Jerry Falwell Opposing the Equal Rights Amendment

In a newspaper photograph taken on February 6, 1980, Republican state senator Eva F. Scott, Reverend Jerry Falwell, and Richmond pro-life activist Geline Williams observe a committee session dealing with the attempted passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Virginia legislature. All three were adversaries of the ERA, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would guarantee women equal rights to men under any federal, state, or local law. Falwell, a fundamentalist Christian pastor and the architect of the Moral Majority movement, fiercely opposed Virginia's ratification primarily on religious grounds. Virginia was one of fifteen states that refused to ratify the ERA, thereby blocking the adoption of the constitutional amendment.