To the Editor:

I’m a college student now, but I was lucky to spend some time the other day at home in Albany County. Each fall, I tend to be distracted by the fiery orange and piercing red leaves. This year, I’ve been more distracted by something else: hot pink and blue signs on grassy roadsides that stare back at you if you look at them long enough. “Save girls’ sports,” they read. “Vote no on Prop 1.”

I’ve lived here essentially my entire life and have never seen so much energy behind a ballot proposition. It’s startling. And when lawn signs pitched into every Capital Region intersection say that this proposition is going to jeopardize girls’ sports or “parents’ choice” or “religious liberty,” it makes Prop 1 startling, too.

It shouldn’t be a shock that Prop 1 is none of those things. Proposition 1 — best known as the Equal Rights Amendment — was born out of the anxiety-induced aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s collapse in 2022. When state legislatures and courts across the country rolled back protections for abortion, birth control, and IVF [in vitro fertilization], advocacy groups and legislators felt a profound obligation to constitutionally bar similar rollbacks here at home.

Today, our state constitution is wholly inadequate when it comes to protecting civil rights. The only enumerated protections against discrimination in New York’s constitution are for race, color, creed, and religion. And while most states have an equal rights amendment in their constitutions, we don’t.

Prop 1 fixes that — protecting New Yorkers from “unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes, as well as reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

The amendment has had enemies from the start. Just months ago, its status on the ballot was temporarily revoked. Despite being passed twice by the state legislature, the Supreme Court of Livingston County struck down the entire proposition, holding that the legislature didn’t follow proper procedure. The Appellate Division reversed this decision, securing the ERA’s place on the ballot.

Today, the ERA is at risk yet again through TV ad buys and frightening lawn signs. Our state Republican Party and organizations like the “Coalition to Protect Kids” have argued that the amendment will erode parental rights, corrupt school sports teams, and provide taxpayer benefits to migrants.

But Prop 1 doesn’t address or change existing laws relating to any of those three things. Rather, it would bar an extreme legislator from giving comfort to discriminatory employers or abortion protection rollbacks. It’s an equal rights amendment — not an attack on family values.

Some would call Prop 1’s discourse contentious, but this characterization is far too clinical. What has happened in our state is a disgusting, deliberate attack on a constitutionally binding guarantee that our government should protect all of us. The idea that this proposition is a poorly crafted statute designed to curtail “parents’ choice” is not just untrue — it’s disgraceful.

I hope our state will end this blatant fear-mongering on Nov. 5. Please flip your ballot over. We don’t deserve to be misled.

Conor Webb

Guilderland