Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly
Born	(1924-08-15) August 15, 1924 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Occupation	Political activist
Spouse(s)	John Fred Schlafly, Jr. (wid.)
Children	John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew, Anne

Phyllis Schlafly (born on August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American conservative political activist known for her best-selling 1964 book A Choice, Not An Echo and her opposition to feminism (see antifeminism) in general and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in particular.

Often called the conservative "first lady," Schlafly is a widely-published author and commentator, and maintains an active presence on the lecture circuit. In 1972, she founded the Eagle Forum. She founded also and was the president of a sister organization known as the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, which resides in the Eagle Forum's St. Louis office. As of 2007, she is still the president of both organizations. Since 1967, she has published her own political newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report.

She was married to attorney John Fred Schlafly, Jr., (1909–1993) for forty-four years. They had six children: John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew, and Anne.

Family background

Schlafly's great-grandfather Stewart, a Presbyterian, came from Scotland to New York in 1851 and moved westward through Canada before settling in Michigan. Her grandfather, Andrew F. Stewart, was a successful master mechanic with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. Schlafly's father, John Bruce Stewart, was a machinist and salesman of industrial equipment, principally for Westinghouse, although no details are available on his employment prior to arriving in St. Louis around 1918. He became unemployed in 1932 in the Great Depression and could not find permanent work until World War II. He was granted a patent in 1944 for a rotary engine.

Schlafly's mother, Odile Dodge, was the daughter of the moderately successful attorney Ernest C. Dodge. Odile attended college through graduate school and, before her marriage, worked as a teacher at Hosmer Hall, a private school for girls in St. Louis. With her father’s legal business suffering during the Great Depression and her husband out of work, Odile worked as a librarian and a school teacher to support both families.

John Fred Schlafly, Jr. came from a well-to-do St. Louis family. His grandfather, August, immigrated in 1854 from Switzerland as a child. Shortly after August’s arrival, his father died and the family resettled in Carlyle, Illinois. There August and two brothers worked as clerks in a local grocery store. In 1876, August’s older brother married Catharine Hubert, the daughter of a successful local businessman. Shortly thereafter, the three brothers founded the firm of Schlafly Bros., which dealt in groceries, Queensware (dishes made by Wedgwood), hardware, and agricultural implements. They later sold that business and concentrated on banking and other businesses that made them wealthy.

Life

Schlafly was christened Phyllis McAlpin Stewart and raised as a Roman Catholic in St. Louis, Missouri. According to the opinion of one critic, during the Depression, Schlafly's father went into long-term unemployment and her mother, entering the labor market, was able to keep the family afloat, including maintaining Schlafly in a Catholic girls' school (Ehrenreich 152-153). An author biography from at least one of her books ("Strike From Space", 1965) notes she was at one time "a ballistics gunner and technician at the largest ammunition plant in the world," which would have been Lake City Army Ammunition Plant (LCAAP) in Independence, Missouri.

She began college early, working to make money, including work as a model, and earning her A.B. Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University in St. Louis in 1944 at the age of 19. She received an M.A. in Government from Radcliffe College in 1945. Much later (in 1978), she earned a J.D. from Washington University Law School in St. Louis.

In 1952, she first ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Republican. It was over a decade later that she first came to national attention with her book, A Choice, Not an Echo, millions of copies of which were distributed in support of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. In it, Schlafly denounced other Republicans, specifically the Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast, accusing them of corruption. Critics call the book a conspiracy theory about "secret kingmakers" controlling the Republican Party.

In 1967, Schlafly also lost the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women, after a bitter campaign against a more moderate candidate. Schlafly's own next-door neighbor in Alton, a housewife and active Republican, accused her at the time of being "an exponent of an extreme right-wing philosophy—a propagandist who deals in emotion and personalities where it is not necessary to establish facts or prove charges."

She joined the John Birch Society but quit because se thought that the main Communist threats to her country were external rather than internal. In 1970, Schlafly again ran unsuccessfully for a House of Representatives seat in Illinois, losing to Democratic incumbent George Shipley.

In 1992, her eldest son, John, came out as being a homosexual. Schlafly has expressed a desire not to talk about that in interviews.

Schlafly has been an outspoken critic of what many conservatives refer to as "activist judges", particularly on the Supreme Court. In 2005, Schlafly made headlines at a conference for the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration by suggesting that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment" of certain Supreme Court justices (see [1]), Justice Anthony Kennedy being the primary target.

In 2006, Schlafly provided an interview which appeared in the March 30 New York Times in which she attributed improvement in women's lives during the last decades of the twentieth century to labor-saving devices such as the indoor clothes dryer and paper diapers.

"Stop ERA"

1970s & 1980s

Schlafly became the most visible and effective opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s as the organizer of the "Stop the ERA" movement, widely credited with stopping it from achieving passage by its legislative deadline. STOP has also been referred to as an acronym for "Stop Taking our Privileges," because Schlafly believes the ERA movement, if passed, would take away many Americans' privileges, especially those of women.

By the time Schlafly began campaigning in 1972, the amendment had already been ratified by 30 of the necessary 38 states. However, Schlafly was successful in organizing a grassroots campaign to oppose further states' ratifications. She campaigned against it arguing that, "the ERA would lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms." Her views were opposed by Pro-ERA groups: "Pro-ERA advocacy was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 other mainstream organizations." The amendment was narrowly defeated, having already been passed in 35 states.

Supporters of Schlafly argue that some of her claims have been confirmed by later state court rulings . Some state courts have interpreted state equivalents of ERA as requiring government funding of abortions and same-sex marriage . Her arguments against the ERA included her opposition to including women in the military draft. In 1981, a highly publicized lawsuit attempted to end the all-male selective service system, claiming it encouraged gender discrimination. In the absence of the ERA, the Supreme Court held by a 6-3 margin that Congress could register only men for military service. (Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 1981).

