Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/781

Rh an's political wrongs and her religious wrongs have been very closely intermingled in the past. I recall a Papal Bull of Urban II., in the 12th century, which compelled priests to discard their wives, making of thousands of women in England, wives who were not wed; of children, offspring who had no recognized fathers. We of the National Woman Suffrage Association have nothing to do with the religious rights of women in Utah, except in so far as they intermingle with and touch woman's political rights. But the Utah question, which now comes up again, is not simply a religious question. The Government is continuously striving to destroy the political rights of the women of this Territory. Its Governor is a United States officer, and in his last report to the Secretary of the Interior, he so far transcended the duties of his office as to suggest the disfranchisement of Utah women. Almost every session of Congress sees some bill of similar import introduced.

The General Government did not confer this right, did not secure even the exercise of it. The territorial Legislature, the same as in Wyoming, secured to women the exercise of the right of suffrage; the United States, according to its own theory, has no authority to interfere with this right, because, according to that theory, it has nothing at all to do with the suffrage question. Yet it proposes to disfranchise those women as a punishment for their religious belief; it proposes to make social outcasts of them, as it has already done with the wives of some of its black soldier voters.

Looking back through history we find no act of the Romish Church more vile than that which compelled its priests to disown their wives and legitimate children—none which so utterly demoralized society, and destroyed its tens of thousands of women. And although, as a body of reformers, I again say we do not touch religion except where it, and politics together, infringe upon the rights of women, I do not hesitate to say for myself individually, that I have no faith in any form of religion, be it what it may, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, that receives revelation only through some man; or farther than that, I will say, I have no faith in any form of religion that does not place man and woman on an exact equality of religious rights. Two forms of religion of the present day which have risen through woman, or as revelations to her, namely the Shaker and the Spiritual, do give us equality of religious rights, for man and woman. But I call your attention to the inconsistency of United States laws, and their especial injustice to women by interference with those rights secured them by State or Territorial laws, as in case of the colored soldier's wife; as in case the assumption that the United States had a right to prohibit the exercise of the suffrage by a woman in New York, although New York itself did not interfere; as in case of the virtual prohibition by the United States of jury rights to the women of Wyoming; as in case of the presumptuous suggestion of the Governor of Utah that its women should be disfranchised; as in case of such bills so often introduced in Congress.

I know something of the opinion of the women of the Nation, and I know they intend to be recognized as citizens secured in the exercise of all the powers and rights of citizens. If this security has not come under the XIV. Amendment, it must come under a XVI., for woman intends to possess "equal personal rights and equal political privileges with all other citizens."