End of an ERA?

The language seemed innocuous enough: "Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex." But in recent months, ad hoc groups of traditionalist women sprang up in New York and New Jersey to denounce the proposed state equal rights amendments as antimarriage, anti-family and likely to lead to unisex toilets. Pamphlets emblazoned with the inevitable picture of the gaping shark from Jaws warned that equal rights for women could mean the "ruination of America," and lead to homosexual marriages, loss of widows' benefits and the mass drafting of women into the U.S. armed forces. The impassioned campaign caught on. Last week the state equal rights amendments went down to defeat, narrowly in New Jersey, by more than 400,000 votes (out of a total of 3.1 million) in New York.

Broad Phrasing. The outcome stunned feminists. Both states had voted quickly to ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, and were expected to pass interim state versions just as handily. "It's hard to believe and harder to accept," said Brooklyn Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. New York Lieutenant Governor Mary Anne Krupsak blamed "the forces of confusion."

Actually, the brevity and broad phrasing of the amendments seemed to feed suspicions of hidden meanings. Said State Senator Karen Burstein: "If someone came away believing there was even a 1-in-100 chance of unisex toilets, then she'd vote against ERA." Columbia Law Professor Ruth Ginsburg added: "A lot of women don't want to buy anything they don't know. It's fear of change."

Yet Professor Ginsburg concedes that no one really knows the full implications of the amendments. Many divorced women with good jobs or other income undoubtedly would lose alimony rights, and the nearly automatic assignment of child custody to the divorced mother would end. More important, anti-ERA women believe that laws promoting the economic independence of women would penalize nonworking mothers and undermine the traditional family. Says Annette Stern, head of New York's Operation Wake Up: "The Equal Rights Amendment could be the turning point of whether family life, as we know it, will survive." Indeed, the referendum took on the trappings of a morality play pitting housewife against feminist. "The women's movement did a lot of good things in the '60s," said Ciel Herman, a Levittown, N.Y., housewife who opposed ERA, "but they neglected the majority of women who are homemakers and mothers. I don't want all women who stand by the sink to be taken out of the textbooks."

Whether or not last week's vote reflected an antifeminist backlash, both sides agreed that it dimmed hopes for passage of the federal Equal Rights Amendment by the March 1979 deadline. Thirty-four of the required 38 states have ratified the 1972 amendment, but the early momentum is gone. Twenty-two state legislatures ratified it the first year, eight in 1973, three in 1974. So far this year, only one state--North Dakota --has approved ERA. Nebraska and Tennessee have voted to rescind their earlier approval, though the legal status of their action is dubious. Congress has the authority to disregard such votes and has done so once in the past. Still, both sides in the ERA struggle expect the issue to reach the Supreme Court. The victorious anti-ERA forces in New York and New Jersey are already gearing up for campaigns to revoke ratification. More important, some feminists now fear that their setback may produce a national split on ERA along liberal-conservative lines. So far, conservative politicians have not seen much political potential in opposing equal rights for women. After last week's emotional voting, they may.

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