Official statement published by the Relief Society General Presidency (the leaders of the women's organization) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stating why many Mormon women were opposed to ERA. (click on image to view full size)

An article published in the Arlington Globe written by Lynn Sandberg, a Mormon woman from Alexandria, Virginia who actively opposed the ERA. She resented women like her being portrayed by Mormons for ERA as "mindless sheep crying for emancipation." (click on image to view full size)

The decades immediately following WWII marked a time of great change for women in the United States. The late 1940s and 1950s was a period of remarkably heavy emphasis on women’s domestic roles in marriage and childbearing. By the early 1960s,  many women began to question and redefine these domestic roles and advocate for women’s rights in a movement which would come to be known as Second-wave Feminism.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was a key battlefield in the shifting landscape of women’s rights and domestic roles. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormons for ERA were two of many organizations that took part in this vigorous national debate. Both groups shared a common concern for the well-being of women and for women’s rights. They were deeply concerned about the potential threats to women and the family embodied in the rapidly changing social landscape, as it shifted away from the domestic ideals that their doctrine unequivocally favored.

The divide between the two groups was based on a different belief of the likely outcome of the ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Mormons for ERA saw the amendment as the herald of a glorious and sweeping change that would ensure equality of the sexes, a tremendous victory sought for by generations of activists. In contrast, the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints saw the proposed Equal Rights Amendment as a malicious harbinger of moral and social ills cloaked in the mantle of good intentions, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. These beliefs were diametrically opposed and therefore unable to be resolved by compromise.

The failure of the ERA to be ratified precludes us from knowing how courts would have interpreted the amendment. However, despite the LDS Church’s apparent victory in opposing the ERA, many of the legal and moral consequences Church leaders feared would follow its ratification, such as the legalization of gay marriage, were later enacted in the United States. The debate about and redefinition of the American family, gender, and domestic roles remains ongoing.