want to take this responsibility because to do so would be against
the w ill of God. She then said that she was equal spiritually in
God’s eyes but in no other w ay. I said that seemed to mean that in
every other w ay she was inferior, not superior. She said that feminists want women and men to be the same but that God says they are different. The Equal Rights Amendment would permit homosexuality because men and women would no longer be as different as God wanted them to be. Being homosexual was a sin because
women tried to be the same as men, and homosexuality confused
the differences between men and women, those differences being
the will of God. The recess ended, and with the return of order
(delegates seated and under discipline again) no more talk between
the Mississippi woman and m yself was possible. The marshals approached; don’t you fucking touch me, I said loudly, ending forever the possibility of further conversation with the Mississippi delegation; and I ran out fast so that the marshals fucking wouldn’t
touch me.
The Utah delegation had women supporters who attended the
convention as observers, a non voting status. Most of the right-wing
women did not care to attend the conference unless they were delegates; instead they attended Phyllis Schlafly’s counterconvention in another part of town. I was interested in the Utah women because
they had wanted to show themselves in an arena where they were a
small and unpopular minority. T hey all wore similar black dresses,
mourning I supposed for the unborn, mourning perhaps for us all,
the feminists so ungodly who surrounded them. The Mississippi
delegation had been a unit unto itself, not interacting at all with the
world of people and ideas around them. M y own evaluation was
that indeed the Mississippi delegation had strong Klan participation and leadership; more generally, it was not only male-dominated but male-controlled, almost martially controlled. The Utah
delegation with its supporters who dared to mingle with the enthusiastic feminists who numbered in the thousands acted with a different kind of conviction: the women were especially concerned with stopping abortion; they were passionate advocates of their values, tied to the Mormon Church, perhaps under direct orders, but nevertheless speaking for themselves with emotional conviction. A
state legislator from Utah, an official delegate, was stern, forbidding, serious, and willing to exercise what power she had in the service of her beliefs: the Equal Rights Amendment legalizes abortion; * the Supreme Court, in saying that all women could have abortions, opened the door for the state to say that all women must
have abortions; pro-ERA women are ignorant and malicious; she is
a feminist and introduces legislation in behalf of women, but finds
that pro-ERA feminists do not know what the interests of women
are; the interests of women are in a strong home and strong laws
protecting the family in which the man, not the state, protects the
woman; also the federal government in following any kind of feminist program takes freedom from her directly as a state legislator, which she finds a violation of states’ rights. Another Utah delegate
said she attended the convention because she did not want her tax
money to go to pay for abortion. I asked her about Viet Nam War
tax resisters: they withheld taxes because they did not want their
money to pay for the war; did she withhold taxes to keep her
money from paying for abortion? Yes, she said. Then, as an afterthought, she said that actually she didn’t pay any taxes at all. Did her husband pay them, I asked. She thought so.
During the ratification of the resolution supporting homosexual
rights, I sat in the audience. There was yelling and cheering;
*Sec chapter 1, p. 33, for an explanation of this non sequitur.
balloons were let loose through the whole hall when the resolution
was finally ratified after some debate. The scene was one of wild
