Parenting & Family Quote by Phyllis Schlafly

A sentence like this is built to feel like a parental wake-up call while smuggling a political strategy inside it. Schlafly doesn’t argue evolution on the merits; she reframes it as a matter of rights, duty, and defense. The phrase "long overdue" manufactures urgency and implies a silent majority has been duped or intimidated into passivity. It’s a classic mobilizing move: if you’re not already fighting, you’re late.

The real pivot is "protect our children". That’s not a neutral claim about curriculum; it casts schools and teachers as potential threats and parents as besieged guardians. Once the debate is recoded as child safety, ordinary disagreements become moral emergencies, and compromise starts to look like neglect.

Then comes the rhetorical judo: "intolerant evolutionists". Evolution is typically associated with scientific authority, so Schlafly flips the script by assigning intolerance to the other side. It’s an attempt to seize the language of pluralism and religious liberty while positioning science education as ideological coercion. The label "evolutionists" also turns a scientific framework into a sect-like identity, suggesting believers, dogma, and zealotry rather than evidence and method.

Context matters: Schlafly’s broader project was conservative grassroots organization against perceived liberal overreach in schools, courts, and culture. This line fits the culture-war playbook she helped refine: redefine institutions as hostile, elevate family as the ultimate political unit, and make the fight feel personal enough that people will show up at school board meetings.