Another case often cited by Schlafly supporters is the Harris v. McRae decision of 1980, in which, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that Congress could provide funding for childbirth but not for abortion (Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 1980). In a summation during a debate with proponents of the amendment, Schlafly said, "I like being a woman, and the protections the law now allows."

On the other hand, Schlafly's critics have said that her work against the ERA, and its subsequent failure, meant government intervention in social engineering, such as treating people differently because of gender, and convinced many women that they should be satisfied to live through the state.

2007

According to the 28 March 2007 article in the Washington Post, "New Drive Afoot to Pass Equal Rights Amendment," Schlafly is working towards the defeat of a new version of the Equal Rights Amendment: "Today, she warns lawmakers that its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows."

Criticism

Schlafly has been criticized for dispersing disinformation about sex education in the public schools and working against federally funded day care and reproductive rights. She has described sex education classes as "in-home sales parties for abortions." Additionally, she and her Eagle Forum have been accused of censorship fights against artists like John Steinbeck and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Journalist Gloria Steinem, among others, has mentioned Schlafly's paradoxical role as an advocate for the full-time housekeeper, while being herself a lawyer, editor of a monthly newsletter, regular speaker at anti-liberal rallies and full-time political activist.

On March 28, 2007, while speaking at Beates College in Lewiston, Schlafly affirmed that married women can't be raped by their husbands: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."

Writings

Schlafly is the author of twenty-one books (see below) ranging from child care to phonics education. She currently writes a weekly syndicated column that appears in over 100 newspapers. She continues to be influential within the Republican Party, and was responsible for some socially conservative language in the yearly Republican National Convention's platform, as recently as 2004.

However, Schlafly has expressed dissatisfaction with the modern Republican Party. Though she has not been actively involved in the neoconservative/paleoconservative schism, her positions on many issues resemble those of a paleoconservative. Like Pat Buchanan, she feels that "President George W. Bush has muddied up the meaning of conservative." Schlafly writes, "Bush ran as a conservative, but he has been steadily (some might say stealthily) trying to remold the conservative movement and the Republican Party into the Bush Party. And the Bush Party stands for so many things alien to conservatism, namely, war as an instrument of foreign policy, nation-building overseas, highly concentrated executive power, federal control of education, big increases in social entitlements, massive increases in legal and illegal immigration, forcing American workers to compete with low-wage foreigners (under deceptive enticements such as free trade and global economy), and subordinating U.S. sovereignty to a North American community with open borders.". However, despite such criticisms, the Eagle Forum defended the party before the 2006 elections: "We cannot let our dissatisfaction and disappointment with some members of the Republican Party keep us from voting for the good guys — the ones who really are leaders for the conservative cause".

Schlafly's published works include:

• Judicial Tyranny: The New Kings of America? - contributing author (Amerisearch, 2005) ISBN 0-9753455-6-7
• The Supremacists: The Tyranny Of Judges And How To Stop It (Spence Publishing Company, 2004) ISBN 1-890626-55-4
• Feminist Fantasies, foreword by Ann Coulter (Spence Publishing Company, 2003) ISBN 1-890626-46-5
• Turbo Reader (Pere Marquette Press, 2001) ISBN 0-934640-16-5
• First Reader (Pere Marquette Press, 1994) ISBN 0-934640-24-6
• Pornography's Victims (Crossway Books, 1987) ISBN 0-89107-423-6
• Child Abuse in the Classroom (Crossway Books, 1984) ISBN 0-89107-365-5
• Equal Pay for UNequal Work (Eagle Forum, 1984) ISBN 99950-3-143-4
• The End of an Era (Regnery Publishing, 1982) ISBN 0-89526-659-8
• The Power of the Christian Woman (Standard Pub, 1981) ISBN B0006E4X12
• The Power of the Positive Woman (Crown Pub, 1977) ISBN 0-87000-373-9
• Ambush at Vladivostok, with Chester Ward (Pere Marquette Press, 1976) ISBN 0-934640-00-9
• Kissinger on the Couch (Arlington House Publishers, 1974) ISBN 0-87000-216-3
• Mindszenty the Man (with Josef Vecsey) (Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, 1972) ISBN B00005WGD6
• The Betrayers (Pere Marquette Press, 1968) ISBN B0006CY0CQ
• Safe Not Sorry (Pere Marquette Press, 1967) ISBN 0-934640-06-8
• Strike From Space: A Megadeath Mystery (Pere Marquette Press, 1965) ISBN 80-7507-634-6
• Grave Diggers (with Chester Ward) (Pere Marquette Press, 1964) ISBN 0-934640-03-3
• A Choice Not An Echo (Pere Marquette Press, 1964) ISBN 0-686-11486-8

See also

• Conservapedia--a site created in 2006 by Andrew Schlafy, one of her children

References

• Critchlow, Donald T. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade Princeton University Press, 2005. 422 pp. ISBN 0-691-07002-4.
• Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1983. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. New York: Anchor Books.
• Felsenthal, Carol. The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority Doubleday & Co., 1981. 337pp. ISBN 0-89526-873-6.
• Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Firebrand: Phyllis Schlafly and the Conservative Revolution." The New Yorker. Nov 7, 2005. pp. 134.

Notes

External links

• Phyllis Schlafly official site
• Eagle Forum official site
• Conservatives' first lady sparked pro-family effort
• Review: 'Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade,' (by Donald T. Critchlow)
• First Chapter: 'Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism' (by Donald T. Crichtlow)
• Article on Phyllis Schlafly from September 2, 2004 Boston Globe
• Phyllis Schlafly speaks about feminism at Mount Holyoke College
• Domestic violence law abuses rights of men - by Phyllis Schlafly