The American people should never forget that right through the 1990s and into the 2010s, the Equal Rights Amendment with its very simple declaration of equality under the law was intensely controversial among both Democrats and Republicans.

People who supported the full legal equality of women were painted by mainstream elements of both parties as crazed radicals.

Scalia’s view does not shock me in the least. For most of my life, almost all Americans believed, whether they admitted it or not, that full legal equality for women was a step too far.

The Democratic Party as an institution is guilty of perpetuating that belief.