Tireless force against feminists

Phyllis Schlafly, 92, the conservative activist, lawyer, and author who is credited with almost single-handedly stopping the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, and who helped move the Republican Party toward the right on family and religious issues, died Monday at her home in St. Louis.

Her daughter, Anne Cori, said Mrs. Schlafly had been ill with cancer for some time.

A champion of traditional, stay-at-home roles for women, Mrs. Schlafly opposed the ERA because she believed it would open the door to gay marriage, more abortion, the military draft for women, coed bathrooms, and the end of labor laws that barred women from dangerous workplaces.

The brief amendment ("Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex") was anti-family and anti-American, she said.

Equality, she added, would be a step down for most women, who were "extremely well-treated" by society and laws.

She was almost too late to stop its passage: By early 1972, when she first published her objections, the proposed constitutional amendment had just passed Congress, and 30 of the needed 38 state legislatures had ratified it.

Mrs. Schlafly, an experienced anti-communist Republican activist, quickly organized the opposition. The effort began operating under the name "Stop ERA" and later became a national organization called Eagle Forum, which Mrs. Schlafly dubbed an alternative to women's liberation.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Suddenly, a huge constituency of conservative, family-oriented churchgoers were energized to engage in politics.

Binding together fundamentalists, evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews, Mrs. Schlafly realized she could direct a movement of people who believed the family and traditional values were under attack.

A best-selling author, a radio commentator, and an excellent debater, she barnstormed the country.

By the time the deadline for passage of the ERA arrived in 1982, 15 states rejected it and five other states rescinded their ratifications. It fell three states short of passage.

Mrs. Schlafly was a lawyer who built her own media empire, writing or editing 20 books. She published a monthly newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report, wrote a syndicated newspaper column, produced radio commentaries, and anchored a radio talk show.

She also was a regular lecturer on the college circuit. Mrs. Schlafly was the subject of two biographies, Carol Felsenthal's The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority (1981) and Donald Critchlow's Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism (2006).

President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, and Ladies' Home Journal named her one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century.

She never shrank from battle, agreeing countless times to debate well-known feminists such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Eleanor Smeal.

Born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart on Aug. 15, 1924, in St. Louis, she was the daughter of a librarian who supported the family of four when her father could not find work during the Depression.

She attended two years of college at Maryville College of the Sacred Heart, but the school was not rigorous enough for her, she later said, so she paid her way through Washington University by working 48 hours a week in a World War II ordnance plant, firing machine guns to test the ammunition.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and then earned a master's degree in political science in 1945 from Radcliffe College, Harvard University's sister school for women.

She headed to Washington for a year to do research for several members of Congress for what is now the American Enterprise Institute, then went back to St. Louis to work on a congressman's reelection campaign and to be a research director at two local banks.

She won the Republican nomination for Congress from Alton, Ill., on her first try in 1952, presenting herself as a housewife, but lost in the general election to the incumbent.

After the death of her husband of 44 years, Fred, in 1993, she moved from their longtime home near Alton to Ladue, a St. Louis suburb.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include children John (who came out as gay in 1992), Bruce, Roger, Liza Forshaw, and Andrew, who started Conservapedia in 2006 as a reaction against perceived liberal bias in Wikipedia; 16 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.