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We have now lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, two of my favorite feminists in their 80s. Gloria Steinem, b. 1934, and my friend Letha Dawson Scanzoni, b. 1935, remain.
Born in 1933, Ruth was a year younger than Virginia, born in 1932. Ruth died on September 18, then Virginia on Sept. 25. In this 2015 photo (right) from a NYT interview, Ruth and Gloria discuss the long battle for women's rights.
My friend Letha Dawson Scanzoni, author of books on Christian feminism and on same-sex marriage blessed by God, celebrates her 85th birthday today, October 9.
These women are irreplaceable. Their courage and leadership changed the world.
They were born into a world where white women had been able to vote for only 12-16 years, and most black women and men encountered voter suppression if they tried to vote.
Most women didn't have access to birth control, yet the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Desperately poor women resorted to DIY abortions, like the ones described in Ch. 14 of my book, Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace.
Each of these four women had only one sibling. The parents of both Ruth and Virginia sent their son to college but not their daughter. The girl child had to fight and work for the opportunity to get higher education. Gloria was one of two girls, and Letha had just one brother.
Thank you to each of these four women. You gave me the rights that I sometimes take for granted.
Letha and Virginia gave me confidence that God wants equality for women and men, that Jesus and even the apostle Paul did not separate gender roles into men's and women's categories. "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus" (Letter to the Galatians 3:28)
Ruth and Gloria gave me the news that women and men are not treated equally in societies today, that we need to work for change. That news changed my life.
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