■ Houston

KEFELLER IN DRAG

manicured, wrapped in plastic and sold for distribution overseas.

The pricetag was $5 million, and the new owner is the U.S.State Department. What was supposed to be four historic days of sisterhood and feminist reform symbolized by the International Women's'

Year dove turned out to be more like Three Days of the Condor.

The conference received wide press coverage, but curiously, none of the stories mentioned that the Commission for the Observance of International Women's Year, which was running the Conference, is a subdivision of the State Department that the conference was not a women's conference at all, but had been mandated by a law passed in Congress which no one had lobbied for, that the leaders of NOW viewed the conference as a shrewd cooptation of the women's movement, that 47 members of the conference staff were working in either the State Department or the Agency for International Development, that the idea for a national women's conference paid for by the taxpayers originated at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a major CIA conduit, or that the resolutions which were supposedly coming from a series of State Women's Meetings were actually drafted word for word by Carter appointees at the State Department.

For months before the conference, Commission PR people, working with free phone and mail privileges provided by the State Department, fed the media a steady diet of vapid press releases likening the impending event to the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. The Commission also planted scare stories about expected busloads of Klan, Nazi and Pro-Life disrupters, predictions that bore little resemblance to the reality in Houston. The delegates had already been chosen at State Meetings and voting was restricted to credentialed delegates. The busloads of Mormons, fundamentalists and Birchers were a substantial comedown from Nazis and KKKers. There were two or three black eyes in altercations between white supremacists and leftist women, but on the whole, the bedsheets in Houston were mainly on the beds. The big danger was that some biblewaver might forcibly save your soul on your way into the Coliseum.

Most reporters at the conference were on automatic pilot, scrambling up and down the aisles look-, ing for ladylike bigots and unladylike libbers scratching each other's eyes out. They were not at all discouraged by the fact that Schlafly's people had more gripes about the tight control the government had on procedure than about commie pinko queers breaking up the family. Only about 20 percent of the delegates were opposed to ERA, abortion and homo. sexual rights, so there were no surprises in the votes, and certainly no feminist/anti-feminist

contest.

What the nation's reporters could have been tracking down were the answers to the real questions raised by the event: Why, for example, was a domestic policy conference being run by an agency ordinarily concerned with foreign policy? And, why would a Congress that would give not one cent for abortions blow $5 million on something no one asked for? And, why did the State Department and some Rockefeller foundations pay the way of 50 representatives of Third World governments to observe the Houston event and report back to their leaders on it?

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The 'Plan of Action" presented by the Commis sion for vote of the delegates included a proposal for a Women's Department at cabinet level some. thing like the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why did no media person ask where the hell such a crackpot idea came from or who was supposed to benefit from it? When ERA oponent Phyllis Schlafly bitched about the "Plan" being drafted by Carter appointees, conference Executive Director Kathryn Clarenbach countered that the resolutions had originated at the State Meetings. Why did no reporter ask where the State Meetings got their drafts of resoutions? Well, YIPster Times asked, and we found out that the Commission had written the continued on page 12

Pro Family Rally in

Jefferson, president of Right to Life. Jefferson is one of the few black people active in reactionary groups and appears on all occasions. Gray proposed a constitutional amendment "protecting life from the moment of fertilization with no compromises and no exceptions."

Texas State Rep. Clay Smothers, who is also black, asked, "What About Civil Rights?" Smothers, who introduced bills to rescind ratification of the ERA and prohibit homosexuality on state college campuses, remarked, "I have enough civil rights to choke a goat. I ask for victory over the perverts

of this country. . . . I want the right to segregate myself and my family from these misfits and perverts." (I was impressed by the fact that the really frothing anti-lesbian speakers were all men.) He was answered with an ovation. Smothers was the first speaker to express the anger these people feel at their "born again" president. He was outraged by "these presidents' wives" who campaigned for the ERA and admonished Carter not to "ever again take $5 million of my money and give it to Bella Abzug."

The sweetheart of the John Birch Society/Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly, came on next for a rousing rendition of "May the Circle Be Unbroken" by the Masters Brothers Quartet. Following the obligatory anecdotes about her husband and son, Schlafly

Houston

swung into her standard right wing complaint about the use of federal funds to support such things as IWY and induced abortions. She bitterly denounced the $5 million budgeted for IWY events and followed that up with remarks about the pitifully under-capitalized right-wing ("If we had had $5 million we would have buried ERA 5 years ago."')

I find this line repulsive for two reasons. One is that these people are perfectly happy to use my tax money to support the armaments and mass murder of war, to which I am morally opposed. The second is that the churches pay no taxes but get the full benefit of the streets, schools, police, and fire departments paid for by the rest of us. I think it's time we started looking at who our enemies are and demanding that the churches be taxed. Of 125 buses I counted in the parking lot, more than half were either chartered by or owned by church groups. How many women's groups can afford their own buses?

Schlafly also put out her usual lies and distotions about the ERA ("It will put the right to abortion Into the constitution" and "The only people who would benefit from ERA are the homosexuals'). An interesting sidelight on this is that practically none of the people at the rally know what the ERA says. Of fifteen questioned at random, exactly none had read it. They may not know anything about it, but they

know they're against it.

Following Schlafly and a short film featuring Anita Bryant, Rep. Robert Dornan appeared. Dornan is the oiled blond wonder who is the current darling of the Hollywood Right and is being groomed to replace Ronald Reagan. Dornan, who was once charged in a divorce complaint with beating his wife Sallie, is a strong family man. He was as obsessed with the Lesbian Menace as most conservatives seem to be.

I was frankly terrified by Dornan, Schlafly and Smothers, and by the mindless ecstasy they in spired. And I was physically afraid at the thought of what some of this crowd might have done had they known that there was a feminist reporter and former gay organizer in their midst. I was filled with grief at the sight of so many women who are totally submerged in a woman-hating culture. And I would] not have been surprised had the whole group surged over to the Convention Hall, shouting "Hep, Hep". and begun to tear the place apart. We often treat these people as a joke, but they have ceased to be funny to me.

Edited from article by Janis Kelly Off Our Backs. January 1978

What She Wants/Januar, 1978/page 9