By Constitution Staff

"It was Oklahoma that started the pro-family movement," conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly told Oklahoma's Eagle Forum in November. And one of the foremost leaders in leading that movement in Oklahoma is Bunny Chambers, honored by Schlafly and others at the event.

Former state Representative Leonard Sullivan recalled his first meeting with Bunny. He was concerned it was some sort of a set-up, when a woman named "Bunny" wished to meet with him. Her effort was to get Sullivan involved in Republican Party politics.

Bunny Chambers' first involvement was in the movement to Stop E.R.A. (the notorious Equal Rights Amendment, which would have been a massive transfer of power from the states to the federal government).

Schlafly recalled it was January 1972, and the proposed ERA was quickly on its way to ratification in the state legislatures, often without opposition or discussion. She received a call from Ann Patterson on the issue. Patterson took Schlafly's newsletter to the Oklahoma Legislature and used it to get the proposal defeated. Oklahoma was the first state to defeat E.R.A.

Bunny's son said that his mom knew the E.R.A. was "slow poison socialism." By 1973, 30 states had ratified E.R.A.(with 38, or two-thirds needed for ratification) when she organized ladies to go to the Capitol and fight against its passage.

All of her children praised her long-term battle for liberty. According to their testimony, she paid her way all over the country doing volunteer work, "not looking for the limelight." Her husband of 56 years revealed that Bunny had once been an active Democrat, even working in Democratic Party headquarters, when she realized it was "not on the right track."

He recalled how their garage used to be filled with textbooks, because she was fighting to clean up the socialist propaganda found in them. She showed him one textbook that devoted four pages to Marilyn Monroe, leaving only one page for George Washington. "Our kids were often spies growing up at Putnam City North."

Another person who praised Bunny Chambers was former Republican National Committeeman Lynn Windel. She served as national committeewoman at the same time. Windel said Bunny is still "fighting the fight." He noted her opposition to the effort to gut the Electoral College without even bothering to amend the Constitution. She has also fought the effort for a national constitutional convention, which Windel called a "sorry idea."

One of Bunny's children (Wendy) explained how she obtained the nickname everyone knows her by. Her father, a traveling preacher, thought his baby daughter was "so cute," and looked like a "little Bunny."

Leonard Sullivan is now the assessor in Oklahoma County, but when he was in the Legislature, Bunny Chambers served as his legislative assistant. Sullivan freely admitted that she kept him straight on upcoming legislation during all of those years.

Phyllis Schlafly, the author of more than twenty books, served as the keynote speaker. Her launching pad as a nationally known political activist was her 1964 book, A Choice Not an Echo, in which she called for the conservative grass-roots to take the party away from its Eastern Liberal Establishment wing represented by Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, and Nelson Rockefeller. Her book is credited with helping to nominate Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Her latest book is No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom.

Schlafly may be getting older, but she still delivered a fiery speech, charging that President Obama "doesn't obey the law," citing his unilateral abolition of the work requirement to receive welfare, his implementation of the DREAM Act (which Congress had refused to pass), and many other executive orders. She said the nine attorneys general have listed twenty-one violations of law by Obama.

She does not see a third party as the solution. "We are a two-party nation," Schlafly explained. "Third party is a dead-end road." As evidence, she said that in 2012, third parties had cost the Republican Party six seats in the House, one Senate seat, and one governornorship.

A national constitutional convention, as proposed by leading conservatives like radio talk show star Mark Levin, is also not a solution to our problems, according to Schlafly. "I have been at every Republican National Convention since 1952, and we won't be any better with Democrats in the Hall," saying that she had seen "about every corrupt deal imaginable."

Referring to her latest book, Schlafly decried Obama's "war" on Christianity. She contended that Obama wishes to convert religious freedom to refer to freedom to worship inside a church building, and nowhere else. She condemned Obama's citing of the Declaration of Independence, in which he drops the Declaration's reference to "the Creator" as the source of our rights. [Editor's Note: Obama has repeatedly cited, "We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights," but drops the words, "by our Creator."] At Walter Reed Army Hospital, a family was told they could not bring a Bible into the hospital.

The schools have become an engine of propaganda for secularism and socialism. In Arkansas, students were assigned to rewrite the Bill of Rights, because the present listing of rights was "outdated," while in Arizona students were assigned to play a game of marrying a goat.

Schalfly identified the present push for Common Core as simply the latest version of the "bad ideas of the past twenty-five years." Among those bad ideas, she listed values clarification, Outcome-Based Education, national History standards, School to Work, Race to the Top, and No Child Left Behind. "Now it is Common Core that has stirred resistance."

Common Core will lead to "federal control of education," Schlafly warned. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has threatened to cut off federal aid if California did not use the tests connected to Common Core. Another problem is the tracking of personal students' information, which is a key component of Common Core.

Some mistakenly think the Common Core threat is limited to public schools, but Schlafly said the effort is to force private school and home school students to take these Common Core tests, too, or they will not be able to go to college.

"The E.R.A. fight was a lesson on how to take back government," Schlafly said. The fight against Common Core is a way to "get people into the fight. It can be a building mechanism for the whole conservative movement." In Oklahoma, House Speaker T. W. Shannon is on board in opposition to Common Core, but Governor Mary Fallin and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi are huge supporters of Common Core.

Schlafly was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies' Home Journal.