking first place. And yet, thanks to arguments like those, the ERA had become so toxic, that by the 1979 deadline, only 35 states had ratified it.

Speaker 1

09:12

And even though Congress then extended the deadline by 3 years, not a single additional state signed on. And look, I'm not saying that there are not laws on the books outlawing gender discrimination. There are. And if you're then wondering, well, hold on, if that's the case, why do we still need the ERA?

Speaker 1

09:27

It's because laws can be rolled back by a simple act of Congress, and policy guidelines can go away based on who's in charge. That is happening right now. Congress recently let the Violence Against Women Act expire, and the Trump administration has rescinded more than 20 policy guidelines on Title IX anti-discrimination laws. A constitutional amendment, like the ERA, is more stable because constitutional amendments are safe from Donald Trump.

Speaker 1

09:53

Unlike Melania's hopes and dreams and any American flag he gets close to. Constitutional amendments are something he cannot easily ruin. Now, some would argue that women do have protection under the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment, which guarantees individuals equal protections under the law. Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has interpreted that to cover gender discrimination.

Speaker 1

10:16

But, not everyone agrees that it should be interpreted that way. In fact, 1 of those people, former Justice Antonin Scalia, once straight out said the 14th Amendment does not cover discrimination by gender at all.

Speaker 8

10:29

Certainly, The Constitution does not require sexual discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.

Speaker 8

10:40

Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.

Speaker 1

10:43

Yeah, he's right, of course. If women wanted that amendment to cover gender discrimination, they should have voted for it in 1868. Why didn't they do that, silly ladies?

Speaker 1

10:55

Look, Scalia was a die-hard originalist, and as insane as I personally find his philosophy of ruling on cases by jumping inside the long-dead brains of history's various misogynists and racists, there are a lot of people who think that way, and Trump has promised to put more of them on the bench, saying he wants justices very much in the mold of Justice Scalia, which I can only hope means dead, but I worry might mean interpreting the Constitution without protections for gender. And that is where the ERA would come in. You can't interpret it as not addressing gender discrimination because that's all it addresses. And that brings us to our final question.

Speaker 1

11:36

How can we finally, after all these years, make the ERA part of our constitution? Because it is very much possible. Yes, the deadline passed in 1982, But legal scholars believe that Congress could simply change the deadline again or eliminate it entirely. In fact, bills to do that have been introduced in both the House and the Senate just this year with bipartisan co-sponsors.

Speaker 1

11:58

Meanwhile, states have been moving the ERA forward with Nevada and Illinois both ratifying it in the last couple of years. And for State Senator Pat Spearman, who was behind Nevada's ratification push, the reasons for doing so were all too clear.

Speaker 9

12:11

People who are born in privilege always debate whether or not those of us who were not deserve equality. And so what we're talking about here... -...what we are talking about here...

Speaker 6

12:23

-...applause What we are

Speaker 9

12:23

talking about here is the fact that equality is non-debatable. We are born with it. The only thing we're asking in the ERA is to acknowledge the fact that women are born equal to men.

Speaker 1

12:35

She's right. I mean, none of this is that complicated. Equality for women should be a basic principle of our society, and if you think it already is, great.

Speaker 1

12:43

All the more reason to write it down. And if you think it isn't, then we badly need the ERA. And look, I'm not saying that it will fix everything, not by a long shot. For 1 thing, it focuses on discrimination by the government, not the private sector.

Speaker 1

12:56

So for an issue like closing the wage gap, most women would have to continue to rely on other legislation, and of course, stealing from their male co-workers. Hashtag feminism, hashtag lady fingers. But... But the ERA could, at the very least, be a safeguard against things sliding further backwards.

Speaker 1

13:13

And we are just 1 state away, giving these 13 states a huge opportunity to genuinely make history. And 1 Arizona legislator is inspired by what this could mean.

Speaker 6

13:25

If we do this, this goes down in the history books. Arizona goes down in the history books.

Speaker 1

13:32

Exactly. She's right about that. Arizona could go down in the history books, and let's be honest here, that just doesn't happen much. The most famous part of Arizona is the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 1

13:42

You know, the part of Arizona where there's notably less of Arizona. Anywhere else, there'd be more Arizona there, but instead, there's just this sudden lack of Arizona, and it's everyone's favorite part. The point here is, any of these 13 states have a huge chance to change how history views them forever. So, The only real question here is, which 1 of you wants to seize that chance?

Speaker 1

14:04

Which state is gonna take this opportunity to put this amendment over the top and write themselves into the history books? Will it be Arizona or Georgia? Or could it be you, Oklahoma? You could be known for something other than tornadoes and musicals about how great morning is.

Speaker 1

14:20

Which it isn't, by the way, it never is. It's just like night, but unpleasantly brighter. Could it be 1 of the Carolinas? Could it be you, Utah?

Speaker 1

14:28

Or you, Missouri? You could be famous for making history, rather than having a state flag that's just 2 bears fucking a Christmas ornament. Or could it be you, Florida? Or Mississippi?

Speaker 1

14:39

Maybe you could... Holy shit, Mississippi! I always forget that's on your flag. The fuck, Mississippi?

Speaker 1

14:47

The actual fuck is that? I mean, yeah, you could pass the ERA, but let's be honest, it would be extremely out of character. Louisiana, it could be you. Arkansas, It could be you.

Speaker 1

15:01

Alabama, it definitely won't be you. But Virginia, it really could be you. Plus, you are the birthplace of Chris Brown, Rick Santorum, and Pat Robertson. So frankly, you fucking owe America this.

Speaker 1

15:13

Any 1 of these 13 states has a huge opportunity to bring to an end a journey that's taken this country almost a hundred years to make. It's not every day you get a chance like this. And all I can say is, somebody, please do it before Florida, because I do not want to give them credit for this. -♪ ♪ -♪ BAND PLAYING FANFARE

Speaker 6

15:31

We'll be right back. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Speaker 6

15:37

Thank you. Thank you.