Please contact your Republican state delegates ASAP and forward/email to your friends to help spread the word. We must remain active and alert to offset the pro-ERA efforts
Bob Marshall
Despite the misleading claims of the media, the ERA is NOT dead in Virginia!
One of the four ERA ratification proposals was rejected 12-10 by the Privileges & Elections Committee last Friday but three other ratification resolutions are still alive and pro-ERA forces are working tirelessly.
We cannot relent.
The two remaining House of Delegates ERA measures would have to pass the P & E Committee before February 5th (Crossover) but the Senate ERA measure is alive until adjournment Feb. 23rd.
The House of Delegates can use a “discharge” motion to bypass the P & E Committee and bring the measure directly to the House floor by a simple majority vote! (Congresswoman Martha Griffiths brought her ERA to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by a discharge petition in 1970.) I believe pro-ERA lobbyists will try this.
If only a couple of Republicans are absent the day it is brought up, we lose! (Two Senate Republicans were absent Jan. 29th causing a major Second Amendment bill to die.)
ERA proponents ran a full page ad in this past Sunday’s Richmond Times. Today a major press conference with a Hollywood actress was held in Congress to push a resolution to have the 1972 ERA be ratified by three, not 38 states as required by our U.S. Constitution!
The ERA is not properly before the Virginia General Assembly for ratification. Period!
Even President Carter’s Justice Department said the ERA had to be reintroduced if its congressionally established deadline expired.
“Certainly, if a time limit has expired before an intervening Congress has taken action to extend that limit, a strong argument could be made that the only constitutional means of reviving a proposed amendment would be to propose the amendment anew by two-thirds vote of each House … [Congresswoman Griffiths … ‘I think it is perfectly proper to have the 7-year statute so that it should not be hanging around over our head forever. … Senator Hartke, a supporter of the resolution, stated …‘if there is such a delay [beyond seven years], then we must begin the entire process once again.’” [Memo, John M. Harmon, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Justice Department to Hon. Robert Lipschutz, Counsel to the President, 10/31/77]
The ERA will end all limits on abortion for 9 months and parental notice and conscience clauses; women will be drafted and serve in combat like men do; privacy for women in prisons, lockers, gyms, and bathrooms will end; women-only schools, sports teams, scholarships and business programs will be prohibited.
Please contact your Republican state delegates ASAP and send this email to your friends to help spread the word. We must remain active and alert to offset the pro-ERA efforts!
Bob Marshall
