By Hunter Hines
Christian Action League
September 8, 2016
ST. LOUIS, MO. – Conservative icon, Phyllis Schlafly died on Monday. She was 92. Schlafly had been battling cancer for a while and was recently confined to a wheelchair. Her family was with her at her home in Ladue, a suburb of the Gateway City, at the time of her passing.
In addition to her innumerable contributions to the cause of conservative values, which included 27 books, thousands of articles, and thousands of speaking engagements across the country, Schlafly founded Eagle Forum in 1972.
According to its website, Eagle Forum’s purpose is to “enable conservative and pro-family men and women to participate in the process of self-government and public policy making so that America will continue to be a land of individual liberty, respect for family integrity, public and private virtue, and private enterprise.”
In a statement concerning her death, the website notes that Schlafly served her fellow Americans for 70 years. “Her focus from the earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life.” It further states, “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.”
Schlafly is probably best known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for Women in the 1970s. The Kansas City Star states, “[S]he led a furious and ultimately successful effort to defeat the amendment in state legislatures where it had not passed. ‘Phyllis…shot it dead,’ conservative columnist Pat Buchanan wrote Monday. She later called the defeat of the ERA her greatest political achievement. ‘Everything was against us, from the media to the politicians, the whole political structure of the country,’ she told Time Magazine in 2009.”
The heart of her opposition to the ERA was stated in a speech she gave in 1972, reported the Christian Post. She argued, “Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there’s nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support. It is his obligation and his sole obligation. And this is exactly and precisely what we will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed.”
Luanne Williams from Albemarle, was elected to serve in 2009 on the Board of Directors of the Christian Action League. Williams was the first woman in the League’s history to serve on the Board. She said Schalfly was an inspiration to her during her early college days when she first started paying attention to politics.
“It was Phyllis Schlafly’s tireless efforts to expose the underlying aims of the Equal Rights Amendment that opened my eyes to the need to dig into the details of proposed legislation. The fact that she was a successful and an outspoken intellectual opposing this amendment on very specific grounds and in such an eloquent way inspired women like me across the nation,” said Williams.
Kami Mueller, a young woman originally from Yorktown, Indiana who now makes her home in Raleigh, is currently the Communications Director for the North Carolina Republican Party. Mueller said in a Facebook post on Monday that she was heartbroken over Schalfly’s passing.
Mueller shared her sentiments with the Christian Action League in an email.
“Over the years, Phyllis Schlafly has been a force to be reckoned with — congressmen trembled at her name, entire coalitions of people rallied for the cause, legislation was impacted almost immediately.” wrote Mueller. “In a world that has bastardized the beauty and potential of women with the lie that is ‘feminism,’ Phyllis Schlafly was a welcome reminder to women across America who held the worthy desire to live a life of integrity, boldness, and faith. So many women, like me, have been greatly impacted by her strength and her spirit. And it is my prayer that we will continue to carry on her torch — shining light into a dark world — for generations to come.”
Numerous national leaders shared their accolades for Schalfly at her passing.
OneNewsNow.com reported that Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, said she was one of his heroes. He said that she helped him with “support for his Mississippi-based ministry that now includes a radio network, news division, and film studio.”
“‘She believed in me and she supported me,’ Wildmon said of Schlafly, ‘and, well, there just won’t be another.’”
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told the Christian Post that “the cultural landscape of America today would have long been devoid of true conservatism” if it hadn’t been for her leadership.
Others, however, were not so complementary.
Newsbusters published numerous tweets of leftists who gleefully marked her passing.
“[M]ainstream” media types, former Jimmy Kimmel Live writer Rick Rosner, MTV News’s Jamil Smith, Politico’s Glenn Thrush, New Republic editor Sarah Jones, and now-Univision-owned Deadspin flashed joy that they certainly wouldn’t be showing if Schlafly had been a decades-long leader of a group like, say, Planned Parenthood,” reported Newsbusters.
Dr. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, said, “The vitriol, the hate, and the profanity of these tweets is stunning. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church don’t have anything on these folks.”
Dr. Creech also pointed out that Schlafly was the purest kind of conservative. He noted that Schlafly had been in a two year legal trademark dispute with her own nephew because he was using the Schlafly name to sell craft beer.
“Tom Schlafly is the founder of Schlafly Beer in St. Louis, Missouri. She didn’t want anyone to associate the Schlafly name with alcohol. She felt the conservative movement and alcohol didn’t go together very well. I don’t know of anyone on the national stage today willing to take a stand like that,” said Dr. Creech.
Schlafly lost that legal battle in the courts last August.
“I think it’s also noteworthy that one of the last things on her mind, which she wrote about in a column posted August 30th, were her concerns about the transgender policies being pushed on the American people by the Obama Administration,” said Dr. Creech. “She rightly blamed these extremist ideas on the seeds planted through the years by radical feminists, women’s studies departments in colleges and universities, and those who have tried to remove the concept of ‘gender binary’ and the roles of men and women in the culture.”
Schalfly was preceded in death by her husband, Fred Schalfly. He passed in 1993. She is survived by her six children along with 16 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.