Culture War Part I

Women’s Movement

The women’s movement faced different set of environmental constraints and opportunities than the civil rights movement.

During the Progressive Era, women’s organizations were able to find allies early on with Prohibition and Labor (ex American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL)

• women’s groups were successful during this period when policy requests did not infringe upon the institutionalized male business interests.

• many labor leaders believed that minimum wage and maximum hour laws would reduce the competition that men faced from women in the workforce

• national labor groups such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the (AALL) turned against the women’s movement when facing pressure from business when the push for minimum wage laws began to include the entire workforce (Skopol, 1992: 412- 413).

Geographic dispersion was another disadvantage the women’s movement

• A constitutional amendment’s opponents only need to win in one quarter of the nation’s states to prevail.
• After winning in Congress, women’s groups to compete everywhere in the country for ratification.
• Right wing groups only needed to focus their resources on convincing a small number of conservative and moderate states to support their cause.

cognitive mobilization

Movement organizations must also have a general unity on issues and tactics

· One of the challenges the women’s movement faced early on was a division based on goals and tactics.

· One major point in contention was how to handle the issue of a military draft.

Counter-mobilization

• The ERA’s opponents were effective in leveraging several of the strategic challenges faced by the women’s movement.
• The Supreme Court began to issue rulings with a more expansive view of the fourteenth amendment This had the effect of usurping issues pro ERA groups intended to change.
• Conservative groups used these rulings as a line of reasoning arguing that the courts could not be trusted to interpret this new constitutional amendment

Gay Rights Movement

Limited success at the state and local level.

Unsuccessful at the National level.

Very successful at moving public opinion.

Gay rights was first advanced in larger cities and university towns

Chapter written before Gay Marriage debate

Focuses on Chicago

Early Gay rights movement

· Focus was on overturning sodomy laws

· Practicing homosexuality was outlawed in all 50 states before 1961

Illinois passed first “Model Code” in 1961 decriminalizing, private, consensual, adult sexual behavior.

Bowers v Hardwick (1986) upheld sodomy law in Georgia

Overturned in Lawrence v Texas (2003)

Author points to the role played by Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) in passing non-discrimination and Hate Crimes laws

· East Lansing, MI first city to pass anti-discrimination ordinance in 1973

· Wisconsin (1981) and Massachusetts (1990) first states

How well does the political process model apply to the women’s and gay rights movements?

How does the relative strength of each movement undermine their respective movement’s long-term goals?