Equal Rights Amendment

In a decision that could transform the way insurers set prices in Maryland and beyond, state regulators banned yesterday a time-honored practice of charging men and women different rates for the same policies.The Maryland Insurance Division ruleed that the state's Equal Rights Amendment prohibits insurers from using policyholders' gender to determine their premiums.The ruling was hailed by women's rights groups as a victory against a system they claim is discriminatory and costly to women.

The last place you're apt to find Westminster resident Bruce Lesh — a history, government and politics teacher and chairman of the social studies department at Franklin High School, inReisterstown — is standing in front of a class pontificating on history's broad themes or regurgitating names and dates. "We have nearly a hundred years of data that tells us that that old model of teaching history just doesn't work," he said. Lesh is the author of "Why Can't You Just Tell Us the Answer?

Horace D. Aynesworth, 79, reconnaissance operations director during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, died Oct. 22 in Phoenix. He was a decorated Air Force brigadier general and commanded the U.S. Tactical Air Reconnaissance Center at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., during the crisis.Ellen Elizabeth "Tottie" Ellis, 71, who campaigned nationally against the Equal Rights Amendment, died Thursday inNashville. The amendment was defeated in 1982.

On Aug. 26, 1920 — 90 years ago today — women became voting citizens of the United States. That was the day the 19th Amendment became law, finally writing women's suffrage into the Constitution. In remembrance of the occasion, Congress in 1971 designated Aug. 26 as Women's Equality Day. It's a name that never fails to provoke a reaction among women I know. "Equality Day?" someone will say, eyebrow raised. "Oh, so we're equal now?" Well, are we? It depends on what you mean by equal.

IF YOU don't believe that television evangelists are kidding about stopping the Equal Rights Amendment from being passed, then you haven't received your fund-raising letter from the Rev. Pat Robertson.The good reverend pulls no punches when it comes to warning his believers what the feminists are up to.He says in his plea that ERA is not about equal rights for women but is an anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- Trying to distance himself from the harsh right-wing tone of last month's Republican convention, President Bush tiptoed into the heart of the evangelical community last night with a message of tolerance.He told a flag-waving audience of about 1,000 delegates to a convention sponsored by the Christian Coalition of television evangelist Marion G. "Pat" Robertson that family values should not be a narrow prescription for how people live."I don't mean we . . . should go back to the days of 'Ozzie and Harriet' -- that may be wrong," Mr. Bush said.

Joel Oliansky, 66, a writer-director who won two Emmys for his work on The Senator and The Law, died Monday in Los Angeles. His directing credits include episodes of the TV series Emergency, Kojak, Quincy, Bring 'Em Back Alive and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His script for the 1970 TV program The Senator earned him an Emmy. He also wrote the TV miniseries The Law, starring Judd Hirsch, which won him another Emmy as well as Writers Guild and Humanitas awards. He directed two films, The Competition, starring Richard Dreyfuss, in 1980, and In Defense of a Married Man in 1990.

The last place you're apt to find Westminster resident Bruce Lesh — a history, government and politics teacher and chairman of the social studies department at Franklin High School, inReisterstown — is standing in front of a class pontificating on history's broad themes or regurgitating names and dates. "We have nearly a hundred years of data that tells us that that old model of teaching history just doesn't work," he said. Lesh is the author of "Why Can't You Just Tell Us the Answer?

BOSTON -- In days of yore, when the late, lamented Equal Rights Amendment was slogging through state legislatures, there was always some foe around to warn that "if we have an ERA, we'll have to have unisex toilets."This prospect never really alarmed me since I had -- I blush to confess -- grown up in a household with a unisex toilet.All that, however, was before co-ed dorms had become the norm, and long before Ally McBeal's law firm had the most celebrated co-ed washroom on television.A '90s questionNevertheless, the issue of privacy and equality -- segregation and integration -- has never quite disappeared.

BOSTON -- And you thought the Equal Rights Amendment was dead. We all did. The amendment flat-lined in 1982, just three states short of the 38 needed for ratification. I even wrote an obit. Back then, feminists shifted their sights to politics, saying if we can't change the state legislators' minds, we'll change their faces. A baby girl born in 1982 will cast her first vote in 2000 without being equal under the law. But what's this I hear out of Missouri? Can it be the faint sound of a pulse?

WASHINGTON -- Now he tells us. Former President Gerald R. Ford wanted us to know that he disagreed with President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. But Mr. Ford didn't want us to know about his disagreement until after he was dead, according to a 2004 taped interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post. Such caution may frustrate you as much as it frustrates me, but it was characteristic of Mr. Ford. He was a man of firm views who nevertheless didn't like to make a fuss. That's why, as one looks back on the Ford years, electric words such as "dynamic" or "groundbreaking" do not spring immediately to mind.

