19th amendment deals with discrimination and the orginal document does not mention women and their place, so one must assume that it covers women in the same way as men. The Democrats have pretended to be on women's side a long time while holding them behind that glass ceiling. NOW claims to be for women, but when it came to speak out out about several things these past several years voted tthe straight Democrat line.
No protective word for the Women Stoned, no protection for 9 year old brides and certainly no kind words for those same little brides sent to their executions for being immoral .... I am sick of these Democrats who scream discrimination and that women are safe with Democrats. This is over. The Democrats are seen for what they are. LIARS.
Does the Constitution Protect Women Against Discrimination?
SodaHead News
2011/01/04 21:00:00
|
|
|||||
|
110 votes
|
|
59% | |||
|
76 votes
|
|
41% | |||
You gotta love Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Well, that is, unless you’re a woman.
The currently longest-serving justice on the court – appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 – is considered to be the intellectual rock of the court’s conservative wing. Or, as The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd described him in a 2003 column, “Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair,” saying that he’s so “Old School, he's Old Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did not have to accept women...”
Need proof? Look no further than a recently published interview with Scalia in the California Lawyer legal magazine, in which the court’s associate justice opined that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.
According to Scalia – who in 1986 cast the only vote in favor of letting the Virginia Military Institute continue to deny admission to women -- while the Constitution doesn’t bar the passage of legislation outlawing such discrimination against women, it doesn’t specifically outlaw it, either.
“In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation,” said his interviewer, asking if we’ve erred in applying the 14th Amendment to both.
“Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine,” he said. “You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date."
The Huffington Post spoke to a couple of legal experts, including Marcia Greenberger, founder of the National Women’s Law Center, who called Scalia’s comments “shocking,” suggesting that he’s saying that if the government sanctions discrimination against women, the legal system offers no recourse for them.
As a refresher, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
"In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," Greenberger said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011."
Under Scalia’s thinking, Greenberger said, women could be legally barred from serving on juries, paid less by the government and receive fewer military benefits, among other iniquities.
The currently longest-serving justice on the court – appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 – is considered to be the intellectual rock of the court’s conservative wing. Or, as The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd described him in a 2003 column, “Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair,” saying that he’s so “Old School, he's Old Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did not have to accept women...”
Need proof? Look no further than a recently published interview with Scalia in the California Lawyer legal magazine, in which the court’s associate justice opined that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.
According to Scalia – who in 1986 cast the only vote in favor of letting the Virginia Military Institute continue to deny admission to women -- while the Constitution doesn’t bar the passage of legislation outlawing such discrimination against women, it doesn’t specifically outlaw it, either.
“In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation,” said his interviewer, asking if we’ve erred in applying the 14th Amendment to both.
“Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine,” he said. “You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date."
The Huffington Post spoke to a couple of legal experts, including Marcia Greenberger, founder of the National Women’s Law Center, who called Scalia’s comments “shocking,” suggesting that he’s saying that if the government sanctions discrimination against women, the legal system offers no recourse for them.
As a refresher, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
"In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," Greenberger said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011."
Under Scalia’s thinking, Greenberger said, women could be legally barred from serving on juries, paid less by the government and receive fewer military benefits, among other iniquities.
(to simplify that if everyone were free to do as they wished society would destroy itself)
And he is right, when the 14th Amendment was created, no one was thinking about the rights of women. They were still trying to grasp the concept that blacks shouldn't be kept as slaves.
Women's suffrage really didn't gain any stocking legs until the early part of the 20th century.