Re-Post From Basdardette: WHAT IF? Illinois HB 5428 and Woman Suffrage

This needs to be shared:

WHAT IF? Illinois HB 5428 and Woman Suffrage

Friday, April 23, 2010

You can listen to the HB 5428 Senate floor debate at the link at the bottom of this blog. The debate is about 33 minutes long.

What I find interesting is that many of the senators theoretically “got” the idea of our “rights”–but failed to grasp that the bill, with its multi-layered “consents,” forms “information exchanges” and liabilities obviated those rights, kept the state in control, and gave adoptees and their families nothing but a big messy pile of obtuse rigmarole that can only be sussed out with a pitchfork.

On June 10, 1919, Illinois ratified the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. What if Illinois leggies that day declared:

All women have the “basic right” to vote. However, we are concerned about the affect female voters will have on male reputation and status in the community. We need to protect the rights of those husbands who believe that the marriage contract promised them that their wives would never be allowed to vote.

To balance the right of women to vote with the right of husbands to protect their reputations and status, we are mandating a mutual consent voter registration law, which authorizes husbands to dictate what level of franchise their wives can practice: full, limited and/or’s (school board, municipal, state, national, initiative, referendum, tax) and, of course…none at all.

Actually, that scheme would have made suffrage reactionaries quite happy as the passage of HB 5428 has made our current crop of bastardphobic reactionaires and adoptahacks happy.

http://media.doughney.net/2010/illinois-hb5428-20100421.mp3

Posted by BD at 11:28 AM