MEN AND WOMEN: SOCIAL ROLES
As for changing notions of “men” and “women” as groups, related to particular sets of social roles, one might note the history of early twentieth-century social welfare legislation for women. That legislation, designed to protect women in the labor market and intended to protect both genders in a judicial climate tending to deny the state’s right to erect such protective legislation, has become the rule of American society; but the special protections offered women protected them right out of the competitive labor market. Only now, under the impetus of women’s movements has an understanding developed of the problems created by classifying women separately from men.
In the field of property rights, women were long treated as inferior, weak and incapable of protecting their own rights. The common law defined a married woman out of legal existence by creating the legal unity of husband and wife, with the husband given power to control the family economy.
In fact, under early common law, the husband was the natural guardian of the children. In America most property restrictions disappeared by the late nineteenth century and the role of the father as natural guardian was replaced by an idealized view of the mother as natural provider to the young child. This, too, expressed social views of the role of women as limited to, or at least most naturally played in, the home. The role of both parents in the custody of children has been subject to serious reconsideration in the last years.
The history of legal issues relating to birth control and abortion can be outlined fairly concisely (Lader; Dienes). For both, though less so for abortion, the last twenty years have witnessed a widespread repeal of laws laid down a century ago. The two issues have, moreover, been related legally, as well as by common sense. The 1965 landmark decision regarding contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut has served explicitly as a precedent for subsequent abortion decisions. In Griswold, Justice Douglas, writing for the Court, found within the constitutional guarantees a right which he delineated in terms of a “zone of privacy older than the Bill of Rights—older than the political parties, older than our school system” as applying to the marriage relationship. Both birth control and abortion have been tied expressly within the wider society to issues of female equality and the rights of women to maintain control over their bodies. The connotations of “birth control” and “abortion” have altered concomitantly with changes in the connotations of “privacy,” “woman,” and “marriage,” to name a few.
The right of “privacy,” so crucial to the judicial decision in Griswold is not guaranteed explicitly by the Constitution. The construction of a basic right to privacy is explained in Griswold. Justice Goldberg, concurring with Justice Douglas’s decision for the Court, wrote: “To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever.” The Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The social and cultural frames of these new connotations were created largely outside the legal system per se. New connotations have become explicit and have become part of an articulated comprehension of personal relationships (to self and to others) primarily through the activities of more or less organized social movements such as feminism (and its opposition).
Modes of social and specifically legal protest within the feminist movement have sometimes included and have more often provided models for groups concerned with homosexual rights. Gay liberation groups have been formed and have demonstrated publically and actively for the end of discriminations against homosexuals, whether by churches, by legislators, judges and police, by employers, or by psychiatrists. Like feminist groups and so-called ethnic movements, homosexuals brought actions to the courts and demonstrated in the streets, donning T-shirts and buttons announcing their particular identity. A vocal opposition has developed, signaled, among others, by the name of Anita Bryant. In April 1978, 54,096 people voted to repeal a homosexual rights ordinance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Following Anita Bryant’s rhetoric, if not her explicit model, arguments for repeal invoked God and nature alike. One local resident is quoted as having said: “If God had meant for men to go with men or for women with women, he would have made us alike” (New York Times). The Reverend Ron Adrian, president of the Concerned Citizens for Community Standards, a group opposing a homosexual rights ordinance in Wichita, Kansas, denied the issue to be one of civil rights, adding, “We think it’s an effort on the part of a small group of people to ask us to approve of their criminal lifestyle” {New York Times).
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