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Sioux City Journal When a House subcommittee ruled the other day that proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment should get another seven years to try for its ratification, it raised a question that goes beyond the ERA. The Question: When a cause is just, is every action taken in support of that cause also just? Mind, the question really has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the Equal Rights Amendment. It has to do with changing the rules when the rules don’t let the game come out the way you want. Supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment had seven years to get that amendment approved by at least 38 state legislatures. The time is up next March. But when it became apparent that the amendment couldn't gain approval within the understood time limits, the move came to change the rules, so as to give ERA supporters seven more years to get the job done. Logic would suggest this should not be. If Pete Rose misses the third strike, he cannot in all conscience petition for a fourth. Play the game. While the House subcommittee’s ap proval of the ERA time extension is not final approval (it still needs House and Senate action), it does illustrate another disturbing tendency on the part of the Intense Advocate; the belief that if God is on my side, anything I do to further my side is okay. The most dramatic example? The forces working for and against gun control in the United States. Sweet reason has departed both camps, although we tend to think that the an tigunners probably are more shrill and looser with the truth than the pro-gun faction. And of course, the pro and anti abortion forces are right up there, too. All of this has engendered the one issue political group, whose support or rejection of a candidate for office is based on whether the candidate likes or dislikes your particular cause. Iowa is full of voters, for instance, who are going to base their vote for senator next fall solely on what happened to the vote on the Panama treaties.
Newspaper Details
Huron Daily Plainsman
Huron, South Dakota, US
Fri, Jun 30, 1978
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Gerald G.
