Tag: Equality

Another Step To Equality

Closing Thought–24Sep19

Women have been fighting for true equality for a very long time…..they we close in the 70s with the ERA and have been trying to achieve their dream ever since.

Some states have got a little closer tom the goal……

Two women sued the city of Fort Collins, Colo., for the right to go topless. Now, six states in total will reap the benefits of their ban-busting efforts after a federal appeals court overturned the city’s prohibition on women sans shirts and the city opted not to appeal. KUTV reports that not only Colorado’s women are now able to bare their breasts, but also those in Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma, after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ban in Fort Collins. Because Fort Collins has no plans to challenge the appellate court ruling, which would bring the case to the Supreme Court, the nixing of the ban applies to all six states the appeals court has jurisdiction over. NBC News notes the court ruling was handed down in February, while Fort Collins just decided this month to back off the case.

The suit was originally brought by plaintiffs Brit Hoagland and Samantha Six, who say their complaint was in the name of gender equality. The women had even started a #FreeTheNipple social media campaign to bolster their stance. Not everyone—not even all women—is 100% behind the court’s decision. “I do think we deserve equal rights in everything,” one female Boulder resident says. “But I think if women do choose to do that, they might be asking for a little bit of trouble.” Hoagland and Six disagree. “Everybody should be able to be comfortable on a hot day, and if that means taking their shirt [off], so be it,” Hoagland tells KGUN 9. “No matter how you look [at it], you should have the same freedom [as] the person next to you.”

As a man I will refrain from giving my thoughts….but I would love to hear from others on this new turn…..

I say just get to work and finally ratify the ERA…..period!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

This From A Democracy

Keeping with the theme of the day….Israel, has been billed the ONLY democracy in the Middle East, that is the biggest damn lie on record.

Equality is part of the principles of a democracy……the US is one state vote away from ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)…..I bring this up because that fake democracy in the Middle East has offered its version of equality….the problem is there will be NO vote…..

Israel is an apartheid state, but you don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is take a look at the actions of the lawmakers in the Israeli Knesset, the national legislature of Israel.

On June 5, the Knesset issued a press release stating that its Presidium (a group consisting of the speaker and deputy speakers) voted to disqualify a proposed bill that called for Israel “to be defined as a state of all its citizens” to be placed on the Knesset’s agenda.

By its own admission, the Knesset mentioned that this was an “unusual move,” since it is the “first time proposed legislation has been disqualified before being discussed in the plenum (the entire assembly of Knesset members) during the past two Knesset terms.” This means that such a swift shooting down of legislation has not occurred in at least five years.

http://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/lawmakers-equality-introduced/

In a rare act, the Presidency of the Knesset (a ten-member group representing most parties) last week disqualified a bill moved by Israeli Palestinian parliamentarians from coming to a debate or vote. The bill in question was named “Basic Law: Israel [is a] State of All Its Citizens.”

As the names hints, the bill would have declared that Israel belongs not to its Jews but to all its residents. The Knesset Presidency decided the bill was too dangerous to come to a vote.

http://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/officially-declares-democracy/

That is right this nation of cowards and bullies will not let the chance of equality for its citizens to even come up for a vote.

So please stop calling this band of criminals a nation of democracy….they will NEVER be a democracy….at best just an extension of fascism.  Please stop using the “D” word when referring to Israel…the land hate created.

Feminism In Review

Last week news came out that another state has ratified the ERA (Equal Right Amendment) making it so that only one more state needs to ratify and it will become the law of the land (I am sure there are a few that will cringe at the thought of women being equal)…..

I wrote about the last vote in a Closing Thought post…..

https://lobotero.com/2018/06/01/closing-thought-01jun18/

Step into the “Way Back” machine and set the dial for the 1970’s USA……Jimmy Carter is president and women started burning bras to get attention from the media……..this gave rise to feminism….and women have been fighting ever since……as of today can we decide what version of feminism we are in?

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the second-wave feminists are at war with the third-wave feminists.

No, wait, the second-wavers are at war with the fourth-wave feminists.

No, it’s not the second-wavers, it’s the Gen X-ers.

Are we still cool with the first-wavers? Are they all racists now?

Is there actually intergenerational fighting about feminist waves? Is that a real thing?

Do we even use the wave metaphor anymore?

