John Morrissey gives a brief overview of the friendship between American conservative powerhouse, Phyllis Schlafly and Babette Francis, founder of Endeavour Forum.
Only months before Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, there occurred the death at the age of 92 of a hero of US Christian conservatives, Phyllis Schlafly, who gave him her blessing in his run for the presidency. This Harvard graduate and mother of six left behind her 50 years of activism on behalf of the nation itself, traditional family interests and values, and the pro-life movement in the US and abroad. Her first publication in 1964, A Choice Not an Echo, was a best seller, calling on the Republican Party to distinguish itself from the drift to the progressive Left in the Democratic Party’s reorientation away from traditional American values.
Some Australian viewers might have been aware of Phyllis Schlafly when her character was played by Cate Blanchett in the TV mini-series “Mrs America” on Fox Showcase in 2020. The series focused on her leading the opposition of Christian conservative women to defeat the 1970s feminist campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution. In no way related to the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, ERA professed to explicitly prohibit sex discrimination, but it was a charter for the radical feminist agenda.
Phyllis is shown opposed to a line-up of the famed feminists of the time, including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm. The images presented of twinset-and-pearls ladies with neat coiffures lobbying legislators with packages of homemade banana-bread while urging them to reject the amendment were remarkably true to life. In contrast and despite the very attractive portrayal of Steinem by Rose Byrne, the hippy appearance and wrangling among these radical feminists made them appear more like a “coven of witches”, as one writer to the Melbourne Age Green Guide likened them. Much of the credit must go to Cate Blanchett’s superb performance in a production which was rated in the top ten of TV series that year and won numerous nominations and awards.
As Phyllis was taking out a law degree and building her profile with numerous media interviews and debates – she conceded that women could “have it all”, but not at the same time – she made her mark on the Republican Party and its platform. Written in her final year, How the Republican Party Became Pro-Life (2016) tells the story of how she and her Eagle Forum followers, now drawn from many states, devised strategies to gain control of the party platform in the latter 1970s, in the wake of Roe Vs Wade. At the Republican Convention in Missouri in 1976 her motion to “protest the Supreme Court’s intrusion into the family structure” and “to seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children” was approved. She was also involved in Helm’s amendment to oppose accommodation and detente with the USSR, her original interest in politics having been in defence strategy.
It is difficult to pinpoint when contact was first made, but the first mention of Phyllis in the “Women Who Want to be Women” (forerunner of Endeavour Forum) newsletter was in September 1980 when Babette met the author of The Power of the Positive Woman in Chicago. By this time Babette was a regular attendee of UN and other conferences overseas, where she delivered many hard-hitting papers on her key topics of the interests of women and families. The November 1980 issue of the newsletter celebrated the successful election of Ronald Reagan as President of the US and noted that a “platform that is solidly pro-life and opposed to the feminist ERA can WIN”. Babette also paid tribute to the “energetic” Baptists of Georgia, who showed that abortion is not just a “Catholic issue”. When The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority, a biography of Phyllis by Carol Fesenthal, was boycotted by many US bookshops and libraries, the newsletter fumed at the “censors and book-burners” responsible.
At the invitation of Women Who Want to be Women (WWWW), in 1983 Phyllis toured the eastern states of Australia, speaking against a Sex Discrimination bill, warning of unintended consequences for women, just as she had warned concerning the ERA proposal in the US. She was described in the Catholic press as “a charmingly feminine lady …. very youthful looking, always perfectly disciplined, always perfectly groomed in appearance”. Speaking at Monash University, she never lost her cool when heckled after affirming that sex outside the marriage bond was sinful. She was guest speaker at WWWW’s first annual convention, where she delivered a paper with the title “Is the Family an Endangered Species?” on problems faced in the US which were also evident in Australia. In the February 1985 newsletter it was reported that Eagle Forum members rejoiced in the re-election of Ronald Reagan, “a vindication of the moral and patriotic values dear to the hearts of Americans”, which reflected the deepening ties. In1994, Phyllis’ sister-in-law, Eleanor Schlafly, visited Australia on a speaking tour organized by Babette. Moreover, at its annual celebrations Endeavour Forum has long awarded a Phyllis Schlafly Eagles certificate to a chosen “Homemaker of the Year”, invariably a lady active in the local pro-life movement.
Phyllis Schlafly went on to build a formidable organization with branches across the US, especially in the South and the Mid-West. As did Babette, she consistently argued that equality of the sexes does not mean reducing the innate differences between them to reproduction and social conditioning. She is credited with having much to do with the rise of the Moral Majority movement which shifted the shape of the US political landscape.
Today the Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum maintains a large membership who play an important role in the Republican Party. Its HQ is an impressive building in St Louis Missouri and the Schlafly family still play a part in its work. The successor to Phyllis was Ed Martin, who in 2017 also visited Australia for a speaking tour organized by Babette. He is now an important member of Donald Trump’s team, having already filled in as D.A. for Washington D.C. and at present is Pardons Attorney, responsible for freeing US citizens unjustly imprisoned by the Biden administration.
In 2018 I was invited to attend with Babette a grand Eagle Forum conference in St Louis. There 600 members thronged a Marriott hotel over a long weekend to be addressed by speakers who included members of the Trump administration, delegates from branches across the US, persons of special interest and guests like Babette and me. When she entered the dining room on the first evening she was welcomed as a VIP and invited to the top table. Before meals we said grace, recited a loyal pledge to the Constitution and sang the National Anthem. It was truly inspiring. Donald and Melania Trump were there in spirit, or rather as large cardboard cutouts on stage. It was a truly inspiring example of patriotism which shames us here in Australia.
by John Morrissey