Kitchen Table Politics

Kitchen Table Politics 24145 POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA Series Editors: Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, Stephen Pitti, Thomas J. Sugrue Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor, and on intellectual history and popular culture. 24145 24145 KITCHEN TABLE POLITICS Conservative Women and Family Values in New York Stacie Taranto UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA 24145 24145 Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4897- 5 24145 24145 For my family, and the ability for all people and families to live as they choose . 24145 24145 This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Note on Terms ix Introduction. Inventing a New Politics of Family Values 1 PART I. OUT OF THE SIXTIES Chapter 1. Becoming a Suburban Family 17 Chapter 2. Vatican II and the Seeds of Political Discontent 35 PART II. AWAKENINGS Chapter 3. Abortion and Female Political Mobilization 59 Chapter 4. Equal Rights and Profamily Politics 93 PART III. COALESCENCE Chapter 5. Ellen McCormack for President 129 Chapter 6. Toward the GOP 162 PART IV. REALIGNMENT Chapter 7. Making a More Conservative Republican Party 189 Epilogue. The Politics of Women, Gender, and Family After 1980 215 Archive and Interview List 229 Notes 233 Index 273 Acknowledgments 283 24145 24145 This page intentionally left blank NOTE ON TERMS Certain key terms and organizing principles appear throughout the book. The movements, groups, and participants they refer to were not as homogeneous as the blanket terminology used to describe them suggests. The term “New York” refers to New York State, not New York City, which is labeled as such. Derivations of “pro-fa mily” or “family values” were used for convenience. Un- less otherwise noted, references to “feminists” relate to (white) liberal, as op- posed to radical, feminism because liberal feminists from organizations such as the National Organization for Women were more immersed in the electoral political arena covered here. Liberal feminists offended the first-g eneration suburban homemakers at the center of this narrative, as women of a similar racial and class demographic who were supposed to be their friends and neighbors, not political adversaries. Perhaps no issue is more volatile than debates over whether abortion should be legal, which necessitated a careful parsing of words. Opponents of legal abortion are labeled as “anti-abortion.” This term does not imply that advocates of legal abortion were necessarily “pro-abortion.” Proponents ad- vocated abortion’s legality; few took the actual procedure lightly. The more politicized “pro-lif e” and “pro-c hoice” descriptors appear only in quotations from activists. Opponents of legal abortion chose the term “pro-life” to reflect their belief that unborn fetuses were akin to, and thus should be afforded the same legal rights as, those living outside the womb. Proponents of legal abortion, particularly feminists, saw legal abortion as a fundamental right—a de- cision that only a woman, whose body and life were directly affected by pregnancy, should make, as the “pro-choice” marker denotes. These terms reflect two very different outlooks on abortion, the origins of which unfold here. 24145 24145 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION Inventing a New Politics of Family Values The inspiration for this book grew from going door-to-do or in 2004 collecting donations for the Democratic National Committee on behalf of John Kerry’s presidential campaign. I was disappointed to be stationed in Rhode Island instead of an exciting swing state like Ohio, but being there made the most sense. I was about to begin graduate school in the area, where I intended to research American women during World War II. That plan shifted after can- vassing Rhode Island for Democratic cash. Wealthier suburban neighborhoods were our best bet. Anecdotally, it seemed that a Volvo or Subaru in the driveway guaranteed hundred-do llar checks from people eager to expound on President George W. Bush’s worst policy blunders. We also visited many lower-middle- and working-class neighborhoods— v oters who had been the backbone of the New Deal coalition, yet whose sup- port for the party was less assured in recent years. As naïve young staffers, we thought we could convince this demographic to open their wallets. These were neighborhoods likely to benefit, for example, from Kerry’s promise of national healthcare. We suspected that issues such as abortion might repel some of these voters. Still, this was the “blue state” of Rhode Island. These were mostly Catholic families, not the Evangelicals our friends were confront- ing elsewhere. We were wrong. Older women, especially ones with rosary beads and other visible Catholic insignia, were the most hostile. They said they would never vote for Kerry, a fellow Catholic, because he backed legal abortion. They liked his economic message and used to be Democrats, but what they called “family values issues” now took precedence. The women had heard much of the same from their Catholic leaders and had been a target of the Republican Party for decades. When, I wondered, did this concept of “family values” emerge, and why did it 24145 24145 2 Introduction become wedded to opposing legal abortion and championing the traditional nuclear family, instead of reforms such as national healthcare? And why vote for these issues when your economic position was not wholly secure? That experience revealed what I wanted to study in graduate school, a project that became this book. I would investigate the origins of family values politics, shining a spotlight on everyday lay Catholic women like those I had met. Their language seemed aligned with the much-di scussed (Protestant Evangelical) Religious Right working in large national religious and antifeminist organizations, yet they were understudied by the media and scholars alike. Women, Kitchen Tables, and Political Change in the Seventies My initial questions led to kitchen tables across suburban New York in the seventies. Archival research, interviews, and never-b efore-seen documents from basements and attics across the state revealed a small but incredibly ef- fective group of ordinary, mostly Catholic women who redirected American conservatism from the grassroots. Throughout the seventies, topics that never had been widely debated in public before—such as how to divide childcare between the sexes or whether to become a parent at all—moved to the fore- front of politics as modern feminist movements and related abortion reforms accelerated. As this occurred, some women felt that their families and homes were under siege. With no formal political experience, they gathered around kitchen tables and used the resources around them to fight back. This is the story of Catholic women such as Ellen McCormack and Jane Gilroy from Merrick, Long Island, who met when their parish priest started a dialogue group in the late sixties that mostly attracted housewives like them. They soon learned of efforts in the state legislature to legalize abortion. Echoing their Catholic leaders, many equated legal abortion with state-sanctioned murder and agonized over making it easier for women to evade their maternal re- sponsibilities. After legislators passed an abortion reform law in 1970, the women formed the New York State Right to Life Party and began running anti-abortion candidates for elective office. It is also the story of women like Phyllis Graham from a nearby suburb of New York City. Graham remembers sitting at her kitchen table depressed after abortion was legalized. Anti- a bortion activism through her Catholic parish evolved into opposing the 24145 24145 Inventing a New Politics of Family Values 3 state’s Equal Rights Amendment; by the late seventies, she was hosting a popular antifeminist local talk radio show.1 New York, which seems as unlikely a place to encounter political conservatism as Rhode Island, provides very useful terrain for studying the Catholic family values Right. New York City was a key intellectual and political center of liberal and radical feminism in the sixties and seventies. At that time, the Democratic Party had growing feminist representation within it. In the New York City area, U.S. representatives Bella Abzug (D-M anhattan) and Shirley Chisholm (D-B rooklyn) garnered a great deal of press as they guided feminist proposals through Congress. On the other side of the aisle, the state Republi- can Party was a Manhattan-b ased organization that Governor Nelson Rocke- feller dominated with his personal fortune, top-down leadership, and generally moderate politics. Rockefeller Republicans, as they were called, em- braced feminist initiatives such as the state’s abortion reform law, which they linked to the GOP’s affinity for individual rights and personal freedom. The strength of feminism in the state engendered a backlash among mostly first- g eneration suburban Catholic homemakers—w omen whose opposition to legal abortion expanded to include other feminist-backed policies.2 Prior to 1970, the women’s political views were largely unformed but Democratic-le aning.

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