Phyllis Schlafly

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.

She is a widely-published author and commentator, and maintains an active presence on the lecture circuit. In 1972, she founded the Eagle Forum, a conservative organization originally headquartered in Alton, Illinois and now maintaining offices in St. Louis, Missouri and Washington, D.C. as well. She founded, and is president of, a sister organization known as the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, which resides in the Eagle Forum's St. Louis office. In 2006, she continues to be president of both organizations.

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

Phyllis' 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. Phyllis’ 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 because of the Great Depression and couldn’t find permanent work until World War II. He was granted a patent in 1944 for a rotary engine.

Phyllis’ mother, Odile Dodge, was the daughter of a 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. Early on, Schlafly was aquainted with the far right and male unreliability when the Depression threw her father into long-term unemployment and her mother, entering the labor market, was able to keep the family afloat, including maintaining Schlafly in an elite Catholic girls' school that stressed Christian anti-Communism (Ehrenreich 152-153).

She began college early, working to make money, including as a model, and earning her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1944 at the age of 19. She received an M.A. in Government from Radcliffe in 1945, and a J.D. from Washington University Law School in 1978.

Sheltered by her husband Fred Schlafly's ample income and assisted by a part-time housekeeper, the woman who would insist that "she had no intention of following in her mother's footsteps and becoming -- even voluntarily -- a career woman" (Ehrenreich 153) ironically developed a new career as a one-woman propagandist for the far-right, consequently making it more difficult for any women to forge a career in the paid labor force (Ehrenreich 153).

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 the corruption and liberalism of other Republicans, specifically the Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast. Critics call the book a conspiracy theory about "secret kingmakers" controlling the Republican Party.

In 1967, she founded her own political newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report, which is still published.

In 1970, Schlafly again ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a House seat in Illinois, losing to Democratic incumbent George Shipley.

In 1992, her eldest son was publicly outed as a gay man by Michelangelo Signorile. John Schlafly is an attorney who has worked with her at the Eagle Forum and as such, has been partly responsible for promoting the group's anti-same-sex marriage agenda. Since the outing, Schlafly has repeatedly been included on lists of conservatives who have gay children, such as Dick Cheney, Alan Keyes, Randall Terry, and others. Despite this, in 2006, her son remains director of the Alton, Illinois, office and accompanies her on some of her public engagements. Despite his political views, John Schlafly has never actively sought to conceal his sexual orientation.

In 1993, Schlafly's husband died and she moved to Missouri, closer to the Eagle Forum office in St. Louis.

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]).

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 not to feminism, but to labor-saving devices such as the indoor clothes dryer and paper diapers.

'Stop ERA'

Schlafly became the most visible and effective opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment 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. She organized vigorously against the amendment, arguing that it could lead to the drafting of women into the military, expansion of federal power, taxpayer-funded abortions, same-sex marriage, and other matters she identified as problems. Her claims were strongly contested by feminists. A coalition of national feminist groups organized a national campaign of rallies and marches to swing public sentiment in key states in favor of the ERA.

By the time Schlafly began campaigning, in 1972, the amendment had already been ratified by 30 of the necessary 38 states. Schlafly was successful in organizing a grassroots campaign to oppose further states' ratifications, however, and the amendment was narrowly defeated, having only been passed in 35 states. More than twenty years later, Schlafly continues to argue against any revival of the ERA.

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 based on 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."

Writings

Schlafly is the author of twenty-one books (see below). Most are on topics of interest to political conservatives, but they range 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 Republican National Convention's platforms as recently as 2004.

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

References

• Donald T. Critchlow. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade Princeton University Press, 2005. 422 pp. ISBN 0-691-07002-4.
• Carol Felsenthal. 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.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1983. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. New York: Anchor Books.

External links

• [2] Phyllis Schlafly official site
• [3] Eagle Forum official site
• [4] Conservatives' first lady sparked pro-family effort
• [5] Review: 'Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade,' by Donald T. Critchlow
• [6] First Chapter: 'Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism' by Donald T. Crichtlow
• [7] Article on Phyllis Schlafly from September 2, 2004 Boston Globe.