>>> ahead of tomorrow's first supreme court hearing on same-sex marriage, some experts are urging caution for some of the pit falls gay rights activists could face this week. joining me now, he just wrote an article titled why gay rights activists could have trouble legalizing gay marriage . and you point to my favorite time of life, the 70s. you were referring specifically to equal rights amendment and what it looked like then compared to what we're seeing now.
>> that's right. although i'm sure you're far too young to know anything about the '70s. i remember them vividly. look, i make the comparison between the same-sex marriage debate we're having now and the equal rights amendment debate of the late 1970s . there was an effort in the '70s to pass a constitutional amendment that would have ended any kind of difts, discrimination in materials of the long material of men and women. and it was very popular. it was supported by president ford , president nixon , it had a lot of momentum when congress passed it in 1972 . it quickly cleared 30 states . 38 states need to pass something to become constitutional amendment . and that happened quickly. and all the momentum was with it. just the same way now that same-sex marriage seems to have a lot of momentum behind it. and then what happened is opponents of the amendment really organized in the states , and they just stopped it from passing new states . they got some states to repeal it. and it never became part of the constitution.
>> and those are all fair comparisons and certainly looking back at history. i found it intriguing. you have with the equal rights amendment is the absence of religion. which is not supposed to be part of the dialogue here with same-sex marriage but just yesterday, ralph reed was on "meet the press" and he talk about pro creation and the reason we have marriage which clouds this debate and certainly did not cloud equal rights amendment as it relates to what people see as a social view of life. what they think is a moral view of life, right?
>> well, you did have a lot of fundamentalist christian groups really flexing their muscles in some ways for the first time with the equal rights amendment . phyllis schlafly who led that --
>> you pointed that out in your article.
>> there are differences, as you know. e.r.a. was one tool of the feminist movement and they may have lost the battle but won the war in terms of having lots of statutes passed. lots of states happened with the states , even if the e.r.a. didn't. is not exactly aanalogous to it.
>> the article is amazing and i think people should look at it from an historical perspective. and there was a quote that when the equal rights amendment first proposed by alice paul , you mentioned it was introducing in 1923 . it was worded equalities of the rights should not be abridged by any state on account of sex. this fits into the dialogue today. when you talk about the equality of rights, we call this debate. same sex marriage vote here's say this is marriage equality .
>> that's right. it certainly echos of the same debate. it is interesting to see what the opponents of e.r.a. did. they said my gosh, you're going to have, first of all, they said you can draft women in the military which seemed like a crazy and outlandish idea at the time. same sex prisons, no men's and women's bathrooms. they took the, the most dubious arguments and that is being charitable, and used that to make everyone think again. i don't think the opponents of same sex marriage have quite found anything yet that will hold it up as much. but you never know.
>> you never know. thank you so much for coming on. everyone should check out your
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