Sonia Johnson
From Philosopedia
Johnson, Sonia H. (27 February 1936— )
Johnson was born a 5th generation Mormon in Malad, Idaho. She graduated from Utah State University, pursuing her M.A. and Ed.D. from Rutgers.
She taught English at American and foreign universities, working part-time as a teacher while accompanying her husband on overseas jobs. The family returned to the United States in 1976, buying a house in Virginia, one of the states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Johnson became such an ardent supporter of the ERA that she was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1979.
Johnson exposed the role of the wealthy Mormon church in sabotaging passage of the ERA. She went on a 37-day hunger strike in the Illinois statehouse in 1982 during the last days of the ERA countdown, to symbolize how "women hunger for justice." She ran on a feminist ticket for President of the United States in 1984 as the candidate of the Citizens Party, becoming the first third-party candidate to qualify for primary matching funds. In countless speeches she pointed out
- Nobody's ever fought a revolution for women.
She wrote of her experiences in From Housewife to Heretic (1981) and The Ship That Sailed Into the Living Room: Sex and Intimacy Reconsidered (1991). When a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution asked if she had acquired any non-Mormon habits, "alluding, I'm sure, to smoking and drinking," she replied,
- Yes, in fact I have. I have acquired the habit of free thought.
Johnson is a business consultant in California and is a freethinker who has written for Truth Seeker. The Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association named Johnson in 1982 the first “Humanist Heroine,” and she responded that
- We know men’s rights are worth laying down one’s life for. Patrick Henry is considered an American hero because he said, "Give me liberty or give me death." No one doubts that, and the revolution was the result. Women must realize that women’s rights are worth the same sacrifice. Human rights are never bestowed. They are wrested.
(See entry for Steve Benson.)
