Anita Bryant was responsbile for possibly one of the most unpleasant anti-gay campaigns in the US in the late 1970s. In 1977, she led a, sadly, successful vote to repeal Miami-Dade's gay-rights ordinance. At the time she was a popular singer with appