Anita Bryant

"The Bryant campaign shows something of the techniques and the stages through which the "Religious Right" came to dominate American electoral politics by defending the family, that is, fatherly (or Fatherly) regulation of sex and gender. It should be no surprise that Anita's immediate supporters included the televangelists Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson. Jerry Falwell not only invited her to his show, he lent her experienced campaign staff. Dade County was a laboratory for the Religious Right, in which it learned the usefulness of homosexuality as a wedge issue for both churchly and secular politics- or rather for the fusion of the two. But the Bryant campaign has also been read in the opposite direction, so far as she provoked a new rhetoric of national gay and lesbian politics not quite a decade after Stonewall. During the campaign, activists claimed Bryant provided a national rallying point around which various queer groups could converge- including, importantly, both lesbian and gay groups. The electoral defeat over the ordinance led to much more important electoral victories, including the defeat of the Briggs Initiative in California in the fall of 1978. Or so the stories go."

"I am more interested in how the Bryant campaign clarifies the continuing history of church debates over homosexuality. It rearticulates decisively the rhetorical devices that some Christian groups had used for decades to "battle" sexual danger. Bryant's performance displays in their mature forms many features of churchly condemnation of homosexuality. She quotes scriptures and rehearses what are supposed to be arguments. She lends her considerable stage presence to the repertoire of inherited topics. But more importantly she performs a rhetoric of compassion and cursing that claims the vulnerability of the young as justification for waging war on homosexuals. The Bryant campaign deploys the professedly, aggressively "Christian" rhetoric that still surrounds us, that still works in us and on us."

"[Bryant] says: homosexuals have organized themselves into a widespread and well-financed militant organization. Although few in numbers, they attempt to terrorize opponents by telling the big lie and by making themselves appear more numerous than they actually are. Many of Bryant's terms and images- indeed, the reiterated word "militant"- derive from American anti-Communist rhetoric. Presumably that militancy justifies her repeated use of war metaphors and her appropriation of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as a campaign jingle. This is not a simple application of Red-baiting rhetoric to homosexuals. After all, homosexuals and Communists were already explicitly associated by McCarthy. Bryant does something more. She reverses McCarthy's accent: homosexuals, not Communists, are now public enemy number one."

"Anita Bryant, a Grammy-nominated singer and former beauty queen who became known for her advocacy against gay rights in the 1970s, died Dec. 16. She was 84. Bryant died surrounded by family and loved ones at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to an obituary posted Thursday in The Oklahoman, a newspaper in Oklahoma City. She started her promising music career as a child before being crowned Miss Oklahoma at age 18. As an adult, her career in music blossomed, with Bryant singing at both Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968 and the Super Bowl in 1971. She sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s graveside. Bryant again achieved national prominence in the 1970s, serving as the TV spokesperson for Florida orange juice and for Coca-Cola."

"Bryant was perhaps most well-known for her advocacy against gay rights in 1977 and foray into Florida politics. Her “Save Our Children” campaign painted gays and lesbians as a threat to the country’s youth. The effort at the time successfully overturned a then-newly passed Miami-Dade County law that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment and public services. “Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America,” Bryant famously declared."

"Nearly half a century later, Bryant’s campaign drew parallels to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its opponents. The law, which passed in 2022, prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in “kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” A year later it was expanded to apply through eighth grade. Bryant’s anti-gay rhetoric ultimately led to the downfall of her promising music and television career. The Florida Citrus Commission stopped running her orange juice ads and she was dropped by her booking agent, forcing her to file for bankruptcy twice. And the antidiscrimination ordinance she helped repeal in 1977 was ultimately restored in 1998. Bryant’s granddaughter Sarah Green, who married a woman, told Slate in 2021 that she came out to her grandmother on her 21st birthday. Green told Slate that Bryant responded by saying homosexuality isn’t real. At the end of her life, Bryant led Anita Bryant Ministries International, “an organization encouraging others to live with faith and purpose,” Bryant’s obituary reads."

"Gay people, we are painted as child molestors. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the myth of child molestations by gays. I want to talk about the fact that in this state some 95 percent of child molestations are heterosexual and usually committed by a parent. I want to talk about the fact that all child abandonments are heterosexual. I want to talk about the fact that all abuse of children is by their heterosexual parents. I want to talk about the fact that some 98 percent of the six million rapes committed annually are heterosexual. I want to talk about the fact that one out of every three women who will be murdered in this state this year will be murdered by their husbands. I want to talk about the fact that some 30 percent of all heterosexual marriages contain domestic violence. And finally, I want to tell the John Briggs and the Anita Bryants that they talk about the myths of gays, but today I’m talking about the facts of heterosexual violence and what the hell are you going to do about that? Clean up your own house before you start telling lies about gays. Don’t distort the Bible to hide your own sins. Don’t change facts to lies. Don’t look for cheap political advantage in playing upon people’s fears! Judging by the latest polls, even the youth can tell you’re lying! Anita Bryant, John Briggs: Your unwillingness to talk about your own house, your deliberate lies and distortions, your unwillingness to face the truth, chills my blood. It reeks of madness!"

"There is a difference between morality and murder. The fact that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that, my friends, is the true perversion! For the standards that we set, should we look to next week’s headlines? Well, I’m tired of the lies of the Anita Bryants and the John Briggs. I’m tired of their myths. I’m tired of their distortions. I’m speaking out about it."

"And to the bigots, to the John Briggs, to the Anita Bryants, to the Kevin Starrs and all their ilk... Let me remind you what America is... listen carefully. On the Statue of Liberty, it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free...” In the Declaration of Independence it is written, “All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights...” And in our National Anthem it says: “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free.” For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Green and Mr. Starr and all the bigots out there: that’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you cannot chip those words from off the base of the Statue of Liberty. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot sing the “Star Spangled Banner” without those words. That’s what America is. Love it or leave it."

"During Bryant's campaign, she invoked religious and morality arguments into her speeches and political commercials. These arguments were often built on her underlying assumption that being gay was morally wrong. Knowing that she could not simply rely on demonizing gays, she tried to develop a message that was both secular and promoted a goal that would be uniformly accepted-that nothing should be done to harm children... To show how overturning the gay rights law would promote this seemingly neutral goal, she needed to show how gays were harmful to children. The central part of this argument was that because gays and lesbians could not have children naturally, they would need to recruit children to be gay, which was morally unacceptable. To show how the fight against the Dade County ordinance was based on protecting the children, Anita Bryant and her husband named the group "Save Our Children.""

"People, get ready! If you are racist, sexist, classist, or homophobic, my child is going to think you are strange."

"Now that the smoke has cleared from last month's big shoot-out in the Dade County corral, let's take a closer look at one aspect of Anita Bryant. The lady is, incidentally, a phenomenon- that rarest of rare birds these days: a female entertainer willing to stand up to the vilest and most scurrilous kind of public abuse for the sake of morality, simple decency and Holy Scripture. But it's the "one aspect" I want to zero in on. Anita doesn't want her children taught in tax-supported public schools by sex perverts. Do you?"

"Here's why I'm lining up in the Bryant Brigade. Not because I want any American denied his or her constitutional rights. Not because I want particularly to be beastly to the bisexual or nasty to the nance. No, it's because children- especially young children- reason this way, and you'd better believe it: "Mom and Dad tell me to mind the teacher, to listen carefully to what she tells me. So what she does and what she is must be okay, fine and dandy." But what the homosexual teacher does and is are most emphatically not okay, fine or dandy at all. Such people, whether willingly or unwillingly, are abnormal by the very definition of the word. The ancient Jews who wrote the Torah used an interesting term to identify the act of sodomy: "confusion." That's what it is, you know. Confusion of the sex roles. Confusion of the biological purpose behind the sex act. Confusion of masculinity with femininity. Confusion thrice combined."

"And school children catch on inevitably and quickly. Little pitchers have big ears, as our forebears were fond of saying, and it's still true. Their reasoning is stark in its simplicity and as certain as sunrise: "If it's okay to hire a pervert to teach in a public institution and if it's okay to pay a pervert with tax money and if it's okay to put a pervert in charge of the educational destinies of children, then it must be okay to be a pervert." This, fellow Americans, we simply cannot have. We cannot have it because the actual survival of our country in the years ahead depends upon a generation which will be straight, not distorted- sensible, not absurd. Where do I sign up for the duration, General Bryant?"

"Anita Bryant, the godmother of modern anti-LGBTQ+ moral panics, died on December 16, 2024 at the age of 84, so it’s finally time that we eulogize her life’s most meaningful accomplishment: getting pied in the face for being such a rabid bigot. Bryant, whose family confirmed her death in an obituary this week, was named Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and rose to fame as a singer in the 1960s. But in 1977, Bryant torpedoed her own performing career by becoming the spokesperson for a campaign to repeal a Dade County, Florida ordinance banning anti-gay discrimination — a decision that would make her name synonymous with homophobia for the next 50 years."

"Today’s celebrities might sign their names to letters that suck, but Bryant went much further, advocating for homosexuality to be a felony and spearheading the “Save Our Children” campaign against gay rights by accusing LGBTQ+ people of grooming minors. “The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality,” Bryant’s group wrote in newspaper ads, “for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.” (The campaign was later forced to change its name to “Protect America’s Children” after legal action from the humanitarian organization Save the Children.) Among Bryant’s new allies was infamous evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell, who appeared at rallies alongside Bryant to preach against LGBTQ+ “recruitment.” But although Bryant’s campaign kicked off a new era of anti-LGBTQ+ conservatism — essentially writing the playbook for today’s moral panic against transgender people — she also inadvertently galvanized the then-floundering gay rights movement itself. Bryant’s campaign and her involvement with the Dade County discrimination ordinance quickly made her an archnemesis to millions of LGBTQ+ people across the U.S."

