SHRILLARY, MICHELE AND SARAH NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT!

 by John Christian Ryter

In Article II, Section 1, the Constitution appears to establish only three ironclad qualifications for president. The president must (1) be at least 35 years old, (2) have lived in the United States at least 14 years, and (3) be a natural-born citizen. Yet, Article II, Section 1 declares that the President will be a man 16 times. Further, as noted by J.A. Corry, principal of Queen's University in London, and Henry J. Abraham, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, in their political science text book, Elements of Democratic Government (©1964; Oxford University Press) that in addition to the "written" qualifications for the office, there are also several "unwritten" qualifications and customary requirements that precedent has added to the qualifications for the office of President of the United States. Corry and Abraham insist these prerequisites must be viewed in the light of the entire composite. Being male is necessarily one of them.

Moreover, the Founding Fathers specifically wrote into the Constitution a male-gendered office called President. Article II, Section 1 begins: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected as follows..." You really do not have to read further to realize the role of President of the United States is gender-specific. Note the qualifications for the office of Congressman found in Article I, Section 1:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States...No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained the age of 25 years, and been 7 years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen..." There is no gender specification in the description of a Congressman. Nor is there any in the qualifications for Senator found in Article I, Section 2: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State chosen by the legislature thereof...No person shall be a Senator who shall have attained the age of 30 years, and been 9 years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen." Only one time, in one sentence, in Article I are the members of the House and/or Senate collectively referred to in male gender, and that is in Section 6, paragraph 2. In that instance, the usage is basically generic since there is no individual gender specific reference made for an individual person. In this single instance, the Constitution is clarifying that Congressmen and Senators may not serve a dual role in the Executive Branch of government.

Four times in Article I, Section 7 the President is referred to specifically as a man. Again, this was not an accident. The President is referred to, by gender, a total of 20 times in the Constitution. Most constitutional scholars agree that the Founding Fathers intended to establish a male gender national leader. In doing so, they explicitly barred women from ever becoming the President of the United States without first enacting a constitutional amendment that would allow them to accept the office if elected (since there appears to be nothing that bars them from seeking the office—only serving it if elected). In his book, "America's Constitution: A Guided Tour," Yale law professor Akhill Reed Amar suggests that the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, also granted them the implied corresponding right to seek the office of President of the United States. "In effect," he said, "that amendment required that the word 'he' in the original constitutional clauses dealing with the president would henceforth be read to mean 'he' or 'she.'"

Amar is, unfortunately, "reading" words or meanings not in evidence. The 19th Amendment merely grants women the right to vote. Although liberals have mastered the art of creating supra rights in existing case law by implication, there is no implied corresponding right to be construed here—particularly for women seeking the office of President of the United States which, constitutionally, is uniquely a male job. Sexist, isn't it? 

Simply stated, the 19th Amendment says: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Granted, starry-eyed liberals will automatically see the expansive nature of the phrase "...shall not be...abridged..." and will expand that phrase sufficiently to drive a Mack truck through it since the entire Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 were crafted from the "commerce clause" in Article I, Section 8. But the simple truth is that all the 19th Amendment does is provide women with the right to vote in federal, State, county and local elections. While women have never been denied the right to seek public office (even when they could not vote for themselves or for other female candidates for office), there is nothing in the 19th Amendment (or any other amendment for that matter) that neutralizes the gender specific qualities required of those who become the President of the United States. 

Without looking too far beyond the tip of our noses, we will find several liberal federal judges—particularly female judges—who would vehemently argue that the 19th Amendment's vote-granting to the "fair sex" tacitly degenderized all masculine references to the office of President. That argument has legal merit only if you can honestly conclude, after reading the entire document, that the Founding Fathers did not intend to create a national leader who was specifically male. 

Remember, at that time there were many female monarchs in Europe, so the notion of female heads of state was not alien to their thinking. And, while the door was not closed to women seeking government office, the Founding Fathers visualized the national leader of the United States as a man—and they deliberately penned that perspective into the Constitution. If that hypothesis is correct, then a woman cannot constitutionally serve as President of the United States until a constitutional amendment is ratified to correct the presumption by the Founding Fathers that the President of the United States must be a man.