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In the spring of 1972, the 535 members of Congress passed the ERA with only thirty-two nay votes. Just a week later the legislature of Republican Nebraska, where I still lived, became the second state to ratify that amendment to the Constitution—unanimously, 38–0—and by summer it had been ratified by another nineteen, including Idaho, Texas, Kansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Hard-core cultural conservatives, who hadn’t been much of an organized national political force, were suddenly galvanized to stop this new abomination.
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