The Right Fight? The LDS Church’s Campaign Against the Equal Rights Amendment

Within a few years after the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment by the United States Congress, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined a new coalition of the Religious Right, allied with Phyllis Schlafly and launched a strategic campaign against ratification.  This was a grassroots campaign waged by thousands of men and women across the country that believed they were waging a moral war against feminism.  Centered in LDS Church Headquarters at Salt Lake City, the enemy was feminism itself and, importantly, the threats it seemed to pose to traditional family values: unisex bathrooms, homosexuality, the dangers of women in the military, and an assault against stay-at-home mothers. The campaign focused on states that had not yet ratified the ERA with a war of rhetoric, strategic planning and organizational efforts that began at the LDS ward level and in the living rooms of members.  In the end, the LDS Church had an impact on the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment that helped seal its demise.