February 14, 2011 9:52AM # Conservatives and Civil Rights By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE In my latest weekly [posting](http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/02/conservatives-and-civil-rights-then-and-now/) on the Britannica blog, I take a brief look at conservative resistance to civil rights, from the early days of National Review to the latest CPAC kerfuffle: > In the 1960s and 1970s conservatives were bitter opponents of the feminist movement.… Phyllis Schlafly organized women to Stop the Equal Rights Amendment. > > > But in 2008 conservatives adamantly insisted that a mother of five, one of them a special-needs infant and another a pregnant teenager, could easily serve as vice president of the United States. “It’s a slam dunk. I think that people who are concerned about ‘How conservative is Mr. McCain’ are now going to say, ‘If he can make a choice of [Sarah Palin](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1468279/Sarah-Heath-Palin), then he can be trusted with our conservative ideals,’ ” said Cathie Adams, Republican National Committeewoman-elect and president of the Texas Eagle Forum (founded by Schlafly), [to the Houston Chronicle](http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5973844.html). Young conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter [said it was sexist](http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/09/03/top_five_sexist_attacks_on_palin) to question the ability of a busy mother to handle the White House, too. > > > Now the battle is over [gay rights](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/766382/gay-rights-movement) … ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).