From: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com (Rod Williams)
Subject: Phyllis Schlafly Still Doesn't Get It
Originator: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Francisco
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 17:04:43 GMT

In Monday's (9/28/92) San Francisco Examiner, there's a hint
that ol' Phyllis Schlafly hasn't yet read that new members'
information packet from P-FLAG...

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A week after her son revealed he is gay, conservative activist
Phyllis Schlafly used her appearance on a nationally-televised
talk show to imply that AIDS might be divine punishment for a
homosexual lifestyle.

Responding to questions Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press,"
Schlafly also criticized [California] Gov. [Pete] Wilson for
signing a bill outlawing job discrimination against gays and
lesbians in California.

She also took a swipe at the media for what she said was the
exaggerated strength of pro-choice delegates at the
Republican National Convention in Houston in August.

"The pro-aborts couldn't even get more than two states" to
oppose a platform opposing legal abortions even if pregnancy
results from rape or incest, Schlafly said.

The 68-year-old Schlafly, who achieved political fame in the
1970s by battling the Equal Rights Amendment, has again been
in the news since her son John, a lawyer, told The Examiner
that he is gay.  John Schlafly, who is 41, lives at home with
his parents in Alton, Ill.

Asked whether that revelation made her more sensitive to the
plight of homosexuals with AIDS, Schlafly said, "I think I've
always been sensitive.

"I love my son and I think this shows we don't hate anybody."

But she refused to disavow a line from the German writer
Goethe -- "Man forgives, God forgives, but Nature never
forgets" -- that she has quoted when asked whether she thought
AIDS was a form of divine punishment.

"What's the matter with that statement?" Schlafly said, and
when pressed on the issue told her questioner, "Didn't you
hear me say I wasn't going to read God's mind?"

Schlafly restated her opposition to same-sex marriages,
workplace protections and military service for homosexuals,
arguing that these amounted to special preferences for gays.

"I think homosexuals are entitled to all the same rights that
everyone else has," Schlafly said.  "But I don't think they're
entitles to preferential rights."

Schlafly said she was unfamiliar with "the details" of the
bill Wilson signed last week, outlawing job discrimination
against gays and lesbians.  But she criticized the legislation
anyway.

"You know that's not about discrimination, that's about giving
open season for lawyers," she said.

Schlafly also used her television forum to attack Hillary
Clinton for "the snide, sneering way she talks about full-time
homemakers."  She lashed out at the wife of the Democratic
presidential candidate for espousing "the typical feminist
view that marriage is a dependency situation for women, kind
of like slavery or the Indian reservation."

But the conservative activist saved her most blistering
denunciations for sex education in public schools, singling
out a program in New York to teach students safe ways to
practice homosexuality.

"That's what we've had in this country for 20 years," Schlafly
said, "a nonjudgmental description of all kinds of sex acts
with demonstrations of how to do it, and with an attempt to
break down the natural modesty of the girls."

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