Phyllis Schlafly, Conservative Activist and Author, Dead at 92

Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative lawyer and activist who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and modern feminism, has died. She was 92. Her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s was seen as a key factor in its ultimate defeat.

The St. Louis native founded the Eagle Forum, a pro-family social issues organization, in 1972. The Eagle Forum issued a statement Monday acknowledging Schlafly's death.

“Phyllis Schlafly spent an astounding 70 years in public service of her fellow Americans," the statement read. "Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life. She recognized America as the greatest political embodiment of those values. From military superiority and defense to immigration and trade; from unborn life to the nuclear family and parenthood, Phyllis Schlafly was a courageous and articulate voice for common sense and traditional values.”

Ladies' Home Journal listed her among The 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

She was preceded in death by her husband Fred and is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Schlafly remained president of the Eagle Forum through its entire existence. Her most recent column was published on Aug. 31, titled "Setback for the Transgender Agenda," in which she decried the U.S. Department of Education's new transgender policies for high school students, referring to "transgender" as a "trendy new term for confused kids ..."

Anyone with a child knows that children learn about the world through binary options: up or down, hot or cold, big or little, inside or outside, wet or dry, good or bad, boy or girl, man or woman. But the radical feminists, who staff women’s studies departments at most colleges, have propagated the idea that we have to get rid of the “gender binary” along with the expectation of distinct roles for men and women.

She published 27 books and authored thousands of opinion columns which were syndicated to 100 newspapers. She also started distributing a newsletter in 1967 called The Phyllis Schlafly Report.

“America has lost a great stateswoman, and we at Eagle Forum and among the conservative movement have lost a beloved friend and mentor, who taught and inspired so many to fight the good fight in defense of American values,” said Eunie Smith, Eagle Forum’s first vice president, in a statement. “I have personally lost a dear friend of over 40 years.”

She led an eclectic life as a young woman, working as a model and earning degrees in government studies at Washington University in St. Louis and Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the all-female school that served as the counterpart in that era to the all-male Harvard University. During World War II, she worked in an ammunition plant as a ballistics gunner.

She married attorney John Fred Schlafly Jr., who came from a wealthy St. Louis family, in 1949. They would move to Alton, Illinois, and raise six children: John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew and Anne.

She became politically active during the war years and ran for Congress in downstate Illinois in 1952. She lost the election. She rose to national prominence in 1964 during Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign when her book denouncing Rockefeller Republicans, "A Choice Not an Echo," was distributed to Goldwater supporters.

She earned her law degree at Washington University in the 1970s.

Also in the '70s, Schlafly organized a nationwide "Stop ERA" campaign. The crux of her argument was that privileges women enjoyed — such as separate restrooms from men, judicial preference for custody of children in divorces, exemption from the draft, alimony and "dependent wife" Social Security benefits — would be erased by the Equal Rights Amendment.

Schlafly's supporters would bring homemade apple pies and jams to lawmakers and tout slogans such as, "I am for Mom and apple pie" and "Preserve us from a congressional jam; Vote against the ERA sham." More than 3,000 women descended on the Illinois state capital to thwart the ERA vote.

The constitutional amendment was ratified by 35 states, but five later rescinded ratification. Thirty-eight states needed to ratify the amendment by March 1979, but the opposition proved to be too much to overcome.

In the 1970s, she was frequently heard on WGN radio. Later, in the 1980s, she would appear frequently on CNN. President Ronald Reagan in 1985 appointed her to serve on the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution.

For her actions, she's beloved by conservatives and reviled by feminists.

In 1992, Queer Week magazine "outed" their eldest son, John, as homosexual. She viewed this as an attack on her and an implication she was a hypocrite, and her son rose to her defense in an interview with the L.A. Times. He was 41 at the time and, like both of them an attorney, and lived in Alton with his parents.

"The family values movement is not anti-gay," he told the L.A. Times. "These people are not anti-gay. They're not gay bashers. I hold my mother in very high esteem. She's doing good work."

She continued to offer her political views and endorsements right up to the end.

In 2008, she endorsed John McCain for president. In 2011, she backed Michelle Bachman of Minnesota. This year, Schlafly endorsed Donald Trump. In January, she sat for an interview with Breitbart to explain her endorsement.

“Trump is the only hope to defeat the Kingmakers because everybody else will fall in line. The Kingmakers have so much money behind them. ... The Kingmakers have picked our last bunch of losers. And there’s one loser after another because they were more interested in maintaining their flow of money from the big donors and their cooperation with the Democrats—their bipartisanship—and that’s not my goal. I’m for America and America first.”

"Kingmakers" was her term for "the Establishment," the party elites.

Schlafly punctuated her comments, noted Breitbart, with a feisty slam of her hand on the table.

Her staff tweeted confirmation of her passing from Schlafly's Twitter account.

Photo by c.berlet/publiceye.org via Wikimedia Commons