How Patricia Arquette’s Oscar speech for equality backfired on a civil rights issue

Patricia Arquette accepts the award for best actress in a supporting role for “Boyhood” at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

When Patricia Arquette won the best supporting actress Oscar for Boyhood, she gave an acceptance speech that roused a cheering Meryl Streep and an equally effusive Jennifer Lopez. Arquette had used her moment to catapult gender equality and the wage gap between men and women to the forefront of the media landscape.

“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights,” she said. “It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”