The Nation: Women March on Houston

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The 38-page National Plan contains 26 resolutions on ways to end sexual discrimination in employment, education, marital property relations and other areas. Proposed suggestions range from greater compensation and Government-supported counseling for rape victims to a federal timetable for adding female managers to the Government bureaucracy.

Five of the resolutions were dubbed "hot buttons"—controversial, high priority items. Among them: endorsement of ERA, a proposal for federally financed child care programs, a demand that Government funds be available for abortions (now known in feminist parlance as part of "reproductive freedom"). Another item calls for a legal end to discrimination based on "sexual and affectional preference"—in short, acceptance of lesbianism. The final "hot button" was that Jimmy Carter establish a Cabinet-level women's department that would strive to guarantee equal opportunities for women.

Every one of those ideas is anathema to feminism's conservative opponents. In Utah last summer 14,000 women, mostly conservative, with the avid encouragement of the Mormon church, packed a meeting that chose 14 conference delegates. In Mississippi, of 20 elected delegates, six were white men who opposed the ERA, abortion and any Government money for day care. The antifeminists drew strength from organizations as disparate as the John Birch Society and conservative Roman Catholic groups upset by the feminist stands on abortion. They also received extensive support from unaffiliated individuals—women and men alike—who fervently believe that the women's movement is antifamily, and worse. Said Homer Morgan, a Jackson, Miss., accountant and conference delegate: "We don't think the National Plan of Action projects good Christian moral ideals."

The conservatives failed to win the majority of delegates, but as the conference opening neared they put the method of delegate selection itself under attack. Illinois' Schlafly charged in Houston that there was "a studied campaign to exclude those who did not agree" with the feminist point of view. That drew a stinging rejoinder from Steinem: "The people here are infinitely more representative than the legislatures of New York or Utah or Florida."

Ironically, the last event in the Sam Houston Memorial Coliseum, on the night before the women's conference began, was a wrestling match. By then, the sniping from both sides had grown bitter. Conservative groups belonging to the Pro-Family Coalition had taken out a half-page ad in the Houston Post showing a young girl holding a nosegay. The headline: MOMMY, WHEN I GROW UP CAN I BE A LESBIAN? Arlie Scott, a N.O.W. vice president who is a lesbian, termed the ad "a new low." Some feminist zealots got off their own low blows, such as trying to make it appear that the conservatives were intimately allied with the Ku Klux Klan. Raged Schlafly: "An absolutely deliberate libelous smear."

In one sense, all the sound and fury in Houston merely served as embellishment for the real gains—and setbacks—of the women's movement in the U.S. in recent years. Neither feminists nor conservatives could dispute that American women have come a long way toward social and economic equality, and that they still have quite a way to go.