Equal Rights Amendment: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

women judging by the bathroom signs, basically men who swallowed a trapezoid. It's been a particularly difficult few years in the United States for women, from the abortion ban to the confirmation of a sitting beer-faced Supreme Court justice to the election of a president who thinks of his genitals as handles. although to be fair, to balance it all out, women got this too, you're not seeing things. McDonald's iconic golden arches have been flipped and turned into a W for women, oh what a nice shout out, Donnell's, and really, why did you stop there with the golden arches?

They are so versatile, right? Yes, you can turn them around for the women, but you can also turn them sideways for the eunuchs and turn them on the other side into three to get the actual number of rats you need to make a McRib I. I'm not saying the rats are in the McRib, I'm saying they make them, is disgusting in a different way, but this

week

a historic milestone occurred because Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of Congress' approval of the 19th

amendment

enshrining women in the Constitution. right to vote, which is a long time and, if you think about it, not long enough, in an ideal world women would have been guaranteed the right to vote for much longer than Kirk Douglas has been breathing, but

tonight

I want focus on a milestone for gender

equal

ity that we haven't actually achieved yet the Equal Rights Amendment is something that has been under consideration for a while the fight for an Equal Rights Amendment dates back to 1923, when feminists Alice Paul wrote the words that became an

equal

rights

under the law should not be denied or restricted by the United States or by any state on the basis of sex and that is basically the core of the Equal Rights Amendment has only 24 words and the idea behind it is very popular, in fact, according to its proponents. 80 percent of us think it's already in the Constitution.

It's one of those things that is so obvious that you assume we already have it. It's like when you see baking soda in the store and you think I don't need to buy baking soda. I definitely already have baking soda. soda is a staple and then you come home and you're baking a cake and you look in the cupboard for baking soda and you realize that women are still not guaranteed equal

rights

under the Constitution and, in fact, There was a time when the ER had a lot of momentum, it passed Congress in 1972, with 84 senators voting for it despite the objections of some of their colleagues, male opponents in the Senate called it the unisex

amendment

, they said that would destroy traditional relationships between men and women, the Senate was not. influenced and

tonight

after 49 years of struggle a constitutional amendment appears on the way proclaiming once and for all that women have all the same rights as the other sex weight that of the sexes that sounds like what you say when in some way you have forgotten the word men women have the same rights as what their children are called swollen two-legged horses with jobs shaved bears who thought someone help me here please having parked the House and the Senate the only obstacle that remained was that 38 states will ratify it and that is Where the Heist Has Been we never cross that threshold, although we are tantalizingly close. 37 states have ratified it over the years, so we just won and if you live in one of the holdout states, that can be pretty discouraging, as these Florida residents found out that Florida is one of the places that resist, oh my God, Courcelette.

I love living in Florida. Nothing makes sense there. Laws. The aligators. Not even the weather. Everyone in that clip is dressed for a completely different season. Mid-May, late October and September 13, 1992. Although we have never been closer to the emergency room enshrined in our Constitution and just six

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s ago there were even congressional hearings on this very topic, so this night we thought it might be a good time to ask why it's taking so long to pass the ER what it would mean if we did it and how we can finally get it done and let's start from the beginning when Congress passed the ER many saw it as part of a general movement towards justice as one supporter put it at the time, although in less than ideal terms, this is equal rights for all people of all sexes, of all colors, of all races.

I don't care if they're gay or whatever. Wow, that speech was such an inspiring rollercoaster only to fall at the

last

second and it's becoming that Martin Luther King arguing that children should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, even the dirty Catholics Oh dr. King, you really could have done without that

last

one, er8 was passed with a deadline of 1979 to get the 38 states needed and that initially looked like it wasn't going to be a problem, it was supported by Democrats and Republicans, including President Nixon, and within a year. 30 states had ratified it.

Hawaii did it just 32 minutes after Congress passed it, which is incredibly fast, especially considering that depending on the whole roast pig calm, it can take Hawaiians 12 hours just to roast a pig, which is in itself ridiculous. I can roast a pig. In just four seconds I'll show you hey pig, your mom, the pigs put an apple in your mouth, they ran you, yeah, big pig, but all that momentum came to an abrupt halt, which many historians attribute to a single woman, Phyllis. Schlafly, yes I've never heard of her congratulations, but she founded a group called stop er a and was all over the media in the '70s spreading fear about ER and some of the things she said would lead to women being included in compulsory military service. it was absolutely possible but a lot of it was like claiming to ban single sex bathrooms and then there was also this nonsense under our system in case of marriage breakdown the mother stays with her children in most cases now who wants change that for such a large amount? -called equality by which each parent has a good child.

I think the Equal Rights Amendment says that in the case of divorce each parent has one, it says that you have to interpret things absolutely the same, that's correct, that's now if one of the children is better. than the other one, the Equal Rights Amendment says you have to cut a little bit of the first and give it to the second because everything has to be exactly the same from now on, so you have to give your son his sister's great son. toe the e ra says that's a fact now, obviously that's not what equal rights means, it's not that everything has to end exactly the same, it's just that the law can't put you at a disadvantage based on gender, but that didn't mean Schlafly dough, she was basically a The pre-Internet internet troll happily greets audiences with lines like this.

I would like to thank my husband Fred for allowing me to come today. I love saying that because he irritates female liberals more than anything else. What I say is fine, thanks to Fred it is total. unnecessary for two reasons: one, wives are not the property of their husbands and two, I'm not sure how big of a sacrifice it was for Fred to spend a few hours hanging out with Phyllis Schlafly; in fact, one guest was absolutely fine with Phyllis getting out of there. the house to spend the day and night, I even want to say, where is this rally?

