JANUARY 1978
From Columnist Smith Hempstone:
When the National Women’s Conference ended in Houston, American taxpayers were S5 million poorer, and the women’s movement not much richer.
And returning home to piles of unwashed socks and sinks stacked high with dirty dishes, the 2,000 de legates to the conference had to face the fact that the drive for ratification of the proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution, the so-called Equal Rights Amendment that is the heart of the women’s movement, is collapsing faster than a bride’s soufflé.
From Columnist Patrick Buchanan:
One day soon Ms. Bella Abzug and other grizzled, battle-weary veterans of the National Women’s Conference will be arriving at the White House to present Jimmy Carter with their “National Plan of Action.”
If Mr. Carter is thinking of a second term, he will thank them for their work, promise to study the agenda, give the girls some milk and cookies, and send them on their way. Then he will call in Hamilton Jordan and tell him to file that 25- point “Womandate” on the same shelf where the Scranton Commission Report and the Kerner Com mission Report are gathering dust.
Why? Because the National Plan of Action, adopted in Houston, points Mr. Carter in precisely the opposite direction from where the national majority is headed. . . . What the Houston confab produced was a warmed-over hash of the radical liberalism that generally stunk up the ’60s.
Item: The Houston delegates voted almost 4-to-1 for the Equal Rights Amendment. Yet, when put to the vote in New York State, ERA was crushed by a margin of 400,000 votes.
Item: The Houston Convention endorsed abortion-on-demand. Not only does this contradict the President’s commitment and convictions, it runs against the trend of court and Congressional opinion.
Item: The Houston conclave approved the same sort of “gay rights” provision the Dade County rejected 2-to-l only weeks ago.
Here is how one Florida delegate, Virginia Harlan, described the “sickening . . . nauseous” scene at the Albert Thomas Coliseum when the “sexual preference” plank was adopted: “The demonstration after the vote was disgusting. Most of the pro-family delegation got up and walked out. Other delegations stood with their backs to the chair in protest. The lesbian element was unbelievable — they were hugging and kissing each other, running through the aisles with their fists raised in a sign of militancy.” . . .
The National Women’s Conference came about through the good offices, if you will, of Gerald R. Ford in 1975 who asked S5 million to underwrite this nonsense. Next time ignorance and inexperience will be no excuse. Any Congressperson who votes another dollop of tax dollars to further this kookery should be retired without regard to race, creed, color, sex, or national origin.
From Columnist Nick Timmesch:
The Federally–funded National Women‘s Conference was no place … for any poor soul who yearns for fairness or for democratic procedures. It was a classic case of a militant minority imposing its will on the majority — the American public, in instance — and making the public pay money for the experience.
The Houston delegates rubber-stamped an action plan for the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion-on-demand, lesbian rights, government-controlled child care centers. These highly debatable questions were endorsed under the rigged auspices of the Federal Government at a cost of more than $5 million to taxpayers. . . .
In July 1976, eight months before the first state conference on women was held, a national commission published the manual that yet-to be–elected delegates were to follow — or else. It was titled “To Form a More Perfect Union” and included arguments for virtually all the controversial issues ultimately rubber-stamped in Houston.
In early 1977, Carter appointed Bella Abzug to head the commission running the Houston show. That act was a green light for militants across the land to stampede the state conferences, using muscle tactics to reduce so–called traditional women to minimal or no–representation status on state delegations.
The militants in Florida cut off nominations of traditionalist women. In Michigan they used questionable floor maneuvers to do the same. In Kansas militant bosses of the conference shut the doors to a crowd of opponents, claiming erroneously that their presence would violate fire ordinances.
In North Carolina women voted for delegates on a Saturday afternoon only to be informed by militants late that night that the election would have to be held again because one name was missing from the ballot. By then many traditionalist women had left. In the election rerun, the militants won it all.
Militant feminists used political theater in Hawaii and California to show and frighten off“nice ladies. In Honolulu feminists staged a program in which women in leotards performed simulated lesbian sexual acts in a pay toilet. At the California conference dildoes, vibrators, mini–abortion kits, and books on the joys of masturbation were exhibited to attendees — all to show how women could become sexually independent of men.
From Columnist Jenkin Lloyd Jones:
… This rigged and stacked pow-wow, purporting to represent a cross-section of all American female opinion, is not only morally fraudulent but probably illegal, as well.
The case for illegality comes about because Congress last winter appropriated $5 million out of the public treasury to find the conference. The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 specifies that memberships in committees and meetings held by federally–funded assemblies “must be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented” and not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest.”
Indeed, on December 10, 1976, Bella Abzug swore on a stack of something or other that “this is not a bill which requires the conference to project a particular point of view.”
Rep. Shirley Chisholm promised that “any kind of lobbying activities would be negated,” and Rep. Patsy Mink stated piously, “In the committee, we were careful in accepting an amendment which restricted altogether any activities whatsoever that could in any manner, form or shape be called lobbying.”
So what happened? The International Women’s Year Commission was already on record with a 35-0 vote in favor of pushing the Equal Rights Amendment. Thus the machinery got underway to fix the state caucuses so that those delegates would be elected who would ensure a thunderous ERA vote in Houston.
The first move was to get ultra-leftist ex–Congresswoman Bella Abzug appointed to head the conference, which President Jimmy Carter duly did. How well Bella Abzug represents the views of the majority of American women have never been tested at the polls but last summer she ran fourth in the Democratic mayoralty primary in her native New York City.
Soon complaints of railroading, vote–packing, and undemocratic procedures began pouring in from the state conferences. These didn‘t bother Bella. She stated, curtly, that such problems are “inevitable for such an ambitious enterprise“ and that “all challenges have been denied.” …
From Columnist John Lofton:
During the time I‘ve been in Houston I have, not surprisingly, been in many arguments with many women about many subjects. But the one assertion I am absolutely unable to challenge is spelled out on a large sign stapled to the wall of the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) booth in the IWY exhibit hall. It reads: “We Are Everywhere!” Indeed, they are.
This conference is loaded with lesbians. It is wall-to-wall weirdos. If it is true, as the conference sponsors allege, that this Valley of the Dykes it is representative of the female population at large, then 150% of American women are homosexuals.
Like they say they are everywhere. How many? When I ask a woman (?) in the NGTF booth says, with a laugh, “thousands.” Perhaps as many as 500 lesbians are delegates, she (?) says.
Another booth in the IWY exhibit hall, operated by a group pushing the idea that homemakers should be salaried, hears a huge banner reading, “Lesbians for Wage for Housework.” I buy a booklet titled “Lesbians Organize: Wages Due Lesbians — for Housework Campaign.” Its cover has a Peanuts-style drawing showing Lucy and another female holding hands. The caption: “Who Needs Charlie Brown?” Another book being offered: “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community.”
When I ask a Ms. Marshall of Black Women for Wages for Housework just how much she thinks housewives should be paid, she says $20,000 a year. When I note that 40 million women are housewives, which means that her proposal would cost a mere $800 billion annually, and ask who will pay these salaries, she obviously bored with such details, replying:
“When you bog yourself down with petty points of an issue, you don’t move, okay? The thing is, when there’s an issue and you have clout behind it, they find a way to do it, okay?” Right on, I say, but who are “they? they?” Who will pay these salaries!? …
On my way over to the San Francisco Bisexual Center (SFBC) booth, I am handed a copy of the current issue of “Defending Wo men’s Rights Newsletter.” The back-page article is headlined: “Defend Lesbian Rights.” …
The night after the IWY convention approved a lesbian rights resolution, hundreds of lesbians and their sympathizers rally outside the convention hall. A downcast Houston Chronicle photographer shows me “a great” photo he took of two women kissing. But, he says, his paper didn’t run it. Oh, well, I console him, what can you expect from a publication run by white, uptight, probably straight men.
