Dismayed but not surprised: Supreme Court predictably outrageous

A Supreme Court giving rights to the President of the United States that no one else has? (Trump v. the United States). Supreme Court justices who believe that acknowledging rights for women will damage the family as conceived of by their version of Christianity? (Moyle v. United States—Idaho).

Who would not be surprised? Dismayed, outraged, but not surprised? The women who called together the Seneca Falls Convention in July of 1848. They passed 11 resolutions demanding equal rights for women. And who opposed it? Virtually every Christian group who expressed an opinion except for liberal Quakers. (Quakers are thought of today as a peace group, but their original issue was the equality of all people. All of them. That is what George Fox set out to proclaim in 17th century England.)

And what was the contention of those who opposed women’s rights? It will destroy the family. Apparently the family, to survive, needs the subjugation of women. For men to be effective as leaders and husbands, women must be forced to obey them — not because they have earned our respect and earned their leadership, but because they need force to insure their authority.

Women who could vote would destroy the family, they said. God does not want women to vote. God does not want equal rights for women, not in the Church, not in civil law, not in political participation, not in financial matters, not in education. That is what they said, and that is what some members of this Supreme Court believe to this day.

It took another 72 years for women to be “granted” what they declared to be their natural, God-given right to vote.

In my church, the old Presbyterian Church U.S., it took until 1965 for women to be given equal rights to ordination.

In the Roman Catholic Church women still do not have equal rights. Not only are women not ordained as priests, not one woman is a cardinal, therefore every pope is chosen without a single vote from any woman. Jesus may not have been hostile toward women, but the Christian Church certainly has been. Yes, there is strong evidence for leadership from women in the very early church, but the Church’s history as a whole is scandalously discriminatory.

The argument that women’s roles are not lesser, just different, does not hold up because difference always turns out to be lesser in power, a position defined and determined by men.

So, no, if we could assemble the people who were there at the beginning, there at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, they would not be surprised because they had heard it all before, all their lives, and they heard it until the days of their deaths. I suspect they would encourage us not to give up as they never gave up.

Five women organized the convention: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (a women’s right activist), the Quaker Lucretia Mott and her sister Martha Coffin Wright, and two women related by marriage, Jane Hunt (also a Quaker activist) and Mary M’Clintock. It has been 176 years, and true equal rights for women is still being debated. God is still being dragged in to bolster the claims of those who would deny equal rights to women. Christians, and people of other religions as well, still debate whether women are simply people, people who are inherently equal, people who are created equal.

And a Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the first modern democracy, has declared that one person, always a man so far, is not our equal but instead has the rights once granted to emperors, European monarchs, pharaohs, caesars, and, of course, modern-day dictators. He has the right to commit criminal acts without being subject to the criminal law every other person on earth is subject to.

These women, and the 300 women and men who gathered with them, said no. No. Absolutely not. And they were deemed radicals. Dangerous. Worthy of being condemned and suppressed.

This July I have to stand with them and say no. No to anyone, even the Supreme Court, who deems women unequal, who declares that the president of the United States is not subject to the same laws as everyone else. And in saying so, I have much more support around the world than the people at Seneca Falls ever dreamed of.

They and their movement have spread. People of good will everywhere agree with them. The belief in equality is not going away, no matter what those opposing it do. They can “win” temporarily in particular times and places, but they cannot make us or our ideas vanish from the face of the earth. That they cannot do.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: What does 1848 Seneca Falls convention have to do with today's Supreme Court?