As the #MeToo movement barrels forward, as record numbers of women seek office, and as the Women’s March drives the resistance against the Trump administration, feminism is reaching a level of cultural relevance it hasn’t enjoyed in years. It’s now a major object of cultural discourse — which has led to some very confusing conversations because not everyone is familiar with or agrees on the basic terminology of feminism. And one of the most basic and most confusing terms has to do with waves of feminism.

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth

I tried to do what I could to help women fight for their rights and their place in this society….a place beyond bare foot and pregnant and tied to the bed scenario….

They are getting close so now would be a good time for the old style feminism to be resurrected and work for that last state to ratify.

As soon as the dullards on the Right realize how close the ERA is they will double their efforts to see that it does not see the light of day in that last state.

Closing Thought–01Jun18

I would like to leave my readers today with a bit of history that almost everyone has forgotten but is not dead in the least.

That little slice of history is the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)……can you remember the fight back in the 70’s…….no?

The proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) states that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution apply equally to all persons regardless of their sex. After the 19th Amendment affirming women’s right to vote was ratified in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul introduced the ERA in 1923 as the next step in bringing “equal justice under law” to all citizens.

In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original seven-year time limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required to put it into the Constitution. The ERA has been introduced into every Congress since the deadline, and beginning in 1994, ERA advocates have been pursuing two different routes to ratification:

  • the traditional process described in Article V of the Constitution (passage by a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states), and
  • the innovative “three-state strategy” (ratification in three more of the 15 state legislatures that did not ratify the ERA in 1972-82, based on legal analysis that when three more states vote yes, this process could withstand legal challenge and accomplish ratification of the ERA)

I drag this out of the dust bin of history because the ratification process is NOT dead and after a recent vote there is only one state short of ratification…..

Illinois has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment a mere 36 years after the deadline for ratification, 46 years after it passed Congress, and 97 years after it was introduced. The amendment, which calls for men and women to have equal rights under state and federal law, was approved by 35 of the necessary 38 states when the deadline passed in 1982, CNN reports. Nevada finally approved it in 2017 and advocates hope it will finally be added to the Constitution if one more state ratifies it, though five states have rescinded their original ratifications, meaning there could be a legal battle even if the magic number of 38 is reached, Reuters reports. The amendment failed in Virginia’s legislature earlier this year.

The measure passed the Illinois House with a single vote to spare in a victory that NPR calls a “stark turnaround” for the home state of conservative Phyllis Schlafly, an anti-feminist activist who campaigned against the ERA in the ’70s. “Years in the making, yesterday’s vote in Illinois brings us one step closer,” says Lenora Lapidus, director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “We look forward to more progress being made, and ensuring that women are explicitly protected against discrimination.” With calls to revive the amendment growing stronger amid the #MeToo movement, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney plans to hold a congressional hearing on the ERA next week. It will be the first since 1984.

Which state will be the history maker….which state will bring about the ratification of the ERA?

That’s it for me guys…..peace out…..chuq

I Now Pronounce You……..

For decades there has been a battle raging over the simple act of getting married…….we have heard from the Leftist…..then the religious d/bags that equate same sex marriage with everything from incest to bestiality….and then there were those like myself that felt that it was a personal and private decision made by two people and because it was thusly it was none of my business or anyone else for that matter……..

Like I said we have heard from everybody and now we have heard from the the last player………. SCOTUS………

Perhaps the most anticipated Supreme Court case has been decided, and it’s a yes for same-sex marriage throughout the land. In a ruling authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court voted 5-4 today that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, the AP reports.
Kennedy wrote that gays and lesbians “may not be deprived of liberty” or of that “fundamental right” to marry, per CNN. Gay couples could already marry in 36 states and DC, but now the other 14 states will no longer be able to ban same-sex couples from doing so. The decision reveals the court’s resounding “yes” to one of the most important constitutional questions posed in recent times, as worded by the Wall Street Journal in January: “Does the 14th Amendment, which guarantees ‘equal protection’ and ‘due process’ of law, forbid states from treating gay couples differently than heterosexual ones?”

The opinion seems to purposely not state a “standard of scrutiny,” SCOTUSblog notes. Instead, it asserts “it is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. … This denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm.” President Obama sent out a tweet right after the ruling was announced, writing, “Today is a big step in our march toward equality. Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry, just like anyone else

Of course the battles are not over…….the state’s rights jerks will be looking for ways to circumvent the ruling as they have with abortion….

