I was ex'd prior to Sonia Johnson. Being pro ERA was speaking out against the prophet. More than a few women in Mormonism were tired of the women being subservient. At the same time, I was also involved in civil rights for people of color.

My biggest fear was having my picture shown on nightly news and humiliating my family. One day I decided that was not a good enough reason to be in the shadows.

I still think a lot of Mormon women had no idea what the ERA even was. The Mormon church was against it, so....WE WOMEN are against it. It is a shame to see so many women without a voice even to this day.

Equal Rights Amendment

Section 1. Equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbX61szWBQo

And then there was this person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c75QdarAFKg&feature=related

What do you remember of that time on this topic?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2011 10:41AM by wings.

I remember vaguely my mom talking about it. Something about women in combat, and unisex bathrooms. Also, if you have a high school football team, it would be a mixture, or you would be required to have a womans and mens team to avoid the girls being 'tackled' by the boys and other stuff along those lines

I personally don't have a problem with it.I've met plenty of women in my time who could probably wipe the floor with me.

I'm no help, as I'm only 33. But my mother was on the other side, you know, the fight-against-unisex-toilets side. The side that didn't want to HAVE to go to work.

Somehow, I obliviously thought equal rights except for gays had already arrived. I've been operating under that assumption my whole life. During my few discussions about how stupid church culture is with my mother I said something about having all the rights the ERA afforded me, and she said, "that never passed, dear." All patronizingly.

Oblivious, that's me.

I have always had equal pay, and got someone canned for slapping me on the ass. Fair's fair, and I have for the most part been fairly treated in the world, despite having a vulva instead of a penis.

I try to do some for equal rights for others, but I am not a humongous participant. I realize certain areas of the US are less "equal" than others, and one pig did tell me to quit my job so a man could have it, when I was an OTR trucker going through the south.
I am fortunate to be in a major metropolitan area that is big on all sorts of equality.

I'd been out quite a while by then.

Which temple? I guess ...Oakland;)

I had a long post about this several years ago. It wasn't a big deal here--California ratified the amendment early on--until the the Mormon church got involved and the Sonia Johnson trial burst into the news. I wrote a letter to the First Presidency, got a reply from GBH. The local leaders were terrified of me--I was a newly minted lawyer and ready to take them on. I had a TR until the day my family and I quit going.

I know we discussed this on RFM when siog and et in Utah ego regularly posted. There were a number of us involved that posted here. Only a few were active members at the time. I was on the Stake MIA board, a beehive teacher, roadshow writer/director and held a TR until I was excommunicated. It was social suicide and familial heartbreak that never really healed. Leaving Utah and the heaviness of the Utah Mormon culture, something that permeated absolutely all one encountered=pure oxygen.

Would love to hear your story.

...is very little. I was just a kid, but I do recall feeling some kind of pride because my mom was involved in something big, and even though I didn't understand, I knew she was in the right. In the family album, proudly displayed, is a photo of my mom and other ladies in the ward with their "Stop ERA" buttons and signs. It's only in the last few years that it's all clicked into place for me, and it leaves me feeling very sad.

Last month I went to visit my parents and had a very frank conversation with my mom about her life, which hasn't been a terribly fulfilling one. she admitted that she had consindered leaving my dad a few times but "Where would I have gone? What would I have done?" I didn't say it, but for starters, she could have not worked against herself and her sisters in getting equal rights. Maybe then she would have had more options. But it wasn't the time orplace for that angle to the conversation. I'm still left feeling sad over it all.

The ERA was one of the main reasons I quit the mormon church. I didn't like being told how to vote from the pulpit. The last time I attended SM the bishop's wife gave a talk about the evils of it. All that stuff about women in the military and unisex bathrooms.

I got disgusted and left and haven't been back since.

Very interesting. I JUST finished reading Sonia Johnson's book (found it in a used bookstore). I was in collage at the time and it brought back lots of memeories. I remember seeing the articles about the Mormons for the ERA chaining themselves to the Bellevue WA Temple and getting arrested.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/UU_Photo_Archive


This is my personal favorite, for a personal reason:)
Update:
Humm... I can't get the link to work. Perhaps someone can assist? Google the subject line of this reply to see photo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2011 01:26PM by wings.

