Later this week, Family Research Council Action will convene its “Values Voter Summit,” which lists “protect marriage” as one of its values. One of the featured speakers at the event, however, has a controversial view on just how to protect marriage: Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative activist and syndicated columnist, has repeatedly claimed that married women can't be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

As Right Wing Watch noted, in 2007, Schlafly reportedly told an audience: “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape.” She later reiterated her views in an interview with a Washington University student newspaper:

Could you clarify some of the statements that you made in Maine last year about martial rape?

I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That's what marriage is all about, I don't know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn't mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn't rape, it's a he said-she said where it's just too easy to lie about it.

Was the way in which your statement was portrayed correct?

Yes. Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them.

So you see this as more of a tool used by people to get out of marriages than as legitimate-

Yes, I certainly do.

The “Values Voter Summit” will also feature advice from apparent values champion and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich.