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A winning combination for the ERA?
Continued from Page 1-C both national political conventions and fight for strong planks favoring the amendment in the parties' platforms.
ERAmerica, which will eventually have a paid staff of seven, is aiming for funds totaling $1 million, "and we'll take it in large corporate contributions and small citizens' contributions,' Mrs. Carpenter said. She added that Betty Ford had already written out a check for $50.
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The two women denied that this emphasis on partisan politics meant that they would, in effect, be snubbing feminist organizations that in the past had led the fragmented fight for the equal rights amendment.
"Oh, we'll work with women's organizations because that's what gave us birth," Mrs. Carpenter insisted. "We'll work with anybody who gives us assistance. We both consider ourselves strong feminists.
ERAmerica came about, the women said, after a number of the more than 100 organizations that are backing the amendment, fed up with the feeble effort in support of it, banded together and asked the International Women's Year Commission here to form a group to spearhead a national ERA campaign.
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Commission members came in with the concept for ERAmerica, then persuaded Elly Peterson to come out of retirement, and Liz
'We don't think the Stop ERA movement has been that successful. What it has done is foster a lot of myths.'
Carpenter to spend less time at Hill & Knowlton, the international public relations firm where she is a vice president. Neither of the women will be paid for their ERAmerica efforts.
The enemy and the two women don't even like to mention her name is, of course, Phyllis Schlafly, the 51-year-old conservative Republican from Alton, Ill., who heads the well-organized nationwide Stop ERA movement, and whose troops in the past have usually seemed to outdebate and outsmart the ill-prepared proponents.
"We don't think she's been that successful," Mrs. Carpenter said. "How can she be when 34 states have ratified the amendment and 110 organizations have come together to support it?
"What she has done is foster a lot of myths, like saying that the amendment will mean more abortions, more busing, the changing of relationships between husbands and wives and coed bathrooms. All lies."
The two women said they deplored Mrs. Schlafly's so-called "femininity tactics," in which her supporters wear long dresses, usually pink, and hand out such things as homemade bread, apple pie and jam to legislators.
"Man does not live by bread alone," Mrs. Carpenter snapped. "I'll give legislators the
dignity of voting with their brains.”
The two women alternately smiled and grimaced when confronted with a list of some of the things that Mrs. Schlafly and her followers have insisted would happen if the equal rights amendment was ratified:
• A woman will lose the right to be supported by her husband.
"There is no legal basis today that a man has to support his wife," Mrs. Peterson replied. "That's a personal relationship between man and woman, without legal obligation."
• Women would lose their right to be exempt from the draft and military combat.
"No. 1, there is no draft today," Mrs. Peterson answered, "and No. 2, if there were, as the laws now stand, women could now be drafted and sent into military combat."
• The amendment will not give women any new rights in employment, education and credit, because those rights are already provided for in federal laws.
"Nonsense," Mrs. Peterson said, "those acts could be repealed at any time, and until state legislatures adopt laws to enact women's rights in these areas, inequities will still exist."
• The amendment would legalize homosexual marriages.
"States enact family codes," Mrs. Peterson said, "and if a state decided in its wisdom to do this, then they'd have to do it for both sexes,. What the ERA says is that you'd have to do it for both sexes, but in no way does it say it's right."
• The amendment would require coed bathrooms in public places.
"It's so ridiculous," Mrs. Peterson said with a wave of her hand. "The right to privacy is provided in other amendments to the constitution, and that takes precedence here."
• The amendment would weaken alimony and child support laws.
"The amendment would force a re-examination of these laws," Mrs. Peterson conceded. "As a result, the money granted would probably depend on a person's personal financial condition, and not on their sex."
And what does ERAmerica plan to do to woo housewives, who have traditionally formed a hard core of opposition to the amendment.
"We're trying to reach homemakers through the churches that are behind us," Mrs. Peterson said. "Almost all of the churches have backed us, except the Fundamentalist and Mormon churches. And we have a special information packet for church groups and garden clubs."