Bad news to the Lavender Ladies at the N.O.W.: Women are still lesser to
men in the eyes of the American legal system. What's worse, it's women
who are bringing this upon themselves. Three recent events show this to
be true.
First was last week's trial of Pfc. Lynndie England at Ft. Hood, Texas.
Leash-lady, as you recall, was the woman who brought dishonor and shame
upon the United States military by posing with naked Iraqi prisoners,
then giving the thumbs-up in a full-frontal display of sadistic bravado.
During the trial Pfc. England's lawyer trotted out the sob story that
she was an impressionable young girl who fell under the diabolical sway
of her boyfriend, Charles Graner. "What mattered to her was her
relationship to Cpl. Graner," according to attorney Jonathan Crisp. And
- get ready for this -- "She has had and has a great deal of difficulty
functioning in life in general."
Yes, the poor dear obviously can't be held responsible for her actions.
Then there's the debate over who will replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the
Supreme Court. The argument now seems to be revolving around whether the
nominee will be a woman or a member of a minority group.
Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have joined forces with first lady
Laura Bush -- all of whom fancy themselves to be constitutional law
experts -- to lobby for the chick pick.
Not all women are ready to jump on the female-at-any-cost bandwagon,
however. Columnist Kathryn
Jean Lopez fumes that the gender quota
argument represents a tacit acceptance of the Neanderthal view that "A
woman is not going to make it on her own. She won't rise to the top. She
can't compete with the boys."
These two cases are merely laughable or absurd. The first represented a
futile legal ploy to keep Spc. England from spending time behind bars -
on Tuesday she was sentenced to three years in jail. The second is an
example of a pro-feminist cabal trying to stack the Supreme Court with
yet another abortionist.
But in the third case, the notion of female inferiority has been
adjudicated by an appeals court and is now chiseled into law.
The case involved a manager at the National Education Association who
developed the nasty habit of regularly venting his spleen.
The male employees didn't take the incidents seriously, in fact they
tended to laugh the whole thing off. But the women were less capable of
tolerating the abuse. The women couldn't take the incidents like a man,
so they sued for sex discrimination.
The problem with their discrimination claim was the manager was an
equal-opportunity yeller -- he berated male and female subordinates
alike. So to make their case, the women came up with a controversial
legal theory called the "reasonable woman" standard. The reasonable
woman standard posits that if females experience "disparate impact,"
then that's sex discrimination.
Sure enough, on September 2 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in
favor of the ladies. To conclude that they had suffered from sex
discrimination, the black-robed justices wrote this Orwellian opinion:
"There is no legal requirement that hostile acts be overtly sex- or
gender-specific in content."
That's right. So a person who has never experienced a racial slight can
now claim he is a victim of racial discrimination. And husbands can
successfully sue for workplace sex discrimination, since they are less
likely than their wives to take parental leave.
There's no limit to this looking-glass logic. If we continue in this
direction, we will soon find ourselves with differing standards of
justice for every identity group. Maybe this bizarre ruling will serve
as an object lesson to those who wonder why the most prominent words
inscribed on the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court building are "Equal
Justice Under Law."
Under old English law, when a wife over-spent the family budget, it was
the husband who went to debtor's prison. And during the 1800s, if an
American woman committed a crime, it was her husband who did time.
The rationale was, if a woman didn't enjoy full legal rights, then she
couldn't be held accountable for her actions. After all, rights and
responsibilities go hand in hand.
But times have changed. Women now enjoy the same legal rights as men.
That also means they stop expecting to receive special treatment under
the law.
So 85 years after passage of the 19th Amendment, these three cases
reveal a sad truth: some women are not yet ready to assume the duties
and obligations that necessarily accompanied their hard-won legal
rights.
Equal rights and unequal responsibilities. That's hardly the American
way.