"Because Bryant was then a spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, activists distributed “Anita Bryant Sucks Oranges” pins and organized orange juice boycotts at gay bars across the country, replacing screwdrivers with “The Anita Bryant” (a cocktail of apple juice and vodka). The backlash against Bryant herself even inspired drag queens to hold lookalike contests in her “honor” at Pride marches in 1977, as Drag magazine noted, and reinvigorated a sense of solidarity. “It seems that the unifying factor of the visible enemy caused many gays to set aside political differences and march together again,” a Drag writer wrote at the time. “In so doing, a trend of declining attendance at the march was reversed.” Of course, it was the famous pie incident that cemented Bryant’s legacy as a hateful laughingstock of LGBTQ+ history. On October 14, 1977, Bryant gave a televised address in Des Moines, Iowa, in which she dismissed LGBTQ+ people who “want to flaunt” their identity rather than remain closeted. As Bryant spoke, Thom Higgins — a gay rights activist who is credited with coining the term “gay pride” years previously — approached her and unceremoniously deposited a fruit pie covered in whipped cream on Bryant’s face. Truly, it was history’s most perfect facial, made even better moments later when Bryant began praying for Higgins to be “delivered from his deviant lifestyle” through stifled sobs. (Queer people can have a little schadenfreude, as a treat.) Apart from taking a pie to the kisser like a weird evangelical Ringling Bros. act, Bryant will be best remembered for her true God-given legacy, by which we mean her out-and-proud granddaughter Sarah Green. Enjoy looking up at the queerness you helped bring into the world, Anita! We’re sure you are missed, somewhere, by someone, but we are too hungry for pie to do it ourselves right now."

"Echoes of the Dade County, Florida war rumble on, and Anita Bryant, the Orange Juice girl who became chief protagonist on the side of the victors, emerges as a composite Lucrezia Borgia and Madame Defarge: Militant piety in a Jacobin cap. Miss Bryant is accused of fomenting mass hysteria; of bringing shame upon the nation; of engineering, unassisted, a massive defeat of democracy, and of single-handedly thrusting the country back into the dark ages. Mercy me! One small lady did that? One frenzied letter to our leading herald here in Seattle manages somehow to link Miss Bryant with the anti-Chinese "hysteria" that allegedly overtook the whole country at the turn of the century, the Japanese "exclusion act" of the 1920s (it wasn't exclusion, it was an entry quota), the Japanese resettlement act of World War II, and something the writer calls the "expatriation" of Filipinos. Maybe she means repatriation, which is decidedly different. "Will this country never free itself of this mass hysteria?" the writer asks. "Must every generation shield its children from those few individuals who can tolerate nothing that does not incorporate their own life style...?" Talk about hysteria! Now, honestly, does any reasonable person really suppose Anita Bryant managed all that? Isn't it possible that the homosexual community is itself responsible in large measure for this controversy? After all, no one paid them much attention, on the job or off, until they started jabbering publicly about their sex lives, like the cretins in television and the movies who suppose their bedroom activities are somehow of interest to, or the business of, everyone else."

"And just what did Anita Bryant do anyway, apart from persuasively speaking her piece from her point of view? She wasn't the issue, nor were her fundamentalist beliefs the issue. The issue was an ill-considered ordinance that proposed to tell employers whom they must hire, not on the basis of aptitude and qualification for the job, but on the basis of sexual preference, habit or aberration. Had the ordinance not been defeated, how long does one suppose it would have taken the bureaucrats to establish quotas for such hiring? And who would be the next in line demanding their rights? The sado-masochists and the cult of bestiality? If this country would try to get its collective mind out of its groin for five minutes it might recognize that the issue in this melancholy wrangle wasn't Anita Bryant or the rights of homosexuals. It was another blatant attempt by government to impose improper rules and restrictions upon free men and women. The ordinance was bad law; and it was repealed because it was bad law. Anita Bryant is only a convenient kicking object for the hysterical."

"The image of Bryant that emerges from the Carson monologues- repeatedly to the cheers and laughter of, one presumes, a largely heterosexual studio audience- is that of a prudish, self-righteous fanatic. Was the New York blackout an "act of God"? No, said Carson, because "Anita Bryant would never have given Him time off.""

