Schlafly, Phyllis 1924-

PERSONAL: Born August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, MO; daughter of John Bruce (an engineer) and Odille (Dodge) Stewart; married John Fred Schlafly (a lawyer), October 20, 1949; children: John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew, Anne. Education: Attended Maryville College of the Sacred Heart for one year; Washington University, A.B., 1944, J.D., 1978; Radcliffe College, M.A., 1945.

ADDRESSES: Home—32 Briarcliff, St. Louis, MO 63124. Office—Eagle Forum, 7800 Bonhomme Ave., St. Louis, MO 63105-1906. E-mail—phyllis@eagleforum.org.

CAREER: Lawyer, 1979–. First National Bank and St. Louis Union Trust Company, St. Louis, librarian and researcher, 1946–49; homemaker, 1949–. Delegate to Republican national conventions, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004; candidate for Congress, 1952, 1970; Illinois Federation of Republican Women, president, 1960–64; National Federation of Republican Women, first vice president, 1964–67; Stop ERA, national chair, 1972–; member of the Illinois Commission on the Status of Women, 1975–85; Eagle Forum, founder and president, 1975–. Member, Administrative Conference of the United States, 1983–86, and Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, 1985–91. Commentator on "Matters of Opinion," WBBM Radio, Chicago, 1973–75, "Spectrum," CBS Radio Network, 1973–78, CNN Cable Television Network, 1980–83, and Phyllis Schlafly Live (syndicated radio show), 1989–.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Daughters of the American Revolution (national chair of American history committee, 1965–68; chair of bicentennial committee, 1967–70; chair of national defense committee, 1977–80, 1983–95), Junior League of St. Louis, Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha.

AWARDS, HONORS: Named woman of achievement in public affairs by St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1963; named Woman of the Year by Illinois Federation of Republican Women, 1969; awarded ten George Washington Honor Medals by Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge; Brotherhood Award, National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1975; LL.D., Niagara University, 1976; named one of the ten "most admired women in the world" by Good Housekeeping magazine, 1977–90; Illinois Mother of the Year, 1992; named one of the most important women of the Twentieth Century by the Ladies Home Journal.

WRITINGS:

A Choice Not an Echo, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1964.

(With Chester C. Ward) The Gravediggers, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1964.

(With Chester C. Ward) Strike from Space, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1965.

Safe—Not Sorry, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1967.

(With Chester C. Ward) The Betrayers, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1968.

Mindszenty the Man, Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation St. Louis, MO), 1972.

(With Chester C. Ward) Kissinger on the Couch, Arlington House (New York, NY), 1975.

(With Chester C. Ward) Ambush at Vladivostok, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1976.

The Power of the Positive Woman, Arlington House (New York, NY), 1977.

The Power of the Christian Woman, Standard Publishing (Cincinnati, OH), 1981.

(Editor) Equal Pay for UNequal Work, Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund (Washington, DC), 1984.

Child Abuse in the Classroom, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1984.

(Editor, with Jo Ellen Allen) Bibliography on Contemporary Issues, Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund (Washington, DC), 1984.

Pornography's Victims, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1987.

(Editor) Who Will Rock the Cradle?: The Battle for Control of Child Care in America, Word Publishing (Nashville, TN), 1989.

First Reader, Pere Marquette Press (Alton, IL), 1994, revised edition published as Turbo Reader, 2001.

Feminist Fantasies, foreword by Ann Coulter, Spence Publishing (Dallas, TX), 2003.

The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, Spence Publishing (Dallas, TX), 2004.

Also author of The Phyllis Schlafly Report (monthly national newsletter), 1967–; contributor of syndicated column to newspapers through Copley News Service, 1976–; editor of Education Reporter, 1986–.

SIDELIGHTS: Phyllis Schlafly, a homemaker turned political activist, is a leading spokeswoman for the conservative viewpoint on issues such as women's rights, national defense, education, the law, and politics. Schlafly's organizational techniques and outspoken personal leadership are often cited as primary reasons for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1982.

Schlafly's first book is A Choice Not an Echo. The paperback, published by a company that she and her husband created, championed Senator Barry M. Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination. Over three million copies of A Choice Not an Echo were sold; political analysts contend that the work helped Goldwater secure his party's nomination. Thereafter Schlafly teamed with a retired military man, Admiral Chester Ward, to coauthor five titles on the subjects of national defense policy and nuclear strategy. In works such as The Gravediggers, Strike from Space, The Betrayers, and Kissinger on the Couch, Schlafly and Ward find fault with a series of presidential advisors who, in their view, weakened United States defenses and paved the way for Soviet nuclear superiority. It was their contention that certain government officials were planning the disarmament of the United States.

Schlafly's first blast against the ERA was printed in the February, 1972, issue of The Phyllis Schlafly Report. Convinced that the ERA would undermine family life, take away the legal rights of wives, and thrust women into military combat, Schlafly turned her full attention to a crusade to defeat the amendment. She founded Stop ERA in 1972 and the Eagle Forum in 1975, both of which became sophisticated grass-roots lobby organizations with the goal of defeating ERA. Schlafly also testified against the amendment in thirty state legislatures. Although polls showed that a majority of Americans favored ERA, Schlafly and her corps of trained volunteers created enough arguments and opposition to it that fifteen states rejected it in repeated votes, and five other states rescinded their ratifications, causing ERA to die after a ten-year battle. Schlafly's pro-family movement pooled forces with all Protestant denominations, Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, and Mormon churches to reach state legislators individually. She made speeches against ERA repeatedly, often driving hostile audiences to hysteria with her calmly-expressed and unshakable convictions.

The Power of the Positive Woman outlines Schlafly's views on the status of American women. The positive woman, she writes, "rejoices in the creative capability within her body and the power potential of her mind and spirit. She understands that men and women are different, and that those very differences provide the key to her success as a person and fulfillment as a woman." The Women's Liberation Movement, she contends, is peopled by "a bunch of bitter women seeking a constitutional cure for their personal problems" and "Typhoid Marys carrying a germ called lost identity."

Schlafly's dedication to her antifeminist views has never faltered. She continues to speak to her followers on syndicated radio and through her writings and stands against the idea of reviving the Equal Rights Amendment three decades after it was defeated. She collected many of her articles in Feminist Fantasies, which put forth her opposition to the feminist goal of a federally-enforced gender-neutral society, such as assigning women to military combat. She continues to advocate for the role of full-time homemaker. She writes that the move toward a "gender-neutral society" is "based on the unnatural ideology that there is no difference between men and women."

Luisa M. Lara commented in the America's Intelligence Wire that the book "forces men and women to recognize the detrimental effects of the sexual revolution and of the feminist ideology that arose as a consequence." Lara wrote that Schlafly "takes the reader into a whirlwind of straightforward argumentation, refuting with statistics claims presented by radical feminists."

"Ironically," wrote Courtney Richard in the American Enterprise, "like the feminists she criticizes, Schlafly uses gender to determine the appropriate course of people's lives…. Her extremist views in some areas risk alienating truly independent women, who believe that they can succeed without the help of the state and without the help of a husband."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 1, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Contemporary Issues Criticism, Volume 1, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1982.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Crichtlow, Donald T., Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, Princeton University Press, (Princeton, NJ), 2006.

Felsenthal, Carol, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1981.

Gilder, George, Men and Marriage, Pelican (New York, NY), 1987.

Schlafly, Phyllis, Feminist Fantasies, foreword by Ann Coulter, Spence Publishing (Dallas, TX), 2003.

Schlafly, Phyllis, The Power of the Positive Woman, Arlington House (New York, NY), 1977.

PERIODICALS

American Enterprise, June, 2003, Courtney Richard, review of Feminist Fantasies, p. 57.

America's Intelligence Wire, December 24, 2003, Luisa M. Lara, review of Feminist Fantasies; July 30, 2004, Tony Snow, "Unresolved Problem" (interview with Schlafly).

Booklist, January 1, 2003, Ray Olson, review of Feminist Fantasies, pp. 817-818.

Journal of Church and State, spring, 2005, Jeremiah H. Russell, review of The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, p. 401.

Library Journal, February 15, 2003, Melody Ballard, review of Feminist Fantasies, p. 159.

Practical Homeschooling, July-August, 2004, Tricia Goyer, Mary Pride, review of Turbo Reader.

Publishers Weekly, January 13, 2003, review of Feminist Fantasies, p. 48.

ONLINE

Eagle Forum Web site, http://www.eagleforum.org/ (February 12, 2006).

Phyllis Schlafly Home Page, http://www.phyllisschlafly.com (February 12, 2006).