Posted on 10/16/2007 7:05:10 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Twelve audience members staged a silent walkout yesterday afternoon in the Agassiz Theatre to protest a conservative icon who has, in the past, downplayed the importance of domestic abuse.
The demonstration occurred at a speech by Phyllis Schlafly, the woman credited with defeating the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s.
Twenty minutes into the lecture on “The Culture War in the Courts,” as Schlafly criticized judges who upheld the right of public school to require programs emphasizing tolerance for homosexuals, the protesters stood up and silently left the room.
“It’s important to listen to viewpoints, but there’s a line,” said Catherine C. Pyle, a second year Harvard Divinity School student and first-time protester who organized the walkout.
“What pushed me over the edge was her stance on domestic violence,” Pyle added, referring to Schlafly’s comments during a speech at Bates College in March, in which she questioned the legitimacy of martial abuse.
According to Robert A. Casapulla, a sophomore and member of the College Republicans at the University of Connecticut who attended the lecture, Schlafly often provokes heated reactions.
Casapulla said that the audience of 70 was “respectful,” noting that “we’re used to a more hysterical response.” Attendees included University President Drew G. Faust and Schlafly’s grandson, Andrew Schlafly ’10.
The 82-year-old firebrand has been in the public spotlight since 1972, when she launched STOP ERA to defeat the amendment, which at the time had been ratified by 30 of the required 38 states. Schlafly argued that the law, which read “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” would undermine families, require the federal government to draft women, and take away women’s right to be supported by their husbands. The 1979 deadline for ratification passed, but the amendment did not.
Her campaign galvanized many conservative Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Jews.
“She demonstrated to New Right activists the power that would come from uniting religious conservatives, which had not happened before,” said University of South Carolina professor Majorie J. Spruill, who was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute last year and suggested that the Institute invite Schlafly to speak because of her impact on the American political landscape.
Schlafly’s speech yesterday also chastised American judges for overreaching their jurisdiction.
“The nation needs judges for the same reason baseball needs umpires, to call the balls and strikes. But the umpire has no right to change the rules of the game,” Schlafly said before condemning as unconstitutional rulings that allow schools to require psychological surveys, pornographers to publish lewd images, and the government to ban school prayer.
What is her stance on domestic violence?
Yet another example of skulls full of mush who haven’t a clue. Even the author of this article seems to have a hard time understanding Phyllis Schlafly.
“It’s important to listen to viewpoints, but there’s a line,” said Catherine C. Pyle, a second year Harvard Divinity School student and first-time protester who organized the walkout.
No one forced you to go you twit!
In a just world, Phyllis Schlafly would be an icon, a heroine: the woman who mostly working from her home and garage managed to stop the ERA when the President and both houses of Congress were for it.
12 Harvard students walk out on Phyllis Schafley. If 12 college rebublicans walked out on Al Gore . . . would it be reported at all?
Well the article says that she has “downplayed the importance of domestic abuse.” To a liberal that may mean that she didn’t shout out “power to the people” and “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” while discussing the issue.
So the room’s IQ average instantly rose 10 points.
What else?
The room's average rate of STD infection dropped precipitously.
Next?
The room’s population of Nader-loving, leftist enviro-terrorist supporting, Castro apologists dropped dramatically.
Courtesy of a left-wing insult generator. http://www.strauss.za.com/sla/leftie.html
Oh goodie! A new tool for my workbench!
I would love to see what it is that these dingbats construe to mean that Mrs. Schlafly endorses domestic violence. If I had to place a wager on the issue without seeing what she said, my money would go on her as having said something sane that the p.c. crowd finds “offensive.”
It’s cute, but I prefer to do that sort of thing the old-fashioned way.
It smelled better?
Note the gratuitous first sentence. Her “downplay” of domestic violence is to report that female on male domestic violence is about equivalent both in incidence and in severity. The women’s movement tried to portray it almost exclusively in terms of male against female and in the occasions they admitted female against male they portrayed it as reaction on the woman’s part against preexisting male-initiated violence. Remember, though, all the old cartoons about women with rolling pins and frying pans braining their husbands for a variety of reasons? It’s no longer politically correct to run such cartoons, but they serve as a snapshot of something everybody knew at one time but has now almost successfully been flushed down the memory hole by feminist ideology.
It’s cute, but I prefer to do that sort of thing the old-fashioned way.
________________________
Hence the tagline . . . : )
Phyllis is one of our country's modern conservative pioneers and is deserving of honor and respect as such.
The evil media spins everything negative and false that it can when it comes to conservative activists, past and present. Phyllis doesn't let it bother her, but it always bothers the hell out of me!
Leni
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