Anita Bryant, Bye Bye!

The announcement of the death of Anita Bryant came one month after she actually passed away. Usually we seek to avoid saying anything negative about the deceased, but we can’t do that for Bryant.

A recap: Anita Bryant was born in Oklahoma, and sang at state fairs and in church; in 1958 she won the Miss Oklahoma contest, and she launched a singing career, performing “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and “Paper Roses” on The Ed Sullivan Show, and performed in Bob Hope’s USO shows, and sang “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic” at the 1971 Super Bowl, and at the funeral of Lyndon Johnson in 1973. She later released albums of Christian music, and little books testifying to her faith (I saw them in a local library in Wilkes-Barre), and was on commercials of the Florida Citrus Commission, with the slogan, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

But the council of Dade County, Florida (where Miami is located) passed an ordinance against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; and Bryant, out of her religious zeal, led a “Save Our Children” referendum campaign to repeal the ordinance. In her campaign, Bryant said she “loved homosexuals,” but she hated their “sin;” but she always portrayed Gays as groomers and sexual predators preying on children (sound familiar?). To Bryant, allowing Gays their rights would be equivalent to allowing rights to “prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.” (That’s the “slippery slope” logical fallacy.) Gay communities throughout the nation joined in the fight against the referendum, and Gay bars stopped serving screwdrivers (orange juice and vodka) and instead served “Anita Bryants” (vodka and apple juice).

She won her campaign against the ordinance, and Bryant took her anti-Gay crusade nationwide, endorsing Anita Bryant Centers, where they practiced “conversion therapy,” which was medical quackery of the worst kind, and instead created greater emotional damage to young people who went through them. She endorsed several anti-Gay referendums, including the Briggs Initiative in California in 1978. Her campaign motivated a Gay political movement, where Gay communities banded together to fight for their rights.

The repercussions on Bryant were severe: she lost a proposed TV show, concerts were cancelled, and the Florida Citrus Commission cancelled their contract with her. Her husband-manager Bob Green divorced her, which the religious fundamentalists she grew up with frowned upon. Her name became a byword for homophobic hatred.

No, I can’t feel sorry for her; her hatred for gays (which she called “love”), her refusal to look on them as human beings or to learn about them, did this to her. But her religious zeal caused her to do these things, in the name of the loving Savior Jesus.