I think most would strongly disagree with your last paragraph, Mark B. The federal amendment you support would effectively federalize a highly contested area of social policy that clearly needs to be sorted out state-by-state. Your premise that this is just judicial activism run amuck doesn’t hold water any more. This November is going to be a bit more contested in CA than last time around. Watch also some of the New England states in the next few years.

With a federal anti-SSM amendment you’d just be creating a reverse roe v. wade situation. While that might sound good to you now, keep in mind that that’s a sword that cuts both ways. The idea of adjusting the full-faith and credit clause to exempt areas of social policy is more interesting, but the historical example you pointed out highlights the drawbacks as well.

Besides, I’m sure we both agree that a federal amendment is completely dead now regardless.

I also note that by saying these issues were already covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, the writers unwittingly conceded modern arguments regarding marriage equality!

I have yet to find anything against SSM as persuasive as Rex Lee’s arguments against ERA. And unless there are non-scriptural persuasive arguments against it, the fight, which the church seems to want to fight in California anyway, is aleady lost.

“14. Would the ERA further erode the constitutional division of powers?
16. Why is the ERA’s legislative history alarming?”

Somebody at Church headquarters should design surveys.

The church engaged in a lot of shady and likely illegal political maneuvering in Virgina to get the state ratification to go in their favor.

The whole tone of General Conferences and the Ensigns changes following the announcement of the church opposition to the ERA and reaches it’s ultimate conclusion when Elaine Cannon came out with the zinger ‘When the prophet speaks, sisters, the debate is over’ which was promptly quoted by N. Eldon Tanner a year later in the First Presidency Message for August, 1979

The pamphlet in the Ensign is only one of the many books and articles that came out during the time, Rodney Turners horrible ‘Women and the Priesthood’ as well as several editions of ‘Fascinating Womanhood’ came out right about this time. I think Sonia Johnson is an unreliable narrator in ‘From Housewife to Heretic’ but she does do an excellent job in documenting how the church was organizing political groups on church property and with the use of church phone lists. Her confrontation with Orrin Hatch is a particularly amusing read (I’d like to see those C-SPAN tapes)

Packer’s ‘The Equal Rights Amendment’ (1977) is a very interesting read, and contains an analogy that is similar to his ‘Don’t spread disease germs’ description of Mormon historians. He compares the ERA to ’smallpox of the most lethal kind’.

It worked for slavery in the first 75 years. Why couldn’t it work for “marriage” now? (Of course, the resolution of that wrong was sort of messy, as you may recall.)

But the federalism argument against the Church’s position proves too much. The ERA would have called into question hundreds of state laws, dealing with everything from divorce and alimony and child support to military service to restrooms in public buildings (yeah, I know–who cares?). And the answers to all those questions would have been federalized–every one of them could have ended up in federal court.

On the other hand, a constitutional amendment defining marriage would not affect a single law passed by any legislature in the nation. It would affect two judicial decisions (in Massachusetts and California). And, the only laws it would affect would be an attempt by a legislature or legalize same-sex “marriage”. Finally, its effect would be to prevent the nationalization of gay “marriage” through the full faith and credit clause, thus preserving the federalist principles advocated by Rex Lee.

Catherine, given the vehement opposition to the ERA that you mention having encountered from some Church leaders, how did the Church’s presentation of its reasons for opposing the ERA in this pamphlet make you feel when you read it at the time? Did it ameliorate the vehemence you were observing in your relationships with local leaders? Did you gain a better understanding for the Church’s position based on this pamphlet?

I am curious as to what you made of the argument discussed in point number 11 as a reason that the Church viewed as justifying opposition to the ERA:

Women already married who prefer to remain home and bear children would not only be giving up their own earning power but would also be unable to legally count on child support from their husbands. Great pressures could be brought to bear on a woman not to marry or have children and to join or remain in the labor force.

This doesn’t seem to be saying that the Church devalues women or does not want them to be valued equally in the workplace so much as expressing a concern that the ERA could create significant disincentives and societal pressure for women who preferred to stay at home with children rather than joining and remaining in the workforce.

Green Mormon Architect: the legal arguments against it, as presented in the pamphlet, are quite persuasive. They are not based on speculation so much as on standard (conservative) legal analysis, particularly in terms of constitutional theory and law (it might look like speculation to someone who is not trained as a lawyer or as to constitutional theory and law). Kevin B. quipped above, for example, that Rex Lee had argued very persuasively the reasons why the ERA was a bad idea from the perspective of constitutional law.

I am still curious as to who actually wrote the booklet, since it obviously wasn’t the FP.

As a general side note, if the ERA was an important moral issue, and we agreed with it, but then opposed it because we were told to, isn’t that going against our morals, and hence, immoral? This is an honest question – I am not trying to make light of anyone. For me, this is trying to understand how to deal with this SSM issue.