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Schlafly Versus The Feminists

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Phyllis Schlafly - Photo: The Imaginative Conservative
"By Michael Lewis, MA

​Over the past several weeks, the American chattering class has been rehashing the debate over the Women’s Movement since Hulu released its miniseries about the Equal Rights Amendment, “Mrs. America.”  The release of “Mrs. America” comes as Virginia became the 38th state to pass the ERA earlier this spring, though a Justice Department memo said the deadline to ratify the ERA has long since passed.

Perhaps the most misleading thing about “Mrs. America” is its portrayal of the feminist movement as a fight for equality when, as Mallory Millett attests, it was actually about the demonization of men, the destruction of the family, and anarchic sexual freedom.  Millett’s older sister Kate was the author of a 1970 feminist manifesto, Sexual Politics, which the New York Times calls “the Bible of Women’s Liberation.”  TIME magazine dubbed Millett “the Mao Tse-tung of Women’s Liberation” in their August 31, 1970 edition.  Many credit Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics with the proliferation of women’s studies departments at most universities, which are to this day nothing more than Marxist therapy sessions cloaked with the aura of academia and scholarship.

Mallory Millett wrote about her sister’s radical Marxism in a 2014 article entitled, “Marxist Feminism’s Ruined Lives.” To illustrate her sister’s radicalism, she recounts as an eye-witness a gathering at her sister’s house with noted feminists like Lila Karp, where the group chanted, almost as if professing a religious creed,

"Why are we here today?” Kate asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”                                                                                                   
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

If nothing else, “Mrs. America” is true to form.  In one episode, former Ford administration aide Jill Ruckleshaus remarks, “We don’t want the housewives thinking that we’re against them,” to which feminist lawyer Brenda Feigen-Fasteau snaps, “but we ARE against them!” 

In typical Hollywood fashion, “Mrs. America” is more left-wing fiction than history.  It portrays Phyllis Schlafly, an Illinois housewife who mobilized millions against the proposed ERA, as a cold, distant mother in addition to being a racist, homophobic, right-wing monster in a contentious marriage full of  jealousy.  In contradistinction, feminist icons like Brenda Feigen-Fasteau, Gloria Steinem, and others are portrayed as progressive heroines and doting mothers, even as Feigen-Fasteau admits a lesbian affair to her husband in episode 5 after making love to him.  How progressive and enlightened!

The media class has seized on “Mrs. America” as an opportunity to slander Schlafly and blame her for everything they view as wrong with America today, up to and including the election of Donald Trump.  In a Washington Post column, Max Boot slanders Schlafly as a fearmonger and a racist that played loose with the facts and was the forerunner of Trumpian politics.  In truth, Schlafly was an honest debater, and her foes were the ones who played fast and loose with the facts.  In real life, Schlafly was ever the happy warrior, concerned that the ERA would overturn ALL abortion restrictions, require women to register for the draft, and eviscerate protections for homemakers in divorce proceedings.  A devout Catholic and doting mother, Phyllis Schlafly’s advocacy was motivated by love for her six children and for her nation.

In the almost 50 years since Phyllis Schlafly mobilized the silent majority against Kate Millett and her feminist soldiers, little has changed.  During the contentious confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, I happened to stumble upon a feminist rally against Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill where the speakers inveighed against “white women who hide behind and vote to protect their husband’s white male privilege and allow men like Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh to access the reins of power.”   That my homemaker wife and I were white supremacists came as news to me.  Yet, as Stephen Baskerville notes in his book, The New Politics of Sex, Kate Millett and her soldiers have succeeded wildly in spreading government control into every aspect of life through sexual Marxism, putting their stamp on the sex education of America’s schoolchildren through the normalization of sexual practices most American adults would find perverse, let alone suitable for children. 

Yet, among the carnage are signs of hope.  Over the past four years, radical feminists have raged against their perceived “traitors,” berating suburban women for Trump’s election, pro-life laws, and the decline in the number of women who describe themselves as feminists.  Moreover, research shows increasing numbers of millennial women choose to stay at home to mother their children, millennials are embracing traditional views on relationships, and the happiest marriages are those between a man and a woman committed for life.

Perhaps, as former Cosmopolitan writer Sue Ellen Browder confessed, the radical feminist vision is a fictional illusion and a fabricated lie.  A feminized version of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy lifestyle, epitomized by the “Cosmo girl”, is as unrealistic as the male counterpart.  No one finds happiness in a “who needs men?” mindset of sleeping with your married boss, having multiple abortions, and getting the next promotion, as Browder admitted was the very ideal Cosmopolitan promulgated to proselytize a nation when she was a writer for the magazine. Despite Hollywood’s best efforts, there’s no greater truth than lived experience, which is why 50 years after Phyllis Schlafly awakened a movement, many women agree—through experience—that Mrs. America was also “Mrs. Right.“

​Phyllis Schlafly’s Daughter Tells Story Hulu’s ‘Mrs. America’ Chose to Ignore
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Phyllis Schlafly - Photo: VOX.com
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Phyllis Schlafly - Photo: theatlantic.com
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Phyllis Schlafly Quote: Pinterest
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Phyllis Schlafly - Photo: The Toronto Star

​Michael Lewis has a Master's in Political Theory and lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.  He is a member of the Hosea Initiative Advisory Board.
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The So-Called Equality Act

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Hon. Bob Marshall - Photo: Picsofcelebrities.com
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Hon. Bob Marshall - Photo: The Christian Post
The following article by Honorable Robert Marshall was originally published in total by the Lepanto Institute on September 18, 2019 under the title: If Christians Don’t Personally Engage in Politics, It’s All Over for America. The following excerpt is reprinted with permission of the Lepanto Institute and the author.  To date, the article has received  greater than 1.45 million views on Facebook. 


The So-Called Equality Act

On October 30, 2008, Barack Obama said, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." The legal policy changes wrought under the Obama Administration paved the way for the so-called Equality Act, HR 5, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 17, 2019 by a vote of 236 to 173. The Equality Act would fundamentally and radically alter Civil Rights Law to prohibit "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity," in the same way racial discrimination is prohibited. 

Analysis by pro-life and pro-family organizations, as well as the U.S. Catholic Bishops, have warned that the Equality Act would:

  • Require faith-based hospitals, doctors and nurses to participate in and/or to perform or assist with abortions or lose their medical licenses;
  • Require tax funding of all abortions without restrictions;
  • Mandate that any entity that provides health care for pregnancy and childbirth be required to provide abortion as a "related medical condition";
  • Force women to share private, intimate spaces with men who "identify" as female including in bathrooms, lockers, schools, hospitals, prisons, gyms, military barracks and homeless shelters;
  • Disallow private school single sex sports teams from competing against public school sports teams, which will no longer be permitted to have "discriminatory" single sex teams;
  • Decertify Catholic and Christian schools from satisfying state compulsory attendance laws if they refuse to adopt LGBTQ policies, treating religious schools as "hate groups" comparable to the Ku Klux Klan;
  • Forbid groups like the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Charities and Christian non-profits from receiving community block grants from local governments for housing for the disabled or seniors unless they accommodate the LGBTQ agenda including hiring those who identify as homosexual or transgender;
  • Prohibit private schools and churches from obtaining construction loans from federally chartered banks or savings institutions unless the schools and churches implement the LGBTQ agenda including hiring active homosexual and transgender teachers in same sex "marriages";
  • Remove children from the legal custody of their parents if they try to prevent their minor children from taking cancer-causing, puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones recommended by school counselors or provided by social welfare agencies;
  • End women-only or men-only shelters serving drug addicts, the battered, and the homeless;
  • Decertify foster care and adoption agencies which do not place children with homosexual partners;
  • Require small businesses owned to promote and affirm LGBTQ sexual behavior or face fines and/or loss of their business licenses;
  • Remove the tax-exempt status of churches and agencies if they fail to "celebrate" same-sex "weddings." The Equality Act would classify churches as "public accommodations" (like hotels and restaurants), prohibited from denying services on account of sexual orientation, in the same manner services cannot now be denied on account of race.

