THREE YEARS AGO, I joined a struggle for what I view as the most transformational justice reform today: change to the U.S. Constitution. The change I advocate is at once unbelievably simple and profoundly radical: for Americans to agree that all citizens enjoy equal rights under law, whatever their gender or sexual orientation. It’s time to recognize the Equal Rights Amendment. Equality is central to most contemporary theories of justice. A majority of Americans puzzle why our nation has failed to live up to the promise of equality in our democracy. So why aren’t women protected equally?
“The ERA is dead,” opponents argue, laid to rest by an arbitrary time limit that was negotiated into the prelude of the bill Congress passed in 1972. A procedural objection seems a weak theory to lead with, in response to the unrequited aspirations of half the citizenry for basic human rights. Whatever the amendment’s merits, many claim, it cannot be revived. And yet miraculously, it has been. And women everywhere are testifying to this resurrection.
This is fitting, isn’t it? It was women, after all, who first testified to the resurrection. This Easter, we read how Mary Magdalene and the other Mary meet an angel at Jesus’ tomb, who commissions them to tell the disciples he is risen. The guards are too terrified to move, but the women rush to fulfill their divine calling (see Matthew 28).
By making them the first emissaries of the gospel, God upset all expectations of women’s place in ancient society. Their role would have been unprecedented, except it fit a revolutionary way of love modeled by Jesus of Nazareth, who defied the culture of his day by welcoming women among his followers.
This egalitarian spirit, this rare inclusivity, aligns with “Jesus’ general teaching of status reversal in the kingdom of God,” epitomized in his prophecy that “the last will be first,” explain scholars Joseph Martos and Pierre Hégy in their book Equal at the Creation. Jesus’ own resurrection was the harbinger of broader resurrection to come, a sign that the kingdom of heaven — marked by peace, love, and justice — is ascendant.
Pat Spearman and Pauli Murray
CHRISTIAN PASTOR AND Nevada state senator Pat Spearman is often credited with “resurrecting” the ERA. Spearman led her state to ratify it in 2017 — the first state to do so in 40 years. This ignited a renewed ERA movement in the wake of #MeToo revelations and the election of Donald Trump. Illinois and Virginia soon followed.
As of 2020, the ERA had cleared both of the high constitutional hurdles for an amendment: A supermajority of Congress (two-thirds) and of the states (three-fourths) had approved it. It remains the only reform to meet both bars but not to be widely heralded as law of the land.
Spearman, founding pastor of Resurrection Faith Community Ministries in Las Vegas, is clear on how essential equality is and how long and arduous the struggle can be. Daughter of a traveling evangelist, Spearman was gifted with preaching at a young age, but churches would invite her to speak yet deny her a pulpit. She served 29 years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Military Police Corps before finally experiencing the freedom to come out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in 2009 and fight for repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Spearman’s faith and perseverance recall that of the Episcopal priest and civil rights attorney Pauli Murray (now enrolled in the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints), who called gender discrimination (or “Jane Crow,” a term Murray coined) “as pernicious as ‘separate but equal.’” Murray’s brilliance undid both — by formulating the argument Thurgood Marshall used to prevail in Brown v. Board of Education and the rationale Ruth Bader Ginsburg used to win increasing equal protection for women under the 14th Amendment, starting in the early 1970s.
But the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court ruling in June addressing whether the Constitution protects the right to an abortion troubled the last 50 years of progress for gender equality by using 1868 as the touchstone for women’s rights. The Dobbs ruling threatens most constitutional progress toward the emancipation of women and LGBTQ+ Americans.
Murray believed that if litigation was ultimately unsuccessful in securing equal protection for all, then the case for an Equal Rights Amendment would be “unassailable.”
Accused as “resurrectionists”
THIS YEAR MARKS the 100th anniversary of the ERA. Proponents will gather for a centennial convention at the First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls in New York where the ERA was first unveiled. It has been introduced in every Congress since 1923, and in 1972 the proposed amendment to the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification. The language is clear: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” As law professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin observed, an arbitrary deadline on a reform of such principle and consequence is a moral outrage.
Fortunately, such esteemed minds as Harvard scholar Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitution Society president Russ Feingold, and a bevy of legal experts have detailed why Congress can change the prefatory deadline as it has once before, or simply disregard it. It was not part of the bargain states approved with ratification, and imposing it violates the careful balance of congressional and state powers in the amendment process.
Still, ERA advocates are accused of being “resurrectionists” by some politicians for our belief that equal justice under law is within reach. Although the “resurrectionist” label is meant as a slam, I will wear it proudly.
Resurrection — the inbreaking of God’s kingdom and good news for those on the margins — is reality. It is never too late for the Spirit to upend our expectations and show us that what looked like death was just a transition.
If Christians believe in the resurrection, why would we not believe in the triumph of every righteous cause? The ERA is an icon of all-inclusive justice that signifies kingdom values. As long as the moral arc of our world is bending toward justice, equality lies ahead.
I believe Spearman when she said, at a rally earlier this year to celebrate the duly ratified ERA: “We are not tired yet. ... All of our ancestors are right here with us today now and they are strengthening us for this fight. We. Will. Not. Be. Deterred.”
Perhaps one day we will testify like St. Pauli, who could say that despite numerous seeming defeats, “I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. … I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.”
In the landscape of God’s kingdom, our hopes for justice are not in vain. Our desires to be counted as fully human are not futile. Nothing is beyond divine power to reverse. Resurrection has come and it will keep a-comin’. The women are already there, witnessing it all.
Allyson McKinney Timm, a human rights lawyer, is founder and executive director of Justice Revival.
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