Phyllis Schlafly, on deaths doorstep, supporting Trump.
Phyllis Schlafly, on death's doorstep, supporting Trump. Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com

• She called public sex education classes ''in-home sales parties for abortion.''

• She said, "Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature."

• Hated the gays.

• Hated "libs."

• Hated gender-nonconformity.

• Was the major force blocking the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have "expanded women’s rights" in the 1970s "by barring any gender-based distinctions in federal and state laws." The amendent "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 percent." But it had to be ratified by the states, too, and "the amendment lost steam in the late 1970s under pressure from Mrs. Schlafly’s volunteer brigades — mainly women, most of them churchgoing Christians."

• Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, told Schlafly, "I’d like to burn you at the stake” during a debate in Bloomington, Illinois, adding, “I consider you a traitor to your sex. I consider you an Aunt Tom.”

• Schlafly said: "There are two very different types of women lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment. One group is the women's liberationists. Their motive is totally radical. They hate men, marriage and children. They look upon husbands as the exploiters, children as an evil to be avoided (by abortion if necessary), and the family as an institution that keeps women in second class citizenship or even slavery."

• And the second kind of woman lobbying? Women seeking equal pay for equal work. Schlafly argued, in the '70s, that other laws already addressed that. Already done. We're all set. Gonna throw that one to you, Hillary:

• Said, less than a decade ago, "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape."

• Was a fear-monger about communism, and while running for Congress in the 1950s (as The New Yorker recalled in a 2005 piece), she accused the Truman Administration of treason. "The Administration, she declared, handed over atom-bomb ingredients to the 'Reds' ... and practiced mind-control techniques copied from the Chinese. 'Many government bureaus have developed extensive programs of brainwashing to push through socialized medicine and universal military training,' she announced."

• Was a fear-monger about immigration: "How can we protect homeland security unless the government stops the invasion of illegal aliens?"

• Said, "sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for the virtuous woman except in the rarest of cases."

• Was against AIDS prevention and teaching evolution in schools.

• Loved Donald Trump. "He is a real conservative, and I ask you to support him," she said, before dissing Obama:

• So how did Trump take the news that Schlafly had croaked? In typical fashion—making it about himself:


• Other reactions: