"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."