Anita Bryant
By 
Anita Bryant is dead, a couple of weeks as it turns out, but this was just announced. This terrible person used her fame to oppress others, the worst thing one can do with fame. She was a master of using hate inside of a Christian framework to attack gay rights, spread fear, and basically make the world worse for her living in it.
Born in Barnsdall, Oklahoma in 1940, Bryant very much was a child of Oklahoma evangelicalism. Now don’t get me wrong here, it’s not like the values of evangelical religion often reflect one’s personal life or that of one’s parents. Her parents divorced when she was young because of course they did, despite undoubtedly opposing divorce on principle. In any case, young Anita was brought up in the Baptist church and started singing in them when she was just a child. She was really into performance and at the age of 12, she got her own TV, The Anita Bryant Show, that aired locally in Oklahoma.
Bryant became a beauty queen. She was Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and competed in the Miss America Pageant, where she finished second. Very ambitious, she went into a supercharged mode toward fame after this, both on television and in the recording studio. She appeared on all the TV shows she could, often singing but sometimes hosting. She released her first album, which was self-titled in 1959, then Hear Anita Bryant in Your Home Tonight in 1961, and then In My Little Corner of the World later that same year. These did not hit huge, but there were some singles that did quite well. Her 1960 single “Paper Roses” went the highest, hitting #5 on the charts. “In My Little Corner of the World” went to #10. Other songs were in the top 30.
But Bryant already was pushing an out of date kind of music, though one with enough cheese factor to remain somewhat connected to the bad pop to come for decades. She got really into USO tours, often touring with Bob Hope. She did this through the 60s. She recommitted to her evangelicalism in these years and turned pretty much entirely to gospel music by 1967. Of course, she absolutely loathed everything about the counterculture, both politically and aesthetically. There wasn’t much room in the Haight for Anita Bryant’s music.
Bryant’s core audience was a combination of working class whites and old people and those old people at least would give her audiences. She was a frequent singer at White House functions during the Johnson administration, for example. At the very least, she and LBJ both liked bombing the Vietnamese. In fact, she sang at Johnson’s funeral in 1973. She also was the halftime entertainment for the Super Bowl in 1971. Let’s just say it was less of a spectacle than it is today. She also became the national spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission. She would appear in a commercial for anyone, so long as they paid. So in this era, she pitched Coca-Cola, Kraft, Holiday Inn, Tupperware, all kinds of things that also fit into her model of evangelical womanhood.
Bryant became an aggressive opponent of anything to do with the counterculture and the more expanded boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior it pushed. She made her big move in this direction in 1969, when she appeared at the Rally for Decency in Miami to protest Jim Morrison pulling out his dick on stage and just generally being a reprobate piece of shit. Well, The Doors are so bad that I can’t really blame her for that. Opposition to Jim Morrison really should unite the country.
Alas, Bryant’s hatred of social change extended past terrible rock bands. She became notorious for opposing anything to do with homosexuality. The 1970s saw the emergence of the gay rights movement. Our queer history is not one of complete oppression before the 70s, a popular conception. But the 1950s and early 1960s were absolutely terrible times, with McCarthy Era oppression defining a generation. By the mid-50s, homophile organizations such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis began to develop that would attempt to bring awareness among the American public that we as gay people exist and we are as normal as you are.
But the counterculture created the conditions for a newly aggressive and open gay rights movement, one that combined the libertine nature of the sexual revolution with the politics of the civil rights movement. Cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and especially San Francisco became centers of the gay rights movement and of gay life. That was especially true gay male life, which more openly embrace counterculture sexuality than the early lesbian rights movements. Those were often more connected to back to the land environmental politics and a withdrawal from the patriarchy, which made it less aggressively in the face of conservatives such as Bryant.
Well, Bryant was disgusted by the sheer idea of homosexuality and she wanted to do what she could about it. Cock was for her in marriage, not for other dudes. She embraced every stereotype about gay men, especially that they were perverted pedophiles who wanted to attract and rape small children. In 1977, Dade County, Florida, where Bryant lived, passed a non-discrimination ordinance against gay people. This was one of the first in the country. Bryant wanted to discriminate. She loved discrimination. She led a campaign to repeal the law. She led an organization called Save Our Children, in case you were wondering if I was exaggerating how she connected homosexuality to child molestation.
In fact, she made public statements such as, “The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality… for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.” Then she also used the ol’ “if the gays are allowed to have rights, next we will be protecting the right to have sex with Fluffy the Dog” bit. She stated, “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.” I actually don’t get the nail biter bit, but whatever. What a piece of work.
Save Our Children became the leading anti-gay rights organization in the country and Bryant the public face of this hate. She had plenty of help. Jerry Falwell gave her a lot of support and the financial resources that meant. Save our Children succeeded in Miami, getting Dade County residents to overturn the non-discrimination clause by a 2-1 margin. That in itself actually significantly accelerated the politicized side of the gay rights movement, with Pride South Florida developing, one of the first uses of Pride as a term to describe the movement and something that would envelop the nation in coming years. But at the time, it was a bunch of desperate people fighting for their lives against a world that hated them.
Save Our Children targeted other liberal cities that had passed non-discrimination clauses, including St. Paul, Minnesota; Eugene, Oregon, and Wichita, Kansas, which is less liberal than these other towns and an interesting case study I should explore a bit. It also had to change its name to Protect Our Children because the organization Save the Children that works on child welfare through international donations sued for copyright violations, and in this case one can see why given the radical nature of this new group that could have threatened its identity in the public mind. Protect Our Children succeeded in getting voters in all these places to stand up for traditional values or whatever. They were less successful elsewhere though. Seattle voters rejected their hate. Then you had California.
