Sonia Johnson and the ERA a contentious issue during presidency of Kimball

This essay was first published in April of 2010.

In “Lengthen Your Stride,” the biography of the Prophet Spencer W. Kimball’s tenure as LDS Church president, there is this anecdote: President Kimball, who in spring 1979 was being constantly called by Mormon dissenter Sonia Johnson, retreated to the foyer of the Church Office Building. He was observed by Relief Society President Barbara Smith, who asked him why he was working on papers in the foyer and not his office. The prophet admitted that he was trying to avoid Johnson’s calls, adding he didn’t want to lie when she was told he was not in his office.

Smith replied, “President, may I sit with you here for a while? Sonia’s after me too!”

It’s been more than three decades since Johnson was excommunicated from the LDS Church. She’s become an answer to a trivia game. But the controversy over the LDS Church’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment was a headache to church leaders, and particularly its leader, Kimball. In some ways it’s a lot like the uproar over the church’s support of a measure banning gay marriage in California.

The LDS Church actively opposed the ERA — which was steadily losing a battle to garner enough states to become part of the Constitution — for what it called “moral” reasons. Johnson, a lifetime Mormon from Cache County married and living in Virginia, became an active proponent of ERA.

According to “Lengthen Your Stride,” she engaged in a feisty debate with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch while testifying on Capitol Hill. Johnson later helped start Mormons for ERA and persistently sought an interview with President Kimball.

Johnson claimed she wanted to know if the church’s opposition to the ERA was based on revelation or not. Kimball would not meet with her, believing it would accomplish nothing and that Johnson would manipulate what he would say to her. Johnson’s crusade made her famous. She became a symbol of feminist resentment against the Mormon Church. As she gained prominence, her rhetoric became more barbed. She urged, or suggested (depending on her or others’ interpretation) that people not invite LDS missionaries into their homes. She also referred to the LDS Church as a “savage misogyny.”

There’s no doubt that the LDS Church actively opposed the ERA. In 1978, a First Presidency letter read by bishops urged members to get engaged with other citizens to defeat the ERA. In a 1980 Church News editorial, the church expounded on its opposition. Later an insert in The Ensign was devoted to criticizing the ERA.

This is what the ERA actually said:
“Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.”

It seems a mild two dozen or so words, but its interpretation caused a decade or more of fierce debate. In late 1979, Sonia Johnson was excommunicated. For several years afterward, the LDS Church was subject to a lot of activism against it as a result of its ERA stance, particularly after the deadline for its passage expired.

In “Lengthen Your Stride,” it is recalled, “In January 1981, a group of twenty representing NOW and Ex-Mormons for ERA gathered at the gates of the Ogden Temple and burned temple garments…” The National Organization For Women, which described the Mormon Church as a major opponent in the effort to ratify the ERA, sent missionaries door to door in Utah to petition President Kimball. It was common for protesters to vote against sustaining LDS Church leaders at general conferences, to picket and to fly banners over many church meetings.

The protests faded in the mid-1980s as the ERA diminished as an issue. Sonia Johnson ran for president under a fringe party banner. She wrote a biography, “From Housewife to Heretic,” that can still be found at used bookstores, as well as other small-press books.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs