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80% of Americans Believe the U.S. Constitution Grants Women Equal Rights. They Are Wrong

Women are at risk until the ERA is ratified.

Carlyn Beccia
5 min readJan 17, 2025
Phyllis Schlafly, wearing a “Stop ERA” badge
Leffler, Warren K, photographer. Phyllis Schlafly, wearing a “Stop ERA” badge, demonstrating with other women against the Equal Rights Amendment in front of the White House, Washington, D.C. 1977 | Library of Congress | Public Domain

Most people today would get in big trouble if they threw a pie in a trad wife’s face, but that’s how disputes were solved in the 1970s.

The drama began at the Women’s National Republican Club Luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Pearl necklaces and lacquered hair glinted and gleamed under the grand hotel’s chandeliers as anti-feminist housewife Phyllis Schlafly took her seat.

Phyllis Schlafly had made a career out of telling women to stay in their place (the kitchen). This ladies' luncheon was supposed to be a victory lap for Schlafly’s campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Instead, it became an unscripted, slapstick moment that the Associated Press would gleefully circulate to every newsroom in America.

Enter Yippie Aron Kay, part left-wing activist, part dessert prankster. Armed with an apple pie from a Greenwich Village bakery, he waited for his cue. When his friend Nancy Borman distracted Schlafly with a feigned conversation about feminism, Kay took a pie from his briefcase and smushed it into Schlafly’s face with the precision of a Marx Brothers routine. “That’s for the ERA, you bitch!” he quipped before…

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Carlyn Beccia
Carlyn Beccia

Written by Carlyn Beccia

Award-winning author of 13 books. My latest: 10 AT 10: The Surprising Childhoods of 10 Remarkable People, MONSTROUS: The Lore, Gore, & Science. CarlynBeccia.com

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