Several Republican members of the Judiciary Committee tried to blunt the coercive effects of HR 5, by proposing amendments that would have prevented biological females from being forced to compete against biological males in any sporting event; protected health care providers from being forced to affirm the self-professed gender identity of an individual; protected parental rights to direct the medical care of their children against efforts to facilitate changing the sexual identity of their children; and restored the Religious Freedom Restoration Act's conscience and religious liberty protections. All of these amendments were defeated on straight party line votes, proving that proponents of the Equality Act intend to require every policy the amendments sought to prohibit.

The "Equality Act" is one egregious example of sexual progressives stepping up efforts to exclude from the public square those who live by the moral teachings of Moses and Jesus. Anyone who disagrees or questions the LGBTQ agenda, abortion and "reproductive rights" is described as guilty of depravity, bigotry and hatred, despite our following a faith based on loving God and loving our neighbor.
​
LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer) advocates preach "tolerance" but one prominent homosexual advocate, Frank Bruni, wrote in the April 3, 2015, NY Times: "... debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices ... Mitchell Gold, a prominent ... gay philanthropist ... told me that church leaders must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list.' ..."

Multi-millionaire leftist donor Tim Gill, who developed Quark Express, a desktop publishing program, announced his jarring diktat, "We're going to punish the wicked," in the June 2017 Rolling Stone magazine. Gill considers anyone, including Christians, who disagrees with LGBTQ policies "the wicked." Mary Bonauto, the attorney, "married" to a woman, who argued the Obergefell same-sex "marriage" case, said, "We would not be where we are without Tim Gill and the Gill Foundation."

…..The window of opportunity for implementing successful civic action will not remain open forever, especially if Leftists have their way and succeed in pushing atheistic socialism and curbs on religious liberty. If we truly love our neighbors, and care enough to protect our families and communities from the ever-encroaching and growing persecution of Christians and others who embrace natural law values, then we must become the salt, the light and the leaven of society. If we fail to act in the public square, more immoral policies will spread and harm those we love. Pray, and like the Good Samaritan, also act. The story of Cain and Abel makes clear that we are our "brother's keeper."

The book of Hosea reminds us that, "My people are destroyed for lack of Knowledge." We must have knowledge of the Word of God, as well as knowledge of the civil world. St. Paul appealed to Caesar on the grounds that he, as a Roman citizen, should not be turned over to the Sanhedrin to be silenced, and Moses grew up in Pharaoh's household learning the ropes of government so God could rely on him to help the Jewish people.

Likewise, we need to become more knowledgeable about civic affairs and understand that each one of us has an important role to play during this particular time in history. Let us be motivated and remain hopeful, courageous, and persistent in the age-old fight between good and evil playing out today.

Full article available HERE.

Robert Marshall served 26 years as a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 13th District.  He authored two books:  Blessed are the Barren [Ignatius Press, 1991] and Reclaiming the Republic: How Grassroots Christians (and other Conservatives) Can Win Back America [Tan Books, 2018].
He and his wife reside in Manassas, Va.  
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Moms are Front-line Heroes, too!

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​By Clare Ruff

It was fall of 1973.  I still remember doing homework one late afternoon at our kitchen table in northern Virginia.  Abortion updates filled the news reels much like coronavirus does today.  It prompted me to repeat some feministic slogan like “Women have a right to Choose” which I had picked up at public middle school.  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’ll never forget mom’s response.  She wasn’t angry at me, but her passion was unlike anything I had seen before.

“STOP!” she said emphatically, as if I were reaching for a fiery stove. “You don’t know what you are saying!” she continued. “I carried you--inside my body!  I loved you for nine months before you were born, not just after you were born.  Life is a gift!  It is always sacred!”  

