Tucked away in a June 21 article about the Maine Legislature’s latest failure to pass on to voters a chance to ratify the ERA (“Equal Rights Amendment champion comes up short in final effort as Maine lawmaker”) was this telling sentence: “Many opponents focused on how the amendment could affect abortion, and others raised concerns about transgender people using bathrooms.
Take a minute to think about it.
Opponents are straight-out admitting that they oppose the equal rights of women and others because they want to control women’s bodies and the bathroom habits of a group of people who are already among the most persecuted in our country.
Rather than embracing equality before the law and thus the universal right to bodily autonomy, these people are still committed, in the year 2023, to withholding equal rights for women.
This is brain-shattering and should galvanize anyone who cares about “liberty and justice for all” to think hard about where we are headed.
Seri Lowell, Buckfield
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