When President Bush warned that he might back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in his State of the Union address last week, he sent a strong message to his conservative religious voter base. At the same time, analysts say, he carefully tailored it to avoid alienating the socially moderate swing voters he needs to win in November. By focusing on a constitutional amendment, he chose a difficult political vehicle with questionable public support. "It's a quagmire," said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a presidential historian at University of Pennsylvania.

Joel Oliansky, 66, a writer-director who won two Emmys for his work on The Senator and The Law, died Monday in Los Angeles. His directing credits include episodes of the TV series Emergency, Kojak, Quincy, Bring 'Em Back Alive and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His script for the 1970 TV program The Senator earned him an Emmy. He also wrote the TV miniseries The Law, starring Judd Hirsch, which won him another Emmy as well as Writers Guild and Humanitas awards. He directed two films, The Competition, starring Richard Dreyfuss, in 1980, and In Defense of a Married Man in 1990.

BOSTON -- And you thought the Equal Rights Amendment was dead. We all did. The amendment flat-lined in 1982, just three states short of the 38 needed for ratification. I even wrote an obit. Back then, feminists shifted their sights to politics, saying if we can't change the state legislators' minds, we'll change their faces. A baby girl born in 1982 will cast her first vote in 2000 without being equal under the law. But what's this I hear out of Missouri? Can it be the faint sound of a pulse?

WASHINGTON -- The Equal Rights Amendment lingers on, its pulse faint but its supporters determined. Their slender hopes arise from recent disrespect for the amending process.First introduced in Congress in 1923, the ERA says: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."In 1971, the year before Title IX prohibited sexual discrimination in education, the Supreme Court for the first time cited the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to invalidate a law on the grounds that it involved discrimination on the basis of sex.Despite this evidence that the ERA might be a legal redundancy (ERA supporters said it was needed to "put women into the Constitution")

BOSTON -- In days of yore, when the late, lamented Equal Rights Amendment was slogging through state legislatures, there was always some foe around to warn that "if we have an ERA, we'll have to have unisex toilets."This prospect never really alarmed me since I had -- I blush to confess -- grown up in a household with a unisex toilet.All that, however, was before co-ed dorms had become the norm, and long before Ally McBeal's law firm had the most celebrated co-ed washroom on television.A '90s questionNevertheless, the issue of privacy and equality -- segregation and integration -- has never quite disappeared.

Shifting SandEditor: Even before the tempest subsides, you can hear it blowing in the wind of every storm that hits our coast.It sounds like the choir at the corner church. The politicians and residents of the affected area all start crying for millions to save Ocean City. And the recent nor'easter is no exception.When will the public ever learn that beaches are dynamic structures? They move and change. All the human efforts to save them are at best only stopgap measures. The environment will win in the end.In fact, this movement should be obvious to all. Ocean City's inlet didn't even exist in the recent past.

WASHINGTON -- Writing into the Constitution a new layer of protection for equality of the sexes, the Supreme Court yesterday ordered the Virginia Military Institute to open its cadet ranks to women, probably ending the institute's 157 years as a place only for men.The 7-1 ruling is based on the Constitution's guarantee of legal equality, applying to any government-run institution or one that relies on public money.It seems sure to apply to the only other single-sex military college operated by a state with state money, The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. Young women are applying even now to go to VMI or The Citadel, and some of them are now likely to become cadets.

WASHINGTON -- The revival of 1970s kitsch -- hip-hugging bell-bottoms, the Brady Bunch -- and the descent of feminism into farce continues with two measures designed to resuscitate the Equal Rights Amendment.For 15 years it has been a-moldering in its grave, but this week, the 25th anniversary of the vote by which Congress sent the amendment to the states for ratification debates, it is being reintroduced in Congress.Congress, never known for its sense of irony, passed the amendment in a chivalrous mood, trying to please regiments of women who regarded chivalry as phallocentrism in drag.

WASHINGTON -- Writing into the Constitution a new layer of protection for equality of the sexes, the Supreme Court yesterday ordered the Virginia Military Institute to open its cadet ranks to women, probably ending the institute's 157 years as a place only for men.The 7-1 ruling is based on the Constitution's guarantee of legal equality, applying to any government-run institution or one that relies on public money.It seems sure to apply to the only other single-sex military college operated by a state with state money, The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. Young women are applying even now to go to VMI or The Citadel, and some of them are now likely to become cadets.