Phyllis Schlafly, the outspoken conservative activist who helped
defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, has died. She was 92.
Schlafly died
on Monday afternoon of cancer at her home in St Louis, her son John Schlafly said.
Schlafly rose to national attention in 1964 with her self-published
book A Choice Not an Echo which became a manifesto for the far right.
The book, which sold three million copies, chronicled the history of the
Republican National Convention and is credited for helping conservative
senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona earn the 1964 GOP nomination.
She later helped lead efforts to defeat the proposed constitutional
amendment that would have outlawed gender discrimination, galvanizing
the party’s right.
Schlafly graduated from college while working overnight at a factory
during the second world war, her newspaper column appeared in dozens of
newspapers and she was politically active into her 90s — including
attending every convention since her first in 1952.
Yet she told the Associated Press in 2007 that perhaps her greatest
legacy was the Eagle Forum, which she founded in 1972 in suburban St
Louis, where she lived. The ultraconservative group has chapters in
several states and claims 80,000 members.
“I’ve taught literally millions of people how to participate in
self-government,” Schlafly said. “I think I’ve built a wonderful
organization of volunteers, mostly women but some men, willing to spend
their time to get good laws and good politicians.”
The Eagle Forum pushes for low taxes, a strong military and
English-only education. The group is against efforts it says are pushed
by radical feminists or encroach on US sovereignty, such as guest-worker
visas, according to its website, which describes the Equal Rights
Amendment as having had a “hidden agenda of tax-funded abortions and
same-sex marriages”.
As momentum grew in the 1970s for the amendment, Schlafly became its
most outspoken critic — and was vilified by its supporters. She had a
pie smashed into her face and pig’s blood thrown on her, and feminist
Betty Friedan once told Schlafly: “I’d like to burn you at the stake.”
She was chastised in a 1970s Doonesbury — a framed copy of which hung on
her office wall.
“What I am defending is the real rights of women,” Schlafly said at
the time. “A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and
mother.”
Thirty-five states ratified the amendment, three short of the
necessary 38. Schlafly said amendment supporters couldn’t prove it was
needed.
“They were never able to show women would get any benefit out of it,”
she told the AP in 2007. “It [the US Constitution] is already
sex-neutral. Women already have all the rights that men have.”
St Louis University history professor Donald Critchlow, who profiled
Schlafly in his 2005 book Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A
Woman’s Crusade, said the defeat of the amendment helped revive
conservatism and pave the way for Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980.
“What the ERA [defeat] did was show the right, and especially Reagan
strategists, that a new constituency could be tapped to revitalize the
right. It allowed the right to take over the party,” Critchlow told the
AP shortly after his book was written.
Schlafly was born on 15 August 1924 and grew up in Depression-era St
Louis. Her parents were Republican but not politically involved.
Her own activism was born partly out of convenience. With the country
involved in the second world war during her college years, Schlafly
worked the graveyard shift at the St Louis Ordnance Plant. Her job
included testing ammunition by firing machine guns. She would get off
work at 8am, attend morning classes, then sleep in the middle of the day
before doing it all over again.
The schedule limited her options for a major. “In order to pick
classes to fit my schedule I picked political science,” Schlafly
recalled in the 2007 interview.
She graduated from Washington University in 1944, when she was 19.
Her first taste of real politics came at age 22, when she guided the
1946 campaign of Republican congressional candidate Claude Bakewell,
helping him to a major upset win.
In 1952, with her young family living in nearby Alton, Illinois,
Schlafly’s husband, attorney John Schlafly Jr, was approached about
running for Congress. He declined, but she ran and narrowly lost in a
predominantly Democratic district. She also ran unsuccessfully for
Congress in 1970.
Schlafly earned a master’s degree in government from Harvard in 1945.
She enrolled in Washington University School of Law in 1976, and at age
51, graduated 27th in a class of 204.
Schlafly received an honorary degree at Washington University’s
commencement in 2008. Though some students and faculty silently
protested by getting up from their seats and turning their backs to the
stage, Schlafly called it “a happy day. I’m just sorry for those who
tried to rain on a happy day.”
Citing Schlafly’s views about homosexuals, women and immigrants — she
was an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, abortion rights and
loosening U.S. border restrictions — protesters said she went against
the most fundamental principles for which the university stood.
Schlafly remained active in conservative politics well into her 80s,
when she was still writing a column that appeared in 100 newspapers,
doing radio commentaries on more than 460 stations and publishing a
monthly newsletter.
Schlafly’s husband died in 1993.
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