Women, the draft and equality
3/15/2019, 6 a.m.
A federal judge in Texas ruled last month that the all-male draft in the United States is unconstitutional.
For many decades, there have been divisions in our military — the 442nd Infantry Regiment of Japanese Americans, the African-American Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American cavalry regiment known as Buffalo Soldiers and the American Indian code talkers.
While Congress eliminated the draft in the early 1970s, all men ages 18 to 25 are still required by law to register with the Selective Service System. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1981 stated that women could be excluded from the draft.
From 1981 to 2019 is an antiquity for a tradition of segregating women from draft registration.
Since so many progressives were elected to Congress in November, and millennials are taking it to the street for change, this should be the generation to make theirs an equality-for-all era.
RICK KNIGHT
Henrico County