"The name Anita Bryant is synonymous with homophobic vitriol. Throughout the 1970s, the infamous anti-LGBTQ+ crusader waged a vicious war on LGBTQ+ rights, accusing queer people of corrupting youth through her infamous “Save Our Children” campaign. Now, her granddaughter is marrying a woman. On a July 8 episode of Slate’s One Year podcast, Sarah Green, the daughter of Bryant’s son, Robert Green Jr., opened up about coming out to her grandmother at age 21. On a phone call, Bryant was wishing her happy birthday, Green explained, when she went off on a diatribe about how someday Green would find a suitable husband. “She would not stop talking about the right man coming along, and I just snapped,” Green said, adding that she told her grandmother: 'I hope that he doesn't come along, because I'm gay, and I don't want a man to come along.’” Green’s father, who also spoke on the podcast, remembered Bryant’s reaction of utter shock. “All at once, her eyes widened, her smile opened, and out came the oddest sound: ‘Oh,’” he said. But Green’s admission has not seemed to soften Bryant’s heart one bit. “Instead of taking Sarah as she is,” Green’s father added, “my mom has chosen to pray that Sarah will eventually conform to my mom’s idea of what God wants Sarah to be.” Green has been struggling with her relationship with her grandmother ever since. “It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” Green said. “She wants a relationship with a person who doesn’t exist because I’m not the person she wants me to be.""

"Before she campaigned across the nation attacking the rights of LGBTQ+ people, Bryant was a pop singer and winner of the 1958 Miss Oklahoma pageant. She launched her notorious “Save Our Children” campaign in response to a historic 1977 gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Fla., which made it one of the first counties to ban employment and housing discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bryant’s campaign adopted the mantra, “Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit,” championing religious purity and aiming to protect children from supposed anti-Christian values. Bryant’s virulent rhetoric, including in press conferences and commercials, swiftly gained her a national conservative following. Famed televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. even came to Florida to help her. Bryant’s efforts led Dade County to put its anti-discrimination ordinance up for public vote. A shocking 70% of residents opted to repeal it, making discrimination against LGBTQ+ people legal again in the area. The county restored the ordinance 21 years later, in 1998."

"Bryant’s success in Dade County led to a host of victories for her campaign around the country and helped make anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs a crux of conservative values. But on a more positive note, a protest against Bryant in 1977 also became a timeless symbol of queer resilience: While speaking to reporters at a Des Moines, Iowa press conference about her anti-gay crusade, activist Tom Higgins famously pied her in the face. Decades later, Bryant’s granddaughter is trying to decide whether to invite her to the wedding. “I think I probably will eventually just call her and ask if she even wants an invitation, because I genuinely do not know how she would respond,” Green said. “I don’t know if she would be offended if I didn’t invite her.”"

"Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen and pop singer of the 1960s whose career led her to become a spokesperson for Florida oranges in the early ’70s and an evangelical crusader against gay rights later in that decade, died Dec. 16 at age 84, her family announced Thursday. The family’s obituary for Anita Bryant Day, as she was known outside the public sphere, was published in her hometown newspaper, the Oklahoman, and said the singer-activist died at home last month in Edmond, Oklahoma, surrounded by family and friends. During her heyday as a public figure, Bryant was one of the most polarizing celebrities in America, vilified by much of the show business community for campaigning against what she viewed as a gay takeover of American culture, while being embraced as a hero by many religious conservatives. Prior to her taking those stands, she was best known for her appearances in commercials for Florida oranges that introduced the catchphrase “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine” — and many parodies of that statement — into the popular lexicon. Those advertisements eclipsed her long-dormant career as a pop singer, even as she made a move into recording gospel music after easy-listening sounds fell out of fashion in the rock era."

"In 1977, Bryant began fronting a “Save Our Children” campaign aimed at repealing an ordinance in Miami-Dade County that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The crusade was successful in getting the ordinance repealed that year by a popular vote. (It was not restored until 1998.) For the next three years, her activism against such regulations made her a poster girl for the religious right and the foremost public archenemy of the gay community and social liberals. Her statement that she “loves homosexuals, but hates their sin” became a sort of mantra for evangelicals — and a much-mocked meme among what would later be known as the LGBTQ community — for decades to come."

"In the subsequent years when the gay rights controversies made her anathema to most mainstream television programmers and advertisers, she continued to enjoy name value among some older consumers who came to see her first in Branson, Missouri, where she and her second husband opened a theater in the early ’90s, and then Nashville, where she moved in 1998 to put on a live variety extravaganza. Bryant moved back to Oklahoma in 2002 to care for her ill mother, deciding to remain in the state thereafter because of its friendliness to her traditional religious values. Well out of the limelight, she worked on writing inspirational books and founding Anita Bryant Ministries International. Bryant was preceded in death by her husband, Charlie, and is survived by four children, two stepdaughters, and seven grandchildren and their spouses."