Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203090209
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Few would think to look at the General Assembly of Virginia, which - though it's not the old-boys' club it once was - remains firmly a sphere of male hegemony.
Yet, with hardly a ripple of dissent, the '92 assembly has done what many thought it would never do: It passed equal-rights legislation.
Should we pinch ourselves?
Granted, the bill introduced by Del. Leslie Byrne, D-Falls Church, comes a decade late. Not the ill-fated constitutional amendment, it does nothing more than urge Congress to approve a new Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and send it to the states for their ratification.
Never mind. This is - zounds! - a sea change of attitude, which ought not to go uncelebrated.
For most of the 1970s and early '80s, the ERA churned bitter struggles at the Capitol in Richmond, as in other states' legislative halls. Against a backdrop of marches, vigils, rallies and all manner of public outcry - by supporters and foes alike - it was introduced each year.
Unisex restrooms? Co-ed prison cells? Women in the military? No, no, a thousand times no, cried the opponents, equating simple affirmation of equal rights for women with the end of morality and civilization. And each year, the ERA was defeated.
Time and again, supporters threatened political retaliation. High on their hit list was the late A. L. Philpott of Bassett, who, as speaker of the House of Delegates, stacked a key committee with opponents to ensure that the ERA proposal would never make it to the House floor.
Emotions heated, voices grew shriller. Two Northern Virginia women, lobbying for passage, were arrested and evicted from the Capitol in 1978, following a scuffle in which they allegedly kicked, tackled and spat on police.
In the Senate, where the ERA consistently failed by one vote, Democrat Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount was branded a traitor for switching his position from support to opposition.
In 1980, Republican John Chichester of Fredericksburg was the scoundrel. By abstaining from voting, on cooked-up grounds of conflict of interest, Chichester denied then-Lt. Gov. Chuck Robb, an ERA supporter, the opportunity to break a tie vote to pass the amendment.
That year, a record 8,000 attended a pro-ERA rally. A featured speaker was Sonia Johnson, a Virginia woman excommunicated from the Mormon Church because of her ERA support.
Now, last week - 10 years after the deadline for ratification expired in 1982 (also the last time the assembly considered the issue) - the Senate quietly approved Byrne's ERA proposal, 21-13; the House voted 58-41 in favor.
How to explain a decade of difference? Many of the old guard - like Philpott - who scowled at the ERA are gone from the legislature now. In their place are younger lawmakers, and the balance of power has shifted from more conservative rural representatives to urban sophisticates. Other developments, including perhaps the high visibility of women serving in Desert Storm, have altered perceptions.
It is amazing that an equal-rights amendment prompted the backlash it did in the '70s. Last week, Byrne's proposal drew scant attention. The vote was mostly a symbolic gesture, a lonely signpost in a political arena traditionally and still in many ways neglectful of women's needs and rights.
But progress marches - or shuffles quietly - on. The premise in Goodman's column was correct: Women remain stuck in situations of inequality; the women's movement at the moment seems to have run out of movement.
Yet, if the once-Neanderthal Virginia legislature has voted for the ERA, there is hope.
by CNB