Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly is best known as a leader of the American fundamentalist conservative movement. A bitter opponent of the ideas espoused by modern feminism, she led the fight, which was ultimately successful, against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982. She founded the Eagle Forum, an organization for conservative women, and is a published author and commentator. She was born into a poor family in Missouri, but was able to enter college earlier than most students, graduating from Washington University in St. Louis at age 19. She later received an M.A. in government from Harvard. She joined the Republican party and ran, unsuccessfully, for a Congressional seat in Illinois in 1952. She continued her work in conservative political circles, however, and attracted attention there in 1964 with her book "A Choice, Not An Echo", in which she put forth conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as an alternative to what she called the "corruption and liberalism" of mainstream Republicans. In 1970 she made a second try at running for an Illinois Congressional seat, but was again unsuccessful. She came to national attention as the leader in the fight against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and is generally given credit for its eventual failure to become ratified by the required number of states. Although she was often accused of spreading false and misleading information about what the ERA would entail (she claimed it would mandate unisex bathrooms, require women to be drafted into the military and legalize same-sex marriages--none of which were correct), her arguments apparently were effective in persuading many women to vote against it, and it was ratified by only 30 states, five short of the number necessary. With this victory Schlafly declared herself a sworn enemy of feminism, and although she was derided by many of her opponents as divorced from reality (she once gave a speech at Swarthmore College where she stated that American women were "the most privileged race of creatures on the earth because they have the best kitchens and the nicest men"), she has remained a major force in the ultra-conservative movement and especially in the right wing of the Republican party and continues to speak and write books on such issues as judicial "activism" and to call for the reintroduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (the much-ridiculed and dormant Reagan-era "Star Wars" space weaponization plan).