Bryant led the fight to pass Proposition 6. Popularly known as the Briggs Amendment, named after the far-right Orange County state legislator John Briggs, who had sponsored it, Proposition 6 sought to bar gay people from teaching in public schools. Oklahoma and Arkansas had recently passed such measures. But unlike in those states, you had a fighting gay rights movement with real power in San Francisco and Los Angeles. You also had a liberal elite in that state that found far-right politics distinctly uncomfortable, whatever they might privately think about homosexuality.
The Briggs Amendment failing in 1978 is an absolutely key moment in American history. There was little reason to believe it would fail when the Orange Country Republican John Briggs built on Bryant’s success in overturning the Miami anti-discrimination ordinance. Who liked the queers anyway? But it didn’t turn out that way. First, it was a very harsh ballot measure that would lead to the firing of gay teachers. It openly played on the pernicious stereotype that gay men were out for your kids and this was the era of Neighborhood Watch and fears of kidnappings, so these politics were powerful. Bryant came to California to help out.
The gay rights movement’s political success can really be measured from the campaign to defeat the Briggs Amendment. This was when Harvey Milk and other gay activists came to believe that coming out of the closet was the most powerful political thing a gay person could do, simply because they knew that everyone knew gay people, even if they didn’t know the person was gay. This proved quite effective. Bryant’s hate played poorly in California. Even Ronald Reagan came out and said this law was a bad idea. So did Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, so we are talking about 3 successive presidents intervening here. This was also the first moment of the Log Cabin Republicans, founded in California just a year earlier. The only useful things those people have ever done is convincing enough California Republicans to oppose the measure. It failed in the end, 58-42, even losing in Orange County. Later that month, Dan White assassinated Harvey Milk. This was the hate that Bryant engendered coming to fruition.
People started targeting Bryant as the evil henchwoman behind this movement. While on camera, Thom Higgins, also known for coining the term “gay pride,” shoved a pie into Bryant’s face. She responded by saying that it was at least a fruit pie, taking a shot at gay men even at that moment of shock. She then said she would pray to God to forgive him “for his deviant lifestyle” before crying on camera. A truly great moment in American history right there.
The gay rights movement then decided to play offense and go after anything associated with this queen of hate. They called for a boycott of Florida orange juice. This was the great era of the boycott, with the United Farm Workers grape and lettuce boycotts gaining a lot of the white liberal imagination after the rise of Black Power meant they couldn’t act the same way in the civil rights movement as they had before. So it was fairly natural to respond to Bryant’s rise by boycotting orange juice. After all, why was the Florida Citrus Commission playing this out of fashion singer to represent it anyway when she spent most of her time hawking hate.
Gay bars stopped serving screwdrivers, replacing the orange juice with apple juice and often calling it the Anita Bryant. This started in Miami but went national. In San Francisco, bars put up signs reading, “To promote human rights, this establishment does not serve Florida orange juice or orange juice from concentrate.” Remember too that at this time, the gay rights movement was barely above water. So the boycott played a critical role in building a more national movement, giving leaders around the country a chance to know each other, and build toward more long-term alliances. The boycott also got plenty of Hollywood support. Vincent Price famously said in a TV interview that Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance described Bryant perfectly.
And really, Bryant was an embarrassment. Johnny Carson routinely made fun of her in his monologues on The Tonight Show. Carson was not a political comedian and his middle America thing was the core of his popularity, so the fact that Bryant was such an easy target suggests what a loon she had become. The range of musicians who attacked her in song was astounding. You may not be surprised that Dead Kennedys would reference Bryant on “Moral Majority.” You might be more surprised that David Allen Coe, not exactly a typical articulator of progressive values, wrote a song called “Fuck Aneta Briant” (and yes, he misspelled her name) on his 1978 album Nothing Sacred, which also included such gems as “Pussy Whipped Again” and “Cum Stains on the Pillow (Where Your Sweet Head Used to Be).” Jimmy Buffett also attacked her in one of his songs, which almost makes up for his history of boring music. Saturday Night Live spoofed her of course, but The Golden Girls made fun of her by name too. Basically, she became a symbol for the very worst the United States had to offer.
In 1980, the Florida Citrus Commission finally fired Bryant. She fought it and it was ugly. She claimed she had been blacklisted, which in fact is true, but then that’s what she wanted to do to gay people, so no tears for Anita here.
Interestingly, Bryant did not succeed on the Wingnut Welfare Train, which was less developed at the time, but still, lots of right-wing figures from the 70s found themselves making good money later. But not Bryant. Some of it is that her image took a shot from her divorce. Of course Ms. Traditional Family Values filed for divorce. Her husband said he refused to recognize it, as it was against the Bible and God’s will. Hard to argue with him given everything else she said and did in her life, though I’m sure he was awful too. But hypocrisy is the go-to choice for the right-wing morality police. She also was terrible financially and declared bankruptcy twice. It didn’t help that the evangelical community didn’t support her divorce and she found a lot of her traditional audiences would no longer pay up to her.
It does seem that Bryant’s personal problems did lead to some realization that she had taken some bad positions. She later expressed some support for feminism, and as one of her sons later stated to a journalist, if she still cared that much about gay rights, she’d speak out about it. Probably true. I also don’t care. While we have to accept the need for people to grow, whatever personal moderation she has come to feel internally on the issue comes nowhere near the tremendous damage she did to the nation and her active role in oppressing queer people.
Bryant spent the next couple of decades moving around a lot. She tried to start a show in Branson, Missouri, because of course she did, but it went belly up. Eventually, Bryant moved back to Oklahoma, where she started Anita Bryant Ministries International, your typical let’s convert the heathen deal that evangelicals love.
In 2021, Bryant’s granddaughter married another woman. And that’s the best place to end this obituary.