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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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one of the allegations against ERA, that men and women will have to use the same bathroom (it's a ridiculous allegation, okay? but it was raised by the opponents) -- she said, “I want you to know that if you're one of those who wants their own bathroom, you can have it!” Now, the thrust of it, and I'm not doing it as well as she did it in the original, was that you've got to be a kook to want to have separate bathrooms. She was saying to people out there [this is the way that it came over]: “There's nothing wrong with having one bathroom for everybody, but if you're one of those nuts that still believes you have to have a bathroom for men and a bathroom for women, we're not going to take it away from you.” And that's the way it came over on television, you see. So it's that kind of excess that I think is destructive, damaging.

I'll give you another illustration of her excess, so to speak, or the ill will that applies to her: There was a measure in Congress to provide $10 million for women's conferences over a period of years -- I'm not sure whether it's five years or ten years -- to be financed by the federal government. The women said to her (like Patsy Mink and others) that she should not lead that fight. It was brought up under what we call a suspension rule, which means that it's not subject to amendment and you have to get a two-thirds vote on the floor to have it passed. You do that if you don't want to get a regular rule from the Rules Committee and you want to avoid some of the legislative process and speed matters up. And you only





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