Thank you for the help:)

Wow, has my perspective ever changed on this since those days. I was in jr. high when my mom was assigned to cover the Washington state convention in Ellensburg for the local newspaper. I wish I had copies of the stories she filed so I could see her spin on things. I believe she always tried to be an ethical journalist BUT she made the trip over there with my stake RS pres grandmother and a bunch of LDS women hell-bent on dominating the agenda. What we heard in the camper at the end of the day was all the stuff you're saying here... fear-mongering about women in combat, women forced to work, unisex bathrooms and sports teams, the evil Sonia Johnson and... the LESBIANS taking over (cue dramatic scream: Eeeee!!!) Little did mom know that she was coming back to the camper after the sessions and feeding dinner to my sweet little baby lesbian sister. Mom is still TBM, but I think now even *she* has some reservations about how all of this played out.

They wrapped all sorts of things into the fear mongering. Homosexuality was one of the "this will happen if" things. Also the women in combat, unisex bathrooms, and women would be expected to provide 50% of the family income.

I still wonder how many Mormon women ever read the simple amendment.

I don't remember much, but what I do remember is that I was 12 years old and brand new in Young Women. Our YW week night activity (which was usually a fun thing) was that they gathered all us girls in the chapel and a lady addressed us; all about the evils of the ERA. And yes, the thing that sticks out the most in my memory is the unisex bathroom thing. After she was finished speaking, they passed out stationary and pens and told us to write a letter to Washington as to why we did not want the ERA to pass. I was a mere child of 12. I had no frame of reference, other than what this woman was telling us. And you can bet she made it sound horrible. As an adult, looking back, I can't believe that they would get teens and pre-teens to do something like this to further their agenda.

I remember the times, long time gone. You and Phantom Shadow should talk, wings.

Last I recall, you went all Europe on us;) I left CA a couple of years ago, retired to ranch lands with cowboys and horses in a no stop light town. A change is as good as a rest?

It would be lovely to chat with Phantom Shadow. I read something this morning. It took my mind on that magical, mystical craziness.... life as a square peg pushing to fit that round hole.

Good to see you. I hope you're enjoying the range lands (and the ranch hands!).

Round peg/square hole = My life in Mormonism. I think Girl in the Box had the most-telling moniker of all time.

That was way before my time...I've read a little bit about it, and it stuns me that other women my age have no idea what the ERA was.

It didn't pass, and guess what? Family bathrooms are being installed in most major malls, gays are getting rights, women are serving in more and more capacities in the military, and, since livable wage hasn't kept pace since the Reagan administration, we are at a place where families need two jobs to stay in the black. Congratulations fear mongers...I doubt it would have made much of a difference.

I don't think she would agree with it now, but we don't talk.

... all the dire predictions of what ERA would bring. Didn't have major impact up here in Canada, since we work quietly on our own terms on such things - but Sonia Johnson was a heroine of mine, and I enjoyed some of the references to her in 'Church'... especially the anger at her "Uppity Sisters" line! Her book "From Housewife to Heretic" is still a total favourite of mine...
My dear old nevermo Mum heard some of the fearmongering and said to me, "Son, what are they so excited about? They all grew up with unisex bathrooms, as did you and I!"
True dat, Mum!

I had left LDS Inc a couple years before the book was published. I almost got myself expelled from BYU in the process. Oops. I felt like I was the only person who had had LDS Inc turn on me like they did. Sonia Johnson provided a "second witness", if you will, that I was in fact not an isolated example. To this day, the memory of that still bring tears to my eyes (he says, wiping away tears).

I actually met Sonia twice, when she spoke in Dallas, TX, and Minneapolis, promoting the book. I later was on a liberal feminist Mormon email list named ELWC (electronic latter-day women's forum, also the student union building at BYU), where I met and became friends with Sonia's friend, Arlene, on whose journals most of Sonia's book was based.

