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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

I found it amusing that the writer (and journalist) listed opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment among achievements worth defending.

It still hasn't passed, to all our disgrace. It only needs a few more states to ratify it.

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Have you read the Equal Rights Amendment?

The idea behind it is nice, but as written it is an absolutely terrible bit of law, rife with unintended consequences. We already saw what happened with prohibition; opposition to the ERA is the right choice.

What exact issues do you have with the Equal Rights Amendment? The amendment is quite simple. It's just three sentences that state that men and women should have equal rights.

> Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

> Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

> Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

...And even if the GP does name issues, what possible connection could there be to Prohibition, other than the fact that both involve constitutional amendments?

The connection to prohibition is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the unforeseen side-effects were way worse than the problem it was intended to solve--hence an additional ammendment was required to repeal it.

All government programs that benefit women suddenly become illegal. No more mandatory FMLA maternity leave. No more WIC, especially not for single mothers. Women would have to register for the draft. No more government support for women's shelters. No more presumption in favor of women in family courts. No laws requiring female representation. And a huge transfer of legislative power from the state to the federal level, for no clear benefit.

Now, you could argue that some of those might be good things, but I guarantee that will not be a universal opinion. And you could argue that, rather than cutting services for women, we should increase services for men--but the ammendment does not require that, and are you really ready to gamble that that's how it would go?

And what about discrimination based on gender--which, after all, is not the same thing as sex?

Yes, all government programs that exclusively benefit women would become illegal. And, all government programs that exclusively benefit men would also become illegal. These are not unintended consequences; equality for all sexes is the explicit purpose of the amendment.

I also just want to note that most of the programs you mention actually wouldn't be affected. WIC provides food money to single fathers in an equal fashion to the food money given to single mothers. Similarly, FMLA provides equal leave for both mothers and fathers. Family courts have already moved past special treatment of women; they now operate in a best interests of the child doctrine.

> Family courts have already moved past special treatment of women; they now operate in a best interests of the child doctrine.

That is incredibly naive. I personally know fathers who have been screwed over by a court system that is biased towards the female gender over all other considerations, to the point that it will grant sole custody of children to an ex-wife with multiple severe mental illnesses living with known-abusive grandparents who have been reported to CPS by their neighbors and which refuses to even enforce visitation rights for the father (who, y'know, actually has a job, and actually pays more attention to his kid than just shoving her in front of a TV all day when he is allowed to see her). And all because "of course the child should be with her mother".

> These are not unintended consequences

OK, perhaps you personally have thought of all of those consequences and you actually want them. And you don't care about gender-based discrimination, only biological sex. But here's another potential side-effect:

The concept of "separate but equal" has already been thoroughly shot down with regard to racial discrimination. If the ERA were passed, I guarantee you will see legal challenges to "separate but equal" treatment of the sexes. Taking that to its logical extreme, that means the ERA could be reasonably interpreted to mean that it is illegal to have, e.g., separate men's and women's locker rooms in public schools.

And just imagine how many parents would be up in arms over their daughters being forced to share a locker room with teenage boys.

The issue of gendered locker rooms and bathrooms can be reduced to an economical problem of building personal unisex booths. It is a bit more expensive, through compared to the budget of building a whole school it is a very minor increase in construction costs.

So the issue is an 0.(many zeros)1% increase in taxes to address that particular issue.

I didn't interpret that as a defense. I interpreted that as noteworthy and an indication of the complexity of his tenure that wasn't adequately captured.

I think you're almost certainly correct. The "giveaway" to someone from a Mormon background was the inclusion of "Monson led the committees that codified the doctrines taught in every Mormon meetinghouse across the Earth." in the article. This sentence probably sounds completely banal and uninteresting to outsiders, but the "correlation" process, as it is called, it largely hated by both the most fundamental believers AND the most rabid apostates. The believers hate it because it's watered down all the crazy (and frankly much more interesting) parts of Mormon doctrine, Ex-mormons hate it because it whitewashes away many uncomfortable historical truths. The institution is invested in it, however, as a way to try to stamp out the legacy of polygamy.

Like you say, the point of this article is that there's a lot of "there" there, but it takes more digging to find that NYT was willing to invest.

For what it may be worth: As a lifelong member who knows many others and reads a lot, I am completely unaware of anyone hating correlation. It has never come up in any conversation or thing I have read, until now that I see your comment. On the other hand, I am aware of tremendous amounts of original historical source materials and information on many topics that have been published and made freely available on the 'net, to anyone, including about experiences and statistics around polygamy and many other things). When I compare the journals I have read (handed down) and oral family history stories, personalities I have known, etc etc., with what I have seen of Church publicationis and online materials, I see nothing being whitewashed or hidden.

It was a strange read. There were times I wondered if it was a parody. Praising all of the things the guy did to keep women and gays as second class citizens.

Best that could be said is that at least he did not appear to be a racist, so that's nice.

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