It was probably one of the best life lessons a mother could give a daughter.

My mom was born into a working class family, earned her high school education, and studied Voice Performance at the Peabody Preparatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland.  She relinquished a future in opera to marry her childhood sweetheart at the age of 19.   Her only sibling arrived almost a decade after her, so Mom always dreamed of having a large family with children close together in age.  Six years and seven months later there were five of us depending on her heroic love.  Mom lacked the modern conveniences of disposable diapers and powdered formula, and, until she was 27-years old, a driver’s license.  But, children placed first in her priorities; family ranked highest in her heart.  “I have 60 people in my family,” she proudly shares today.  Creating a circle of love defines my mom; it always has.

We lived just outside Washington, DC, the epicenter of the historic legal earthquake resulting from the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.  It wasn’t long before Roe’s ticking time-bomb hit close to home.  One summer afternoon in 1974, a 16-year-old neighbor friend of my eldest sister came running into our house.  The screen door slammed behind her and in a rather shrill, hysterical voice she cried, “I killed my baby.  I really do love babies.”  Instantaneously, my aunt set about gently ushering all of the children out of the kitchen, and I stood outside the closed door wondering the meaning of my mom and aunt’s inaudible words and hushed tones interrupted by soulful sobs.  Years later, I assembled the mosaic pieces of this memory and realized abortion had touched my life at an early age.

Mom volunteered for the prolife effort after our move to coastal Texas.  For almost a decade, she worked alongside the Director of Respect Life for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and counseled women with crisis pregnancies.  In addition, she and my dad sheltered expectant mothers who lacked support, resources or safe housing.  She was also the grandmotherly voice that stood before middle and high school religion classes delivering information on human sexuality rooted in Christian anthropology and respect for self, others, and God’s sacred gift of life.  She welcomed any question, understood a child’s natural curiosity, and provided calm, unvarnished answers.  She possessed a matter-of-factness combined with homespun wisdom rooted in God’s Truth and a passion for the mystery of life. 

In 2004, Mom combined her passion for life with another interest in children’s literature, and authored a prolife novel, Who Would Know? [target audience early to late teens] about a 16-year-old who navigates the challenges of unwed pregnancy.  In the closing chapter, the young heroine writes a heartfelt letter to her unborn baby expressing that adoption is the gift of her deepest maternal love.  My mother keeps a scrapbook of letters she has received from fans who read her book, including a touching one from the inmates at the women’s correctional facility in Harris County, TX, where it’s reported the book never stays on the shelf. [If interested, the book is available on Amazon or post a message at the end of this article].

Sometimes, we have to grow-up to fully process past experiences.  This Mother’s Day, as you reconnect with the amazing woman who carried you until you entered the world, relive her stories, record her memories, give thanks for what is good, let go of what is not.  And if my personal experience captured in this blog is any indicator, talk to your children and grandchildren about the consequences of abortion.  Advertisements routinely warn parents of the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, but are silent when it comes to warning them about abusing God’s law of life.  If you find it hard to initiate the subject, imagine your son or daughter reaching for a fiery stove.  Spare them the pain and suffering which often tortures post-abortive men and women until they find healing.

My mom wrapped up our recent visit with this statement, “I value children – and pregnancy!  No one comes fully grow.  Everyone starts in microscopic form, but there is as much a human life then as when it is born.  It changes, but it is always a HUMAN LIFE!”  

Thanks, Mom, for giving me life, but also for the wise and beautiful life lessons.  I’m sharing them with the digital world! 
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Mom with two of her 24 grandchildren.

​​Clare Ruff earned her BA in Theology from University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX
and serves as Director of Events and Outreach for the Hosea Initiative.
She writes from her home in southeastern Minnesota.
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Pandemic Exposes Culture of Death-Again

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Texas Governor, Gregg Abbott
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By Michael Lewis, MA


After more than a month of coronavirus shutdowns that have killed thousands, driven unemployment to levels not seen in generations, and sent oil futures into negative territory, the debate over America’s economic recovery has begun.  

However, the crisis has devolved into yet another war between the culture of life and the culture of death.  While most states have been enforcing social distancing measures, some Democratic governors have used the crisis to issue draconian edicts.  To wit, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has halted low-contact construction and landscaping businesses, prohibited the sale of garden seeds, all while declaring elective abortion “life-sustaining.”

Not to be outdone, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, warned of criminal penalties for holding church services, while going out of his way to notify the public that they can still get an elective abortion.  Northam’s executive order suspending all elective surgeries on March 25 specifically exempted “the full suite of family planning services.”  According to Northam, your knee replacement can wait; your abortion, vasectomy, or IUD implant cannot.  Talk about priorities.  In a pandemic, forget the First Amendment; only unenumerated rights hidden in the “emanations and penumbras” of the 14th amendment are protected.

As if exempting abortion from lockdown orders wasn’t enough, Governor Northam signed into law the most horrific, pro-abortion law in a generation on Good Friday, and proclaimed, “the Virginia Reproductive Health Protection Act will make women and families safer, and I am proud to sign it into law.”  On a day on which the Christian world commemorates the death of Christ, Northam was “proud” to repeal 20 years of common sense pro-life protection laws including: informed consent and ultrasound requirements; parental consent for minors; provision of information about fetal development and abortion alternatives (such as adoption); and health and safety regulations for abortion clinics, including regulations requiring abortion clinics to meet the same building codes as hospitals. 

While Northam and his fellow travelers are using a pandemic to expand the slaughter of innocents, other states  have halted abortions along with other elective procedures. Like clockwork, Planned Parenthood teamed up with the ACLU to file suit against Arkansas, Ohio and Texas after governors Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Gregg Abbott (R-TX) deemed elective abortions well, elective, and subjected them to the same cessation order as other medical procedures.  After a series of reversals by federal courts, the Texas ban on medication abortions was allowed to stand, and it is expected that the Supreme Court will take up the question, after refusing a request to do so a few weeks ago.

If the use of the pandemic to expand abortion wasn’t enough, private charities responding to the crisis have faced criticism from LGBTQ activists.  Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian charity that partnered with Mount Sinai hospital in New York to operate a field hospital in Central Park, faced protests and charges of “anti-gay bigotry” while treating COVID-19 patients, simply because Samaritan’s Purse holds a biblical definition of marriage.  It is worth noting that Mount Sinai affirmed that Samaritan’s Purse is abiding by the hospital’s non-discrimination policy.

Ironically, while the LGBTQ lobby was protesting Samaritan’s Purse for non-existent discrimination at their New York City field hospital, Disability Rights Pennsylvania was filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights after Pennsylvania’s Department of Health released eugenic guidelines that deprioritized individuals with disabilities for ventilators and other scarce medical resources during COVID-19. OCR recently announced that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health revised the guidelines to comply with federal disability law.  

Look around at what is outright celebrated in modern society. God and religion are mocked as all manner of idolatry and perversion is celebrated.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) lit up the Empire State building and the Tappan Zee Bridge last year in celebration of a new law repealing all restrictions on abortion, and recently declared that the number of COVID-19 cases in New York had declined, adding, “God did not do that.  Faith did not do that.”  As tens of thousands die from COVID-19, the culture of death ensures even more death by dismissing the power and sovereignty of God.

  The Bible is full of instances in which God purposefully corrects His children for their waywardness, idolatry, and blatant disobedience.  In Africa, locust swarms have been documented in recent days, and every nation is facing a disease of apocryphal proportion.   Our time, our society is not immune from the wrath of God.  God is merciful yes, but God is also Just, and He will not be mocked.  Use this time of pestilence to prepare your soul, to repent, to turn back to our loving Father.  “Watch, therefore, for you know not the hour nor the day when the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 25:13).  
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Michael Lewis has a master's in political theory and lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.  He is a member of the Hosea Initiative Advisory Board
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