Oh, happy day!

Women in our great state must have been dancing in the streets after it was made public Tuesday that Gov. Terry Branstad will support a new version of an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution.

If approved by the Iowa Legislature, the proposed amendment would go before Iowa voters for ratification in 1998.

Amazing, isn’t it? A mere century or so after the idea of legislated equality between men and women was introduced, the ERA may finally come to our state. Who says Iowans aren’t progressive?

It should be noted that this is not the same amendment that was rejected by voters in Iowa in 1980 and 1992. The new version simply adds the words “and women” to the sentence, “All men and women are, by nature, free and equal and have certain inalienable rights…”

The amendment Iowans found unacceptable in 1980 and 1992 contained the insidious phrase, “Neither the state nor any of its political subdivisions shall, on the basis of gender, deny or restrict the equality of right under the law.”

That one sentence, which seems to say the state would not be allowed to discriminate against anyone on the basis of her gender, really got the underpants of Iowa’s Conservatives in a bunch. That sentence is the heart of what the ERA is supposed to be, and the heart has been cut out of the new version.

The campaign against the ERA in Iowa contained arguments and hypotheticals that ranged from terribly closed-minded to incredibly silly.

At the time of the 1980 vote, I was six years old and not very politically aware. In 1992, however, I was a wide-eyed freshman.

Those were turbulent times at Iowa State, my friends. Julius Michalik was confusing the hell out of opposing basketball teams by being the only 6-foot-11-inch man in the world who couldn’t dunk. Football Coach Jim Walden’s patented “Run-It-Up-The-Middle-Three-Times-And-Punt” offense was in it’s prime, and the ERA was a topic of political debate on campus.

On election night, I returned from voting for the first time and was pretty proud of myself. I went into a friend’s dorm room and the topic of conversation turned, as it often does when college guys sit around drinking beer, to the ERA. A friend asked me if I had voted for the ERA and I told him that I had.

“What?” he said. “Do you want gay guys teaching your children?”

I swear on my life, this was an actual concern among ERA opponents. My response was something along the lines of, “What the hell are you talking about?”

That was then. I have matured now and have had a few years to think about it. My response today would be, “What the hell was he talking about?”

The fact is that one of the arguments against the ERA was that, through a series of hypothetical circumstances, the state could not fire teachers for being gay.

“You’re kidding!” the state’s small-town conservatives would say. “I thought that could only happen in Des Moines or Iowa City or fruity places like that.”

I still have no idea what gay teachers have to do with the ERA. And as far as I know, the state cannot fire a teacher for being gay.

But the answer to that ridiculous question is that if a teacher is doing a good job teaching my child what he or she is supposed to be learning, I don’t care if that teacher takes sheep to the local motel. I know of several straight teachers, in high school and here at ISU, who shouldn’t be allowed to have children of their own, much less teach other people’s children.

The possibility of gay people teaching in public schools was used as a scare tactic to keep the state’s voters from approving truly meaningful reform.

My friend also asked me if I would want a woman backing me up in combat. Under the ERA, women would be allowed in the National Guard’s combat units.

The answer again is yes. I know several women who would be very good in combat, certainly better than me. Of course, I have no intention of going into combat anyway. So if there is a woman out there who would like to take my place, more power to you, sister.

And finally, there was the issue that was mentioned by Rep. Janet Metcalf, R-Urbandale, in Tuesday’s Des Moines Register: unisex toilets.

During the 1992 campaign, it was argued that under the proposed amendment, the state would not be allowed to have separate men’s and women’s bathrooms in state buildings. Men and women would be required, by law, to use the same bathroom.

Obviously the anti-ERA people were afraid women would be picketing the capitol building, demanding use of the men’s room.

No woman who has lived with a man for more than, say, 10 minutes, would ever want to share a bathroom with him, no matter how liberated she was. Men are filthy. Our whole society hinges on having separate bathrooms for men and women. If we had to share, civilization as we know it would end. I don’t think unisex toilets would be an issue.

If the Legislature passes the watered-down, meaningless version of the ERA, Iowans will vote on it in 1998, but I won’t be supporting it this time.

Women deserve an amendment with some teeth in it, not the empty gesture that is the new amendment. I urge women to reject the inferior version of the ERA and keep fighting for the real thing. Maybe in another hundred years, Iowans really will come around.

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Steven Martens is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids.