DATE: Friday, March 21, 1997                TAG: 9703210659

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   73 lines

SCHLAFLY SAYS HER PHILOSOPHY IS HOW WOMEN CAN HAVE IT ALL

Longtime conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly addressed a central irony of her life story Thursday night.

She is a lawyer, author, lecturer and peripatetic political gadfly who stands in no man's shadow. Yet she champions the traditional feminine role of dutiful wife and mother against the assaults of women's rights activists.

A member of the audience at Old Dominion University wanted to know: How does she reconcile the two?

``I am what they call in modern parlance a sequential woman,'' she replied. ``That is the way women can have it all.''

For 25 years she stayed at home and raised her six children, she said. Only after that did she earn her law degree and embark on full-time activism.

``Unfortunately, the feminist movement told women they could have it all at the same time,'' she said. ``That didn't work out very well.''

She said many women who chose the workplace over raising a family in their 20s are now miserable and embittered in their 40s.

Schlafly addressed an audience of 650 as part of ODU's President's Lecture Series. Many in the crowd were clearly fans of hers, but there were detractors as well.

Members of the Tidewater chapter of the National Organization for Women picketed the building. One of the signs was a response to Schlafly's lecture topic, ``The Feminists Just Don't Get It.'' It read: ``What I don't get is the existence of misogynist women like Phyllis Schlafly.''

Midway through her lecture, two members of the audience unfurled a banner reading ``Schlafly is a female impersonator'' and carried it through the room.

Schlafly was nonplussed. She plowed ahead with her indictment of feminists, accusing them of ``working for a gender-neutral, androgynous society'' and pursuing a ``hidden agenda'' of taxpayer-funded abortion and same-sex marriage.

``The American woman is the most fortunate class of people on the face of the earth,'' she said. ``It is a lie that American women have been oppressed and mistreated.''

Feminists' views are ``incompatible with marriage and motherhood,'' she said. ``Their premise is, God goofed when he made us different, and they want to correct his mistake. They have an identity crisis.''

A sampling of the Schlafly philosophy. . .

On government-subsidized day care: ``Feminists think it's so unfair that society expects women to look after their babies.''

On affirmative action: ``Women are just as smart as men. They should go out and compete equally with men for jobs'' rather than rely on ``busybody bureaucrats coming around trying to run your business for you.''

On women in combat: ``How did we get to the point where the men of this country are letting nursing women go out and fight foreign wars?''

On the fight to get women into Virginia Military Institute: ``The feminists' game plan was to feminize VMI.''

On Hillary Rodham Clinton: ``She got where she is the old-fashioned way - by marriage.''

On women clergy: ``In the church I go to, we don't allow women clergy, and that's just fine with me.''

On women in government: ``If you look at the women who've been heads of state, most of them have started a war.''

On charges that she is mean-spirited toward feminists, gays and lesbians: ``I'm not mean-spirited toward anybody. I just don't like what they've done to the country. I think their ideology is a disease that young women ought to be inoculated against. And what about all the things they say about me? Betty Friedan once said I ought to be burned at the stake. How's that for mean-spirited?''

On her homosexual son: ``He has not faced any discrimination in jobs or housing. He's a fine, honorable young man.''

On her ideal candidate for president in 2000: ``I'm still hoping they can bring back Ronald Reagan. Maybe cloning gives us another chance.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Photo]

For 25 years Schlafly stayed at home, she said. Only then did she

earn her law degree and embark on full-time activism.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu