Phyllis Schlafly died on Sept. 5 at age 92. It is said that one must not speak ill of the dead; this is very hard to achieve when one has nothing nice to say about someone who has died. This is the case with Phyllis Schlafly.
Let us start with her greatest achievement, preventing the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The U.S. Senate passed the ERA in 1972 and then it went to the states for ratification. Schlafly founded the group, STOP ERA, which later evolved into the rightwing organization Eagle Forum which she continued to lead until her death. Promoting the false narrative that equality before the law would hurt women, depriving them of their privileges as wives and mothers, she spearheaded an organizing drive to pressure state legislators into voting down the ERA.
Many have pointed out the seeming contradiction in Schlafly’s position as the arch-nemesis of the feminist movement. Here was a well-educated, articulate and personally empowered woman, who dedicated herself to political organizing—speaking, campaigning, writing, networking—against women’s rights. Schlafly at one time said that “sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women” and that “sex-education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions.”
The writer Gail Sheehey pointed out that “Phyllis Schlafly’s formula for the better life, then, is based on marrying a rich professional, climbing the pedestal to lady of leisure and pulling up the rope ladder behind her.”
Schlafly and her husband Fred, who she married in 1949, were active in various conservative causes. She ran for Congress as a Republican in 1952, and was president of the League of Republican Women from 1956-1964. Together the Schlaflys founded the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation — named for a Hungarian Catholic anti-Communist . They were also closely associated with the Goldwater campaign.
Up until the mid-1970s, Schlafly was mostly associated with foreign policy anti-communism. However after losing the presidency of the League of Republican Women and another failed run for Congress, she saw her chance to regain her prominence by organizing against the ERA.
Schlafly’s anti-feminism was closely linked with anti-gay bigotry. In 1973, she asserted that the ERA “would legalize homosexual marriages and open the door to the adoption of children by legally married homosexual couples.” She added that any “law that defines a marriage as a union of a man and a woman would have to be amended to replace those words with ‘person.’” She was a trailblazer and role model for other anti-LGBTQ activists who came after her like Anita Bryant and John Briggs.
This cartoon shows the blending of her anti-gay, anti-feminist and anti-communist ideology.
In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, she attacked C. Everett Koop, the Surgeon General, describing his program for AIDS prevention as “the teaching of safe sodomy.”
Her newsletter asked: “Would police, paramedics, dentists, health personnel and morticians be permitted to take adequate precautions to defend themselves against AIDS and other homosexual diseases? Could we restrict homosexuals from working in the food handling business, such as restaurants and as flight attendants on airlines?” Even when her own son was publicly revealed to be gay in 1992, she continued to rail against gay marriage.
While this despicable individual faded somewhat from the public eye in recent years, she continued her right-wing activism, most recently attending the Republican National Convention as a Trump delegate.
Phyllis Schlafly is a perfect example of how simply being a woman is no guarantee of being a feminist. She will not be missed.
