All government programs that benefit women suddenly become illegal. No more mandatory FMLA maternity leave. No more WIC, especially not for single mothers. Women would have to register for the draft. No more government support for women's shelters. No more presumption in favor of women in family courts. No laws requiring female representation. And a huge transfer of legislative power from the state to the federal level, for no clear benefit.

Now, you could argue that some of those might be good things, but I guarantee that will not be a universal opinion. And you could argue that, rather than cutting services for women, we should increase services for men--but the ammendment does not require that, and are you really ready to gamble that that's how it would go?

And what about discrimination based on gender--which, after all, is not the same thing as sex?

Yes, all government programs that exclusively benefit women would become illegal. And, all government programs that exclusively benefit men would also become illegal. These are not unintended consequences; equality for all sexes is the explicit purpose of the amendment.

I also just want to note that most of the programs you mention actually wouldn't be affected. WIC provides food money to single fathers in an equal fashion to the food money given to single mothers. Similarly, FMLA provides equal leave for both mothers and fathers. Family courts have already moved past special treatment of women; they now operate in a best interests of the child doctrine.

> Family courts have already moved past special treatment of women; they now operate in a best interests of the child doctrine.

That is incredibly naive. I personally know fathers who have been screwed over by a court system that is biased towards the female gender over all other considerations, to the point that it will grant sole custody of children to an ex-wife with multiple severe mental illnesses living with known-abusive grandparents who have been reported to CPS by their neighbors and which refuses to even enforce visitation rights for the father (who, y'know, actually has a job, and actually pays more attention to his kid than just shoving her in front of a TV all day when he is allowed to see her). And all because "of course the child should be with her mother".

> These are not unintended consequences

OK, perhaps you personally have thought of all of those consequences and you actually want them. And you don't care about gender-based discrimination, only biological sex. But here's another potential side-effect:

The concept of "separate but equal" has already been thoroughly shot down with regard to racial discrimination. If the ERA were passed, I guarantee you will see legal challenges to "separate but equal" treatment of the sexes. Taking that to its logical extreme, that means the ERA could be reasonably interpreted to mean that it is illegal to have, e.g., separate men's and women's locker rooms in public schools.

And just imagine how many parents would be up in arms over their daughters being forced to share a locker room with teenage boys.

The issue of gendered locker rooms and bathrooms can be reduced to an economical problem of building personal unisex booths. It is a bit more expensive, through compared to the budget of building a whole school it is a very minor increase in construction costs.

So the issue is an 0.(many zeros)1% increase in taxes to address that particular issue.

...And even if the GP does name issues, what possible connection could there be to Prohibition, other than the fact that both involve constitutional amendments?

The connection to prohibition is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the unforeseen side-effects were way worse than the problem it was intended to solve--hence an additional ammendment was required to repeal it.