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ERA opponent wins passing' debates

By Judy Klemesrud

• New York Times Service

ST. LOUIS

Phyllis Schlafly the 50-year-old conservative Republican who heads the nationwide crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment, was rushing to a class at Washington University Law School here the other day when she found her path blocked by a semi-angry young woman student.

It was Phyllis Schlafly, the country's leading anti-feminist, versus Sue Gross, an 18-year-old feminist and art student from New York City.

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"If you want to make your own deal with your boyfriend, fine. But why take away the right to be supported of a wife who went into marriage 30 or 40 years ago?”

The student, speechless, broke into a slow smile. Like so many of Mrs. Schlafly's debating partners, she was unprepared and could not come up with any quick answers.

Mrs. Schlafly is head of Stop ERA, the nationwide opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, which she says she runs out of the kitchen of her six-bedroom English Tudor home overlooking the Mississippi River in nearby Alton, Ill.

"Miss Schlafly," the student said, "would you please explain to me why you're against the Equaling Rights Amendment? I just can't understand your opposition."

Mrs. Schlafly, an immaculately groomed woman with streaked blonde upswept curls who stands 5**** feet 7 and weighs 135 pounds ("The same as I weighed before my six children were born") smiled, sighed and patiently began to recite the answers she has given thousands of times in the last few years.

"It won't do anything to help women," she said, in her calm but forceful -some call it intimidating manner, "and it will take away from women the rights they already have, such as the right of a wife to be supported by her hus band, the right of a woman to be exempted from military combat and your right, if you wanted it, to go to a single-sex college."

The student was not convinced "But what if a man wanted to be supported by a woman?" she wondered.

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"Fine. There are plenty of women who supported their hus bands, putting them through school," Mrs. Schlafly said. "Who's stopping them? But why have

law that takes away rights of women who want to stay in the home?

In between her numerous speakforays all over the country, she is a first-year law student at Washington University, where she says she ranks in the top fourth of her class.

"I went to law school at the age of 50 because I thought it might give me some useful information,”

she said after class.

"I've debated all the lawyers they've had on the other side, and I felt I got the better of all of them. As a matter of fact, that's what encouraged me to go to law school."

When she isn't studying contracts and torts and other law school subjects these days, Mrs. Schlafly is gearing up for what she thinks will be a big effort by its proponents to get the ERA ratified in 1976, the Bicentennial year.

"The momentum is all against the ERA, and the big defeats against state ERA's in New York and New Jersey were a tremendous help. It lays to rest all those phony polls that purport to show people are for the ERA. The real poll is the ballot box."

At present, 34 state legislaturés have passed the Equal Rights Amendment, with 38 needed for ratification. However, two of the 34 states Nebraska and Tennes-

New York Times

Phyllis Schlafly, a leading opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is attending law school.

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have rescinded their previous ratifications, actions whose effects are to be determined in the courts.

"There's no debate, really, because the proponents won't debate the issues. They use pressure, browbeating tactics and bullying, because they're not able to show anything that the ERA will do.

"It won't give women any rights in employment, education or in credit because those rights are already there, in the Equal Opportunity Act of 1972, the education amendments of 1972 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974."

She added that she thought passage of the ERA would result in legalization of homosexual marriages, coed bathrooms and "coed everything whether you like it or not."

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