›› BEHiND THE SUN
From the Sun vaults, May 8-14, 1981
End of an ERA Housewife to defeated feminists: ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads...’ by Jason Walsh
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“You’ve come a long way, baby”—renowned Virginia Slims slogan of the 1970s But you’d gone a bit too years ago far for Phyllis Schlafly 30 years ago this week. As the Equal Rights Amendment suffered a slow and painful demise in the spring of 1981, staunch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly was toasting her prominent role in setting the women’s movement back by at least a decade. Literally. The proposed amendment that vowed, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” had been ratified by 28 states in 1972. But thanks to the one-time Midwest housewife/congressional hopeful’s decade-long crusade to defeat the amendment via her “Stop the ERA” movement, the constitutional guarantee of sexual equality under the law fell three states shy of ratification by its 1982 deadline. Thanks to Schlafly, women were finally free to resume their natural roles as Phyllis Schlafly, 1981. dutiful wives and mothers. “The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment is the greatest victory for women’s rights since the women’s suffrage amendment of 1920,” Schlafly said at the time. And she would know. Born in 1924, at the birth of the women’s movement, Schlafly rode the hard-earned victories of early 20th-century women’s-rights activists to enjoy a highly successful career of keeping other women from enjoying highly successful careers. Writer and feminist Sydney Weisman caught up with Schlafly for this May 8, 1981 Pacific Sun interview. Here are the highlights: The feminist movement never in its wildest dreams calculated you into the game plan. Where do you think they made their biggest mistake with you? Attacking me. Why? Early on in the fight, they decided the way to get ERA was to destroy me. And so they started out to attack me in every news conference and in every speech. Now that is not a winning strategy. Winning strategy would be to tell the people what good ERA will do for you. Of course, it won’t do anything good for people, so they didn’t have that to talk about, anyway.
You vote? Vote? Of course. If you had been born when your mother had been born and the right to vote had been an issue rather than ERA, where do you think you would have been on that issue? Well, I would have been for women voting. That’s a tangible right. But back then people thought women voting would destroy the family and break traditional family values. The same arguments that you used against ERA. Well it isn’t the same argument. Voting is a tangible right. And then you might have been a radical on the other side. Yes, but the defect of that argument is that I don’t accept the suffragettes as ancestors of the ERAers. They were the ERAers of their day. They were a radical, fringe political movement; they were not considered good Christian ladies. It would have been a whole different Phyllis Schlafly out there. Well that’s speculation. Whether I would have been out there in the streets in bloomers, or whatever they wore, I don’t know. Does it bother you that [by having a successful career away from home] you may have transcended your own political beliefs? You mean that my constituency would think I’m too much of a career woman than a homemaker? Yes. No. Does it limit you at all? No, as long as they know I have a happy marriage and the home front is in shape, they are perfectly happy with my lifestyle. I’ve kept the marriage together; I’ve produced six happy, successful, achieving, moral children. Now that part of my life is done, I’m devoting my energy to protecting other women’s rights to have the same lifestyle of being wife and mother. Does the political spectrum of the women you represent ever restrict your own goals? Well, do you mean something like the Reagan administration not appointing any women?
›› TRiViA CAFÉ
by Howard Rachelson
1. Where does Marin County rank in California in terms of per capita income? 2. What type of perfume is named after a city in Germany? 3. The process of pasteurization was conceived in 1864 as a way of preventing what two kinds of beverages from souring? 4. Pictured, left: Just days before the opening of the Winter Olympics in 4 February 2010, everything was in place, except snow. What city hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics? 5a. Who was the United States fighting in the War of 1812? 5b. It was on January 8, 1815, that the final major battle in this war was fought, in what city? 6. Pictured, below: On March 19, 2009, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to appear on late night television, as a guest of what host?
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7. Can you name the five U.S. states that border the Gulf of Mexico? 8. According to Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, for every action there is what? 9. Obama got Osama. Member of a billionaire family, later jihadist terrorist, Osama bin Laden is dead. Of what Islamic sect was he a member: Sunni or Shia? 10. In 399 B.C., 70-year-old Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth by teaching them to question tradition. By what method was he executed? BONUS QUESTION: This is one of the earliest inhabited U.S. capital cities; it was settled by Indians around 1200 A.D., and later by the Spanish around 1539. Located east of the Mississippi River, what city is it? Send your best trivia question (with your name and hometown) to howard1@triviacafe. com; if your question is used in the ‘Pacific Sun,’ we’ll give you credit!
Something like that. Should you have been appointed to this administration? Oh, I’m not insulted. But you can see they have hardly appointed any women. Should there be more women in the Reagan administration? I’m not for appointing women just because they’re women. But yes, I think there should be more women. Do you think you’ve lived a liberated life? It all depends on what you mean by liberation. You can define that in different ways. Now the way the feminists use it, it means one thing. But I have certainly been liberated in the sense that I have not been held back from achieving the goals that I set for myself. However, I don’t look upon myself as liberated from a strict moral code, or the traditional family values that I care about. Let’s say liberation means being able to make choices and take advantage of the choices you make.
Answers on page 29
Well, I’ve been able to do that. But I think whenever you make certain choices, you then put yourself within the strictures of that choice. For example, when you make the choice to get married, you are accepting certain social compromises that are necessary to live according to family values and standards. But after you made a marital choice, you then proceeded to make a choice to run for Congress—which is not your everyday homemaker’s choice. Well, that’s right and if [my husband] Fred had opposed my running for Congress, I wouldn’t have run. Because given the choice between having a race for Congress and having a happy marriage I would choose the happy marriage. Now feminists think that’s an interference with their liberation. Well, I think I’m a feminist, and I’d still make that choice. Because in the scale of my priorities, it’s better to have a loving husband. ✹ Liberate Jason at jwalsh@pacificsun.com
MAY 6 - MAY 12, 2011 PACIFIC SUN 9