It’s Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote a mere 131 years after the country was founded. Congratulations, girlfriends.
This year, as part of our celebration of the 87th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, let’s shine a little light on some of the nutballs, the blockheads, the knuckle-draggers who give new meaning each day to the struggle for women’s equality in a 21st-century world.
Let’s start with Khada Dad Erfani, tribal chief in the Jaghuri district of Afghanistan, who proposed to the parents of a 7-year-old girl brutally raped by two men that the child be married to the rapists’ brother to salvage her honor. The parents – at significant risk to themselves – refused.
Then they fled the village under cover of darkness. The alleged child rapists, meanwhile, were set free.
Here at home we have National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell, who immediately barred Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick from training camp while he was under investigation on dog-fighting charges, but has allowed innumerable criminal suspects to remain in their jobs while they were under investigation for domestic violence.
One example occurred soon after Goodell announced a much ballyhooed April crackdown on misconduct in the NFL. It involved Cincinnati Bengals linebacker A.J. Nicholson, who was accused of slugging his girlfriend in the face.
Nicholson was one of nine Bengals players arrested during a nine-month span. He was released by the Bengals days after his girlfriend’s accusation.
Then, remarkably, his girlfriend re-remembered what happened and dropped the charges.
She said her face had turned purple after she accidentally hit herself with a cellphone.
Right …
And then there’s the story of California National Guardsman Travis Gruber. The personal assistant to commanding officer Major Gen. William Wade reportedly maintained a website of brutally hateful racist and misogynistic messages, including one in which he described an incident where a woman approached him with a question while he was on duty. He said he regretted not “crushing her windpipe” and slamming his car door on her legs.
He said she bothered him.
In the cavalcade of recent women’s-inequality news, Denver had its own dreary entry with the story in The Post last week about the plan to harass Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains for trying to build a new clinic in Denver.
This is particularly relevant because the founders of Planned Parenthood were among the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement we honor today.
They recognized more than a century ago that the right to vote was important, but without access to health care and reproductive choice, there is no equality for women.
Anyway, when the organization revealed its plans to build a new headquarters and clinic in northeast Denver, threats to the project followed almost immediately.
Leslie Hanks, vice president of Colorado Right to Life, declined several requests for an interview, but Cybercast News Service reported Thursday her group has begun planning for protests and business boycotts as soon as construction begins. She told them the clinic is a “death camp.”
In fact, the clinic provides life-saving cancer screening, sex education, counseling and contraception.
Leslie Durgin, senior VP of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said health-care services were provided to 96,848 Coloradans last year. And, yes, of the 125,046 patients served in the organization’s five-state region in 2006, 8,800 received abortions – which is their right under federal, state and local laws.
That’s just a fraction of the people who have relied on Planned Parenthood over the years, though, so when Right to Life threatened to disrupt construction of the new clinic, thousands of supporters materialized to defend the organization.
“We got an immediate boost in fundraising,” said Durgin. “Our development office has been very busy.”
This brings up one more crucial element of women’s equality over the eons: money. Voting is wonderful, girlfriends, but every now and then casting a check in the right direction sends a powerful message.
Party on.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