To call the LDS anti-ERA campaign a watershed moment in my life doesn't even begin to do it justice. I was transfixed by the entire process, and paid very close attention, coming to know a lot of the female principles in the Mormons for ERA movement.

I still have my Mormons for ERA membership card. I still remember the air banners they had flown over General Conference back in the 1970s.

The one I remember is "Mother in Heaven supports Mormons for ERA."

I supported the ERA, but I did not consider myself a Mormon at the time and hadn't been inside a church for 10 years. I argued with my mother about it a lot.She accepted the churches' reasoning and believed the scare tactics. I thought it was ridiculous.Even without the ERA , women are working, in the military and we even have unisex restrooms and society has survived just fine.

I read Sonia Johnson's book, "From Housewife to Heretic", years ago. Probably when it first came out. I was a bit of a feminist firebrand in my youth and I remember being really appalled that her whole CHURCH rose up against her. Also I was totally grossed out by her description of her husband as being an engineering nerd who wore shirts with white perspiration rings under the arms.

Does anyone know what happened to Sonia afterward? I couldn't find anything about her on the internets.

ETA I played "College Bowl" when I was in college -- kind of a trivia game for nerds -- and I won a match once by being able to recite the text of the ERA. I remember people being amazed to hear it was so simple. If we'd had t-shirts with the text on them, it would have passed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2011 05:56PM by frankiepup.

If I remember correctly, she was exed, got a divorce and later came out as a Lesbian. It is possible I have her mixed up with someone else though.It has been a while since she has been in the limelight.If I do have this right, I'm betting the church blames all her actions on her sexual orientation. LOL.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2011 06:44PM by bona dea.

BTW, for those not familiar with the story, she was basically exed for exposing LDS Inc's underhanded shenanigans during their anti-ERA campaign. Their total lack of integrity did not start with Prop 8.

LDS Inc was lobbying hard against ratification of the ERA in Virginia, where Johnson lived at the time. They were rounding up sisters, providing baby sitting and bus service to Richmond and Washington. This meant they met the legal definition of "lobbyist", but they had not registered as lobbyists. In addition, the women were told to identify themselves as "concerned mothers", and NOT to say they were Mormons, especially Mormons organized by the Church.

Sonia outed them, and LDS Inc was required to register as a lobbying organization. They were mightily pissed off at being publically humiliated by an "uppity female", a phrase used by then brand new Utah senator Orrin Hatch, iirc. Her excommunication was payback for making LDS Inc look bad. She had violated the first and greatest commandment in LDSdom - Thou shalt not make the Organization look bad in public.

She was active in Mormons for ERA for several years after her exing. She then went radical lesbian, living at several lesbian communes, at least one of which was in New Mexico. She distanced herself from her former Mormons for ERA colleagues, and pretty much dropped out of sight in the late 1980s.

Yep. I was a Mormon for ERA. That was the beginning of the end for my relationship with the church.

I am so glad our community remembers and respects Sonia Johnson.

Back in the day, I was still a TBM, in thrall to the wretched TSCC. I remember receiving the patronizing flyer Salt Lake sent out to all the sisters, letting them know they only wanted the "best" for them. (Hangs head in shame.)

Years later "Housewife to Heretic" was one of the two books that got me out of the church. I still have a dog-eared copy, with dozens of bookmarks and keep an extra copy to loan out to anyone interested.

About two years ago I read a post about Sonia. She and an a dear friend run a little Bed and Breakfast near a natural hot spring in a lovely part of the country. She prefers to live very simply and quietly.

Regarding unisex bathrooms, that argument doesn't even make sense if you think about it for ten seconds.

Most people do not have men's bathrooms and women's bathrooms in their houses. I don't know about y'all, but I have two bathrooms in my house and they are both unisex! I know, the horror, right? I can't believe people are so mindblowingly stupid that they'd actually buy into this argument.

Ironically, of course, nowadays you find "family" bathrooms all over the place. Because ERA and their unholy unisex bathrooms would have solved the Daddy-with-daughter/Mommy-with-son bathroom problem.