If it's more than 10 minutes away it might make sense to stay the night and if it's later in the week it's Wednesday just say that weekend Phyllis no thanks it's necessary. I never even mentioned it to Fred again. Lazy Lea became a major player in the rise of the religious right that rallied conservatives to oppose the era, and one of the most galvanizing pillars of his argument was that the era would expand access. to abortion, in fact, when three first ladies met at a women's conference, then organized a protest rally with this fiery speech from a Republican congressman and the biggest tragedy of all was seeing three former first ladies of this nation approving sexual perversion. and the murder of young people in their mothers' world, okay, that was a lot and first of all, the era doesn't say anything about abortion or any other policy, all it says is that men and women should be treated by equal before the law and, secondly, if your view on abortion requires that men and women not be explicitly equal, you may want to reconsider your view on abortion, if someone stood up at a council meeting municipal council and said that passing this law against animal torture would make it impossible to run my pizzeria, then holy shit, his pizzeria should never have existed in the first place, and yet, thanks to arguments like that, the era had become so toxic that for By the 1979 deadline only 35 states had ratified it, and although Congress later extended the deadline by three years, not a single additional state signed and look, I'm not saying there aren't laws on the books defending gender discrimination, and If then you're wondering, wait, if that's the case, why do we still need the era?

It's because laws can be reversed by a simple act of Congress and policy guidelines can disappear depending on who is in charge, which is happening right now. Congress recently let the Violence Against Women Act expire and the Trump administration has rescinded more than 20 policy cut lines in the title. 9 anti-discrimination laws a constitutional amendment like the era is more stable because constitutional amendments are safe from donald trump, unlike milania's hopes and dreams and any american flag that comes close constitutional amendment to something that doesn't can easily ruin now, some would say that women do have protection under the Constitution, specifically the 14th amendment, which has guaranteed people equal protection under the law since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has interpreted this to cover discrimination of gender, but not everyone agrees that it should be interpreted that way, in fact, one such person former Justice Antonin Scalia once openly said that the 14th Amendment does not cover gender discrimination at all, certainly if the Constitution does not require sexual discrimination, discrimination based on sex, the only question is whether it is prohibited, no one ever thought that was the case.

Why didn't anyone vote? Yes, you're 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 look? Scalia was a staunch originalist and as crazy as Personally, I find his philosophy of solving cases by jumping into 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 judges very very in the mold of Justice Scalia, which I can only hope means dead, but I worry it might mean interpreting the Constitution without gender protections and that's where the ER would come in, it can't be interpreted as not addressing gender discrimination because that's all it is. addresses and that brings us to our final question: how can we finally, after all these years, make RE part of our Constitution?

Because it is very possible. Yes, the deadline passed in 1982, but legal scholars believe Congress could simply change the deadline again. or eliminate it entirely—in fact, bills to do so have been introduced in both the House and Senate this year with bipartisan cosponsors—while states have been moving forward and Nevada and Illinois ratified it in recent years. and for state senator Pat Spearman, who was behind the push for Nevada ratification, the reasons for doing so were very clear: people who are born into privilege are always debating whether those of us who are not privileged deserve equality and therefore , What are we talking about here.

What we are talking about here is the fact that equality is not available, we are born with it, the only thing we are asking in the emergency room is for recognition of the fact that women are born equal to men, you are right, None of this is such a complicated equality. for women it should be a basic principle of our society and if you think it's already great, all the more reason to write it and if you think it's not, then we urgently need the emergency room and look, I'm not saying that. It won't solve everything by any means, on the one hand it focuses on discrimination by the government, not the private sector, so for an issue like closing the pay gap, most women would have to continue to rely on other laws and Of course, steal from his men. coworkers hashtag feminism hashtag lady fingers, but the ER could at least be a safeguard against an even greater setback and we're just astate away, giving these thirteen states a great opportunity to genuinely make history and an inspired Arizona legislature.

So this could mean if we do this, this will go down in the history books. Arizona goes into the history books. Exactly, she's right that Arizona could go down in the history books and let's be honest, that doesn't happen much in most cases. The famous part of Arizona is the Grand Canyon. You know the part of Arizona where there is noticeably less Arizona. Anywhere else there would be more Arizona there, but instead there is this sudden lack of Arizona. It's everyone's favorite part. The point here is any of these 13. States have a huge opportunity to forever change the way history views them, so the only real question here is which of you wants to take advantage of that opportunity, which state is going to take advantage this opportunity to put this amendment on top and write itself into the history books.

Will it be Arizona or Georgia or could it be you, Oklahoma? You might be known for more than just tornadoes and musicals about how big grief is, which it isn't, by the way, it never is, it's like the nights, but unpleasantly brighter, could it be? From the Carolinas, could you be Utah or Missouri? You could be famous for making history instead of having a state flag. There are only two bears. Your Christmas decorations. What could it be in Florida or Mississippi? Maybe you can bless Mississippi. I always forget that's on your flag, so Mississippi, the real thing is, I mean, yeah, you could party, but let's be honest, it's going to be extremely out of character.

Louisiana, it could be you, Arkansas, it could be you, Alabama, it definitely won't be you, but Virginia. It really could be you, plus you're the birthplace of Chris Brown, Rick Santorum, and Pat Robertson, so, frankly, you owe it to America for any of these thirteen states to have a great opportunity that's taking this country almost a hundred years to ensure that this is not always the case. an opportunity like this and all I can say is someone please do it before Florida because I don't want to give them credit for this.