Phyllis Schlafly, whose grass-roots campaigns against communism, abortion and the equal rights amendment galvanised conservatives for almost two generations and helped reshape American politics, has died aged 92.
In her time, Schlafly was one of the most polarising figures in American public life, a self-described housewife who displayed a moral ferocity reminiscent of the axe-wielding prohibitionist Carry Nation. Richard Viguerie, who masterminded the use of direct mail to finance right-wing causes, called her “the first lady of the conservative movement.”
On the left, Betty Friedan, the feminist leader and author, compared her to a religious heretic, telling her in a debate that she should burn at the stake for opposing the equal rights amendment. Friedan called Schlafly an “Aunt Tom.”
Schlafly became a forceful conservative voice in the 1950s, when she joined the right-wing crusade against international communism. In the 1960s, with her popular self-published book A Choice, Not an Echo (it sold more than three million copies) and a growing legion of followers, she gave critical support to the presidential ambitions of Senator Barry Goldwater, the hard-right Arizonan who went on to lead the Republican Party to electoral disaster in 1964, but who planted the seeds of a conservative revival that would flower with the rise of Ronald Reagan. And in the 1970s, Schlafly's campaign against the equal rights amendment played a large part in its undoing. The amendment would have expanded women's rights by barring any gender-based distinctions in federal and state laws, and it was within hailing distance of becoming the law of the land: Both houses of Congress had passed it by a vote of more than 90 per cent, and 35 state legislatures – only three shy of the number required for adoption – had approved it. But the amendment lost steam in the late 1970s under pressure from Schlafly's volunteer brigades – mainly women, most of them churchgoing Christians (Schlafly was Roman Catholic) and not a few of them lugging apple pies to cajole legislators.
Despite an extension of the deadline, the amendment died, on June 30th, 1982. Schlafly’s pronouncements drove her antagonists to distraction, though they suspected that her biting language was calculated precisely to provoke their outrage.
She 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.” She called the atom bomb “a marvellous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.”
When Freidan, during a debate at Indiana University in 1973, recommended that she burn at the stake, Schlafly replied in an even voice that she was pleased Friedan had said that because, she said, the comment had made it plain to the audience just how intolerant “intemperate, agitating proponents of the ERA” were.
She was born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart in August 1924, in St. Louis, the oldest of two daughters of the former Odile Dodge, a teacher with two college degrees, and John Bruce Stewart, a machinist and industrial equipment salesman who was 17 years his wife’s senior.
Her son John gained attention in 1992 when a gay activist revealed that he was homosexual. Schlafly said she considered the disclosure a deliberate attempt to embarrass her. The revelation did not alter her disapproval of gay marriage. In 2010 she said of gay couples: “Nobody’s stopping them from shacking up. The problem is that they are trying to make us respect them, and that’s an interference with what we believe.” (John Schlafly defended his mother and refused to repudiate Republican politicians, like Pat Robertson, who had condemned homosexuality. “Family values people” are “not out to bash gays,” he said.)
Schlafly maintained an energetic pace into advanced age. In 2011 she spoke out for “shotgun marriages” as the solution to unwanted pregnancies. Even as supporters of the equal rights amendment tried to revive it, Schlafly strove to make sure it stayed dead. In March of this year, she endorsed Donald Trump for president, saying he had “the courage and the energy” to do “what the grass-roots want him to do.”
Her husband, John Fred Schlafly Jr, died in 1993. She is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.