In Memoriam: Phyllis Schlafly

I try not to say anything negative about the departed, so in this case I'm going to let Sarah, Proud and Tall say it for me:

She was a nasty, hypocritical old baggage – she believed in jobs and power for her, but not for other women, that there was no rape inside marriage, that Anthony Kennedy should have been impeached for abolishing the death penalty for minors, and that all Muslims should be banned from the armed forces and political office.

She endorsed Donald Trump, but that might just have been because she was bats at the end.

She was a prude whose hatred of sex and those who dared to have it – in particular those who she thought God had cursed with disease for having it – somehow made her the respectable face of a campaign to stigmatise people with HIV and AIDS (and not just the gays) which gave the Reagan administration cover to ignore the AIDS crisis, held back AIDS education and funding of AIDS research for years, and therefore directly or indirectly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the infection of twice that many again.

There are lots of disgusting people occupying places in America's public discourse, the Schlafly was one of the worst.

Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian, put it much more succinctly: