history

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Unit 4: The Rise of Conservatism

The Politics of Love, Sex, and Gender

Demonstrators opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment protest in front of the White House in 1977. Library of

Congress.

The sexual revolution continued into the 1970s. Many Americans—feminists, gay men,

lesbians, and straight couples—challenged strict gender roles and rejected the rigidity of

the nuclear family. Cohabitation without marriage spiked, straight couples married later

(if at all), and divorce levels climbed. Sexuality, decoupled from marriage and

procreation, became for many not only a source of personal fulfillment but a worthy

political cause.

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At the turn of the decade, sexuality was considered a private matter yet rigidly regulated

by federal, state, and local law. Statutes typically defined legitimate sexual expression

within the confines of patriarchal, procreative marriage. Interracial marriage, for instance,

was illegal in many states until 1967 and remained largely taboo long after. Same-sex

intercourse and cross-dressing were criminalized in most states, and gay men, lesbians,

and transgender people were vulnerable to violent police enforcement as well as

discrimination in housing and employment.

Two landmark legal rulings in 1973 established the battle lines for the “sex wars” of the

1970s. First, the Supreme Court’s 7–2 ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973) struck down a Texas

law that prohibited abortion in all cases when a mother’s life was not in danger. The

Court’s decision built on precedent from a 1965 ruling that, in striking down a

Connecticut law prohibiting married couples from using birth control, recognized a

constitutional “right to privacy.”43 In Roe, the Court reasoned that “this right of privacy .

. . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her

pregnancy.”44 The Court held that states could not interfere with a woman’s right to an

abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy and could only fully prohibit abortions

during the third trimester.

Other Supreme Court rulings, however, found that sexual privacy could be sacrificed for

the sake of “public” good. Miller v. California (1973), a case over the unsolicited

mailing of sexually explicit advertisements for illustrated “adult” books, held that the

First Amendment did not protect “obscene” material, defined by the Court as anything

with sexual appeal that lacked, “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific

value.”45 The ruling expanded states’ abilities to pass laws prohibiting materials like

hard-core pornography. However, uneven enforcement allowed pornographic theaters

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and sex shops to proliferate despite whatever laws states had on the books. Americans

debated whether these represented the pinnacle of sexual liberation or, as poet and lesbian

feminist Rita Mae Brown suggested, “the ultimate conclusion of sexist logic.”46

Of more tangible concern for most women, though, was the right to equal employment

access. Thanks partly to the work of black feminists like Pauli Murray, Title VII of the

1964 Civil Rights Act banned employment discrimination based on sex, in addition to

race, color, religion, and national origin. “If sex is not included,” she argued in a

memorandum sent to members of Congress, “the civil rights bill would be including only

half of the Negroes.”47 Like most laws, Title VII’s full impact came about slowly, as

women across the nation cited it to litigate and pressure employers to offer them equal

opportunities compared to those they offered to men. For one, employers in the late

sixties and seventies still viewed certain occupations as inherently feminine or masculine.

NOW organized airline workers against a major company’s sexist ad campaign that

showed female flight attendants wearing buttons that read, “I’m Debbie, Fly Me” or “I’m

Cheryl, Fly Me.” Actual female flight attendants were required to wear similar

buttons.48 Other women sued to gain access to traditionally male jobs like factory work.

Protests prompted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to issue a

more robust set of protections between 1968 and 1971. Though advancement came

haltingly and partially, women used these protections to move eventually into traditional

male occupations, politics, and corporate management.

The battle for sexual freedom was not just about the right to get into places, though. It

was also about the right to get out of them—specifically, unhappy households and

marriages. Between 1959 and 1979, the American divorce rate more than doubled. By the

early 1980s, nearly half of all American marriages ended in divorce.49 The stigma

attached to divorce evaporated and a growing sense of sexual and personal freedom

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motivated individuals to leave abusive or unfulfilling marriages. Legal changes also

promoted higher divorce rates. Before 1969, most states required one spouse to prove that

the other was guilty of a specific offense, such as adultery. The difficulty of getting a

divorce under this system encouraged widespread lying in divorce courts. Even couples

desiring an amicable split were sometimes forced to claim that one spouse had cheated on

the other even if neither (or both) had. Other couples temporarily relocated to states with

more lenient divorce laws, such as Nevada.50 Widespread recognition of such practices

prompted reforms. In 1969, California adopted the first no-fault divorce law. By the end

of the 1970s, almost every state had adopted some form of no-fault divorce. The new

laws allowed for divorce on the basis of “irreconcilable differences,” even if only one

party felt that he or she could not stay in the marriage.51

Gay men and women, meanwhile, negotiated a harsh world that stigmatized

homosexuality as a mental illness or an immoral depravity. Building on postwar efforts

by gay rights organizations to bring homosexuality into the mainstream of American

culture, young gay activists of the late sixties and seventies began to challenge what they

saw as the conservative gradualism of the “homophile” movement. Inspired by the

burgeoning radicalism of the Black Power movement, the New Left protests of the

Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement for sexual freedom, gay and lesbian

activists agitated for a broader set of sexual rights that emphasized an assertive notion of

liberation rooted not in mainstream assimilation but in pride of sexual difference.

Perhaps no single incident did more to galvanize gay and lesbian activism than the 1969

uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police regularly

raided gay bars and hangouts. But when police raided the Stonewall in June 1969, the bar

patrons protested and sparked a multiday street battle that catalyzed a national movement

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for gay liberation. Seemingly overnight, calls for homophile respectability were replaced

with chants of “Gay Power!”52

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The window under the Stonewall Inn sign reads: “We homosexuals plead with our people to please help

maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village–Mattachine.” Photograph 1969. Wikimedia.

In the following years, gay Americans gained unparalleled access to private and public

spaces. Gay activists increasingly attacked cultural norms that demanded they keep their

sexuality hidden. Citing statistics that sexual secrecy contributed to stigma and suicide,

gay activists urged people to come out and embrace their sexuality. A step towards the

normalization of homosexuality occurred in 1973, when the American Psychiatric

Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness. Pressure mounted on

politicians. In 1982, Wisconsin became the first state to ban discrimination based on

sexual orientation. More than eighty cities and nine states followed suit over the

following decade. But progress proceeded unevenly, and gay Americans continued to

suffer hardships from a hostile culture.

Like all social movements, the sexual revolution was not free of division. Transgender

people were often banned from participating in Gay Pride rallies and lesbian feminist

conferences. They, in turn, mobilized to fight the high incidence of rape, abuse, and

murder of transgender people. A 1971 newsletter denounced the notion that transgender

people were mentally ill and highlighted the particular injustices they faced in and out of

the gay community, declaring, “All power to Trans Liberation.”53

As events in the 1970s broadened sexual freedoms and promoted greater gender equality,

so too did they generate sustained and organized opposition. Evangelical Christians and

other moral conservatives, for instance, mobilized to reverse gay victories. In 1977,

activists in Dade County, Florida, used the slogan “Save Our Children” to overturn an

ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.54 A leader of the

ascendant religious right, Jerry Falwell, said in 1980, “It is now time to take a stand on

certain moral issues. . . . We must stand against the Equal Rights Amendment, the

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feminist revolution, and the homosexual revolution. We must have a revival in this

country.”55

Much to Falwell’s delight, conservative Americans did, in fact, stand against and defeat

the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), their most stunning social victory of the 1970s.

Versions of the amendment—which declared, “Equality of rights under the law shall not

be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex”—were

introduced to Congress each year since 1923. It finally passed amid the upheavals of the

sixties and seventies and went to the states for ratification in March 1972.56 With high

approval ratings, the ERA seemed destined to pass swiftly through state legislatures and

become the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. Hawaii ratified the amendment the same day it

cleared Congress. Within a year, thirty states had done so. But then the amendment

stalled. It took years for more states to pass it. In 1977, Indiana became the thirty-fifth

and final state to ratify.57

By 1977, anti-ERA forces had successfully turned the political tide against the

amendment. At a time when many women shared Betty Friedan’s frustration that society

seemed to confine women to the role of homemaker, Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA

organization (“Stop Taking Our Privileges”) trumpeted the value and advantages of being

a homemaker and mother.58 Marshaling the support of evangelical Christians and other

religious conservatives, Schlafly worked tirelessly to stifle the ERA. She lobbied

legislators and organized counter-rallies to ensure that Americans heard “from the

millions of happily married women who believe in the laws which protect the family and

require the husband to support his wife and children.”59 The amendment needed only

three more states for ratification. It never got them. In 1982, the time limit for ratification

expired—and along with it, the amendment.60

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The failed battle for the ERA uncovered the limits of the feminist crusade. And it

illustrated the women’s movement’s inherent incapacity to represent fully the views of 50

percent of the country’s population, a population riven by class differences, racial

disparities, and cultural and religious divisions.