For now it is a win for equality…..and after all is that not what the Founders intended?

You may begin the rejoicing!

War on Dr. King

Back in the days of the civil rights movement there was No one more central than Martin Luther King….and during this time the FBI  lead by the cross dresser, J. edgar Hoover,  spent many hours trying to discredit everything Dr. King tried to accomplish….they tried labeling him a Communist…..as a serial adulterer……and any other dirty trick they could think of at the time…….

A recent discovery may have been one of the dirtiest……

In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. received an anonymous letter assailing him as an “evil” fraud and threatening to reveal all kinds of sordid details about his personal life. Unless: “There is only one thing left for you to do,” it concludes. “You know what it is.” As Yale professor Beverly Gage explains in the New York Times, King read the letter and concluded that it could only have come from the FBI and that it was J. Edgar Hoover’s way of getting him to kill himself. Historians have long known about the so-called “suicide letter,” but Gage has discovered an unredacted version in Hoover’s files in the National Archives, and the Times has published it here. (Though the newspaper redacts the name of a woman the letter writer calls one of his “evil playmates.”)

The letter also makes reference to an “enclosure” and says King should listen to it, suggesting that it could be an audio recording related to one of his affairs. Gage writes that Hoover isn’t the author—instead one of his deputies, William Sullivan, “apparently took it upon himself” to write it. For the record, the letter never explicitly says King should commit suicide, and some historians think the intent was to get him to step aside as a civil rights leader, not kill himself.

Character assassination is what we Americans do when we a confronted by someone that does not fit our little range of acceptable…..and the FBI does it better than most.

Dr, Kong basically flip-off the letter and as they say….the rest is history.

Whose Equality?

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Early American History

From time to time when I am talking with people a subject comes up that puts my brain into overdrive and I just have to post something before it can rest………this was a conversation I was having with a conserv friend and he used the ‘equality’ about 5 times in a sentence………BANG!  My mind went to work…….

Let me inject that I am not saying that what we believe about our founding era is wrong just that the thinking may not be the same as it is today or has been portrayed by history books……..I have spent many years studying and researching the founding period a….by read papers and thoughts from those men that we hold in high regard….and in doing so I have found an insight in the thought processes from those days……..

Who does not know those magic words from our founding, “….that all men are created equal……”?  Words that we Americans are proud of and hopefully we aspire to live by…….words that have echoed through out our history……but what we the Founders thinking?  What can explain the continuation of slavery?  Or women not being allowed to vote?  What were they thinking?

Well the liberal definition is that people are born equal….legal and political equality but equality of opportunity as well….the conservative definition is more  an abstract and unachievable goal…..but where did the Founders fall in this scheme?

Most of the Founders were well schooled and being such would have been exposed to John Locke……..Equality is the driving force of Locke’s political theory because it is the basis for our consensual participation in society, a requisite for the establishment of any state.  As such, equality is not just necessary in the establishment of government but is also a requisite in maintaining a safe and stable nation.  Locke describes the responsibility of the government (specifically the legislative power) as “the preservation of the society, and of every person in it” (Locke, Treatise, 69), showing his belief that the obligations of the government are to provide safety and protection to all its citizens equally.

But was Locke the driving thought of the day?

Let’s start with the person who put the idea in the minds of average Americans, Thomas Paine, in his mind equality meant just what it sounds like……for men, women, slaves………Paine thought everyone in the society was equal there were no one person or group that was better than the others……Paine wrote about women and they voting, wrote about free all slaves and even wrote about a social security type of fund for retirement……he foresaw all people living as equals in a just society.

But that is about where the Founders departed from the whole equality thing…..at least in my opinion.

Equality is a magical word but what did it mean in the context of our founding documents?  Personally, I do not think the the Founders were speaking about ALL men…….their idea was that Americans were equal to citizens of England….that they should have all the rights and privileges of their English brothers…..

I give you the decision written by Taney in the Dred Scott vs Sanford……..Taney — a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression — wrote in the Court’s majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.”

Yes, he was a supporter of slavery but also I believe that he was interpreting what the DoI was stating…..that all white free men were equal to the free men of England and all others were subordinate to that…….I want to believe that the Founders were that forward looking but their writings and papers just does not bear that out…..