Posted on 10/07/2001 1:52:37 AM PDT by Movemout
OLATHE, Kan. - A prominent female Kansas state senator has said that she does not support the 19th Amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, and that if it were being considered today she would vote against it.
Sen. Kay O'Connor last month told the co-presidents of the Johnson County League of Women Voters that the amendment was the first step in a decades-long erosion of traditional family values.
The Olathe Republican was in the audience at a public affairs forum on juvenile justice at Johnson County Community College on Sept. 19, when league co-president Delores Furtado asked her whether she was planning to attend the league's "Celebrate the Right to Vote" luncheon.
"You probably wouldn't want me there because of what I would have to say," O'Connor told Furtado after the forum had ended.
"Wasn't it in the best interest of our country to give women the right to vote?" Furtado asked the senator.
"Not necessarily so," O'Connor said.
Although she does vote, O'Connor said in two subsequent interviews that if men had been protecting the best interests of women, then women would not be forced to cast ballots and serve in the state legislature. Instead, they could stay home, raise families and tend to domestic duties, she said.
Asked whether she supported the 19th Amendment, she responded: "I'm an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women [today] we wouldn't have to vote.
"I'm sorry women have not been taken more care of," she said. "We have gotten the short end of the stick."
If the measure were up for ratification today, she said, she would not support it.
Furtado said she was dumbfounded by those views.
If O'Connor were just an ordinary citizen, Furtado said, "I'd say fine."
"She is the beneficiary of a system she doesn't support," Furtado added.
Beginning in the 1960s, O'Connor said in an interview, career doors began to open for women, bolstered by efforts of the earlier women's suffrage movement. The message to women, reinforced by the mass media, O'Connor said, was to abandon more traditional homemaker roles and enter the workplace.
With the onset of higher taxes to finance social welfare programs, said O'Connor, a 15-year homemaker, a second household income was necessary to make ends meet.
Consequently, the 19th Amendment was the beginning of a societal shift that today erodes traditional family values, she said.
O'Connor said that in her case, mounting medical bills to care for a sick daughter forced her into the workplace. Rules created by men did not allow her the opportunity to stay at home and care for her child, she said.
Searching for something to do in retirement, O'Connor got into politics by accident when she was drafted by a neighborhood gathering to run for the House of Representatives in 1992.
O'Connor, who concedes she has a reputation for speaking her mind, said she was not afraid to let her views be known.
"My husband is the head of the household, and I am the heart. And the head can't live without the heart," she said during an interview. "I offer my suggestions, but I give [my husband] the right to make the final decision."
O'Connor has just completed the first year of a four-year term in the Senate after serving eight years in the state House of Representatives.
(actually, this would be a very bad idea)
They do have it over men in the area of pragmatism which can be good or bad. They are reluctant to fly off in war driven adventures of foreign policy because of protecting their children which is good. They are hell to live with but hell to live without. Seems to me, women suffrage is about a draw. Men have done a pretty good job of messing this country up.
Yes, many, but they are afraid to say so because of the pilloring they would receive.
FReegards,
Specious
I'm a woman, and I bet I voted to support the same issues you did.
Plus, I'm a veteran, so if nothing else, I've EARNED my right to vote. This hypocrite (elected female official who wouldn't be in the position she is today sans suffrage) can kiss my magnolia-white behind.
This thing was gettin' me all riled before I had my second cup of coffee. You know how it is!
Then again I know some guys who cast some pretty stupid votes too.
Besides, I'm sure she isn't serious.
Rottweiller does have a point too, though. You have to admit that the majority of women don't vote with their head. They go gaga over some guy that says "I feel your pain..." and vote for him because he "feels" something akin to compassion. They are so easily fooled.
The Johnson County League of Women Voters is so liberal, and Kay is so conservative, but ornery. She knows where their goat is tied up, and she might have just been going after it.
Here is something I'm curious about: It's pretty clear that men are more interested in the purely visual appeal of the opposite sex than women are. They have Playboy, cheerleaders, exotic dancers, celebrities like Pamela Lee and Britney Spears, etc. A woman can be "just pretty" in a way that a man can't ("Pretty boy" is a put-down). But you hardly ever hear of a woman getting elected based on her looks. Men might ogle Pamela Lee all day, but they would never elect her to anything. In so many other areas of life, a woman's face is her fortune, but not in politics. I can't think of a female politician who made it on her looks the way that, say, Britney has made it in music on her looks. It's as if men get more reasonable when it comes to important matters.
As a great-mother, grandmother, mother and mate-for-life to a WWII Marine vet (served valliantly in the South Pacific), I'm rarely specious. Sometimes illinformed or prejudicial but rarely specious.
Non-sequiter
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