I just missed the draft, but had to sign up for the Selective Service, which is apparently too selective to be constitutional.
Me too. And when I applied for a Federal job, I had to prove that I had done so way back in the day.
I’m guessing Donnie will try to draft all of the new Democrat Congresswomen first, under the command of General Pelosi…
Donnie will call it: Broads on the Border……
We can’t talk about equal pay or gun rights or anything else but BY GOD AND BY TRUMP we can try and make women do even MORE!!! Constitutionally, that is, of course.
Well, to keep things consistent women will have to go into combat with only 70% of the ammunition the men get.
As I understand it, the previous justification for excluding women from Selective Service registration is that the draft exists (on paper) to draw up combat troops, and since women were excluded from combat roles, their inclusion in the system would be nonsensical. Since this exclusion has been removed, the judge noted that the previous justification for excluding them was no longer grounded.
It’s unfortunate that noxious garbage “mens’ rights activists” are in any way involved, but that seems like the correct ruling to me. Judges aren’t supposed to withhold opinions because it’s otherwise politically inconvenient.
Men’s rights group???
Men have always had rights! WTF!!!
No equal rights, but equal responsibilities. What a country!
The ERA never was ratified because some women opposed it on the basis that it would require women become eligible for any draft.
This is an important issue because we should have already had at least one draft since Vietnam. Bush chose to loose the Iraq War he lied America into instead of doing what was necessary to win the Iraq War. That is either through stupidity or just the way the world works, we will one day again be in a position where we need a draft.
The day that Bush Jr. started that stupid war in Iraq based on lies, I wrote a letter to every major news outlet saying that America now had a simple choice in regard Bush’s Iraq War, DRAFT or LOSE. That is in order to have the necessary troops to secure Iraq’s borders to keep out undesirables and provide everyday security to everyday Iraqis so they could carry out their everyday lives and build the institutions necessary for a unified western style democracy instead of other choices. I also predicted that a DRAFT would be the end of the Republican Party. My biggest concern is Bush would put party and himself over country and choose a loose slowly strategy of sacrificing American blood to keep the true nature of the disaster hidden until Bush could get out of town and Republicans could blame Bush’s successor for the disaster their lies caused. Needless to say, we see the results of the lose slowly strategy that saved the Republican party but hurt America.
So as for drafting women, for those of us old enough to remember the Equal Rights Amendment, it never passed enough states because of opposition from women who feared what it meant in regard to a draft. But if women are going to have equal rights in regard to jobs, pay, and everything else, they must have equal duty. I mean if a man can be taken from his job to go to war, a woman in the same job must have the same issues or she has a huge advantage.
Be interesting to see if there are new deferments, for example, if requested, deferments for single moms. What will the physical requirements will be to be draft ready. What I’d like to see is the development of a universal service program that could be joining the military, teaching or assisting in low performing schools, helping organizations like Partners in Health with their work in the US, assisting immigrants, etc., etc. - in other words, some kind of public service contribution. I think that can help make better citizens in the long run, especially if people in the program are assigned to areas very different from the ones in which they grew up so they are exposed to other types of people and lifestyles.
He said Monday the court ruling won’t influence their ultimate recommendations to Congress.
They plan to ignore the ruling, and maybe recommend something to Congress that has already been deemed to be unconstitutional. Crackerjack commission!
Yes, including the exclusive right to be inscripted into the military.
Ah, such simplistic thinking, the binary genders.
Now, since Trump has banned transgenders from serving, does a male who identifies as a female have to register? Or a female who is transitioning to a male? Is it based on the birth certificate gender? Does it matter if it’s someone who identifies as the other gender but is not seeking surgery? And since they’re not allowed to serve, are they exempt from the draft regardless? Or do they have to sign up, then be found unfit for service?
Same here I signed up for the Selective service when I was a senior in high school in the late 70’s.
Even the it was not long after the Vietnam War you still felt some sort of obligation.
This became one of the sticking points with the ERA that opponents like Phyllis Schafly made hay with. The proponents did a somewhat inadequate job of responding when they should have just said “We’ll leave it to the Pentagon to set policy”.
Why limit national service to the military? I’d like to see every 18-year-old kid in the US, regardless of gender, do two years of national service.
My (now) wife registered for SS when she turned 18. It had a checkbox for gender and she checked F. They sent her a followup indicating that she had checked F, and they wanted to know if that was accurate; if not, it would need to be corrected, but if so, she was not eligible.
100% agree.
The penalties for failure to register are potentially quite severe: it is a federal felony carrying a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.[4] Since 1980 millions of young men have violated the law by failing to register. And for those who did register, millions more violated the law by failing to register during the time period prescribed in the law.[5] Since 1980 a total of 20 people have been prosecuted for failure to register. (The last indictment was on January 23rd, 1986.) Almost all of those prosecuted were conscientious objectors to the draft who publicly asserted their non-registration as a religious, conscientious or political statement. [6]
Initially, the government planned to prosecute a handful of public resisters and scare everyone else into complying with the registration requirement. But it backfired. Even in rural conservative areas like Iowa, and military towns like San Diego, conscientious objectors facing prosecution were on the evening news talking about their values, and that they were answering to a higher moral law. This caused other young men to think about what draft registration really meant and to realize they also had a choice. Non-compliance with registration actually increased in those areas.
Beginning in 1982, the federal government enacted punitive legislation and policies designed to coerce people to register with Selective Service. These laws, commonly called “Solomon” laws after the member of Congress who first introduced them, mandated non-registrants be denied the following:
Federal financial aid to college students;
Federal job training to non-registrants;
Federal financial aid to Medical Students;
Employment with federal executive agencies to the same group;
U.S. Citizenship to immigrants.
Yup. Would be a great way to pay for universal College, do your service, get a GI-bill-type benefit.
Plus instill some (very much missing) civic pride and investiture in the Country.