LETERS: TELL LEGISLATORS TO VOTE NO ON ERA

To the editor:

The Equal Rights Amendment, House Joint Resolution 42 in the Missouri House of Representatives, has already passed the House Critical Issues Committee.

The battle in the Missouri Senate is expected to be hard-fought as the liberals are trying to deceive the legislators by making them believe the amendment is about equal rights for women with equal pay for equal work and fair treatment for all women who, of course, are portrayed as victims.

The U.S. Supreme Court has already declared that the ERA was dead when, after 10 years, the amendment failed to achieve the necessary ratification by three-fourths of the states.

However, New Mexico and Connecticut are two of the few states that have ERA amendments like the one that was rejected by three-fourths of the states.

Under the constitutions of Connecticut and New Mexico, it was ruled that Medicaid must pay for elective abortions under the ERA, for to deny women the right would be discrimination. Naturally, the American Civil Liberties Union brought the suit to the courts in those states. Here is what the Connecticut courts said: "Since only women become pregnant, discrimination against pregnancy by not funding abortions ... is sex-oriented discrimination."

Also, the ERA would allow same-sex marriage. Hawaii is another state that has adopted the ERA, and in 1993 the Hawaii Supreme Court rules in Baehr vs. Lewin that denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples was sex discrimination and unconstitutional under the equal-rights amendment to Hawaii's constitution. Hawaii voters had to undo the damage done to their constitution by voting a new constitutional amendment stating that its legislature "shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples."

It would seem as though the ACLU will not be happy until same-sex marriages are legitimized throughout all of these United States and will not rest until it reaches its goal.

Another benefit of the ERA would be to allow our daughters and granddaughters to be drafted into the front lines of any war.

If you want to see the equal-rights amendment to our state constitution defeated in this election year, contact your representatives in the House and tell them you want them to defeat this pro-abortion and pro-homosexual ruse. Tell them to vote no on HJR 42. Please write before May. Also write to your state senators asking them to vote no on Senate Joint Resolution 43, which is the Senate version of the same bill.

VIRGINIA BAUMERT

Cape Girardeau