They are everywhere. When at one of the so-called “Briefings from the Top,” presidential aide Midge Costanza finishes her talk and asks for questions, the first one — a statement actually — from a woman ( ?) who identifies herself as a member of the Socialist worker party and a lesbian who “refuses to compromise my rights.” Costanza empathizes. She notes that in a Father’s Day interview with the AP, President Carter, saying “more than any President ever said before,” had declared that he knew people “who were taught by homosexuals and “they were never negatively affected by that.” Says Midge: “I get very emotional about this issue because I feel very strongly that you should have the right to love whomever you want. I do.” Applause. . . .
Later, she is asked if Mr. Carter will campaign actively for ERA. Yes, he will, says Midge, and she doesn’t mean just make phone calls, which she admits has not been successful. She tells how the phone calls strategy backfired because those state lawmakers who were called promptly held news conferences announcing that the President could not intimidate them. Costanza refers to these legislators as “nincompoops.” Laughter. . . .
In fairness to the other far-out crazies working this confab, it ought to be noted that lesbians and their supporters weren’t the only weirdos working the gathering. Also in the IWY exhibit hall was the extreme left-wing Pathfinder Press booth which was selling a wide variety of Communist and Socialist literature including the Guardian newspaper. Outside the convention hall free sample copies of the Communist Daily World were being given away.
Also being handed out free of charge were copies of a newspaper published by the ultra-left Prairie Fire Organizing Group of San Francisco. Last but not least, prowling the halls and holding press conferences here was Margo St. James, the head of what she calls “a loose organization,” COYOTE — Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. Pushing her favorite cause, the legalization of prostitution, St. James was passing out the program from her group’s 4th Annual Hookers Masquerade Ball, held last February in — where else? — San Francisco. . . .
I know of nothing I’ve ever agreed with Betty Friedan on. But when she says of this convention: “I have never seen anything like this,” I agree. And I hope I never do again. But, if I do, I at least hope I’m not helping pay for it. …
From “Accuracy in Media” Report
The International Women’ s Year Commission, the organization that staged the recent taxpayer-financed women’s convention in Houston, received a rude shock a few weeks ago. The Department of State notified it that it would not be permitted to continue to send out its mail under the State Department frank.
Kay Clarenbach, executive director of the IWYC, told AIM that this would result in an additional cost to the organization of about $1,000 to $2,000 per month. She said that the organization had already used up all but $200,000 of the $5 million appropriation it had obtained from Congress. The requirement that it now pay its own postage bills will mean that the IWYC will have to watch its outlays a little more carefully as it prepares to wind up its affairs by March 1978.
State Department‘s decision to quit paying the postage for the IWYC came about as a result of some persistent questioning by two editors, Les Kinsolving of the Washington Weekly and Reed Irving of the AIM Report, at the State Department daily press briefings.
This began when it was discovered that the IWYC had issued a press release that charged that “the radical right” was trying to subvert the law. It included in the “radical right” such diverse groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, the Mormon Church, the Right to Life movement, and unnamed “fundamentalist churches.”
The release was mailed under State Department frank. … Senators Jake Garn and Orrin Hatch of Utah and Senator Frank Church of Idaho expressed outrage over this release and demanded apologies from the Department of State. ...
The State Department continues to pay the salaries of three members of the IWYC staff, while the Office of Equal Opportunity pays the salary of the IWYC’s general counsel. Thus the cost of the IWYC is running over the $5 million that Congress appropriated. …
From Columnist Paul Scott:
Next to Rosalynn Carter, the President’s politically active wife, the most influential woman in America today by any standard is Phyllis Schlafly, the TV-radio commentator, author, and President of the fastest growing women‘s organization in the country.
As leader of the Stop ERA movement, the attractive housewife mother from Alton, Illinois, has built up a political following among, “traditional” women and family groups unmatched by any of the more highly publicized leaders of the Women’s Liberation movement. …
January 1978 Phyllis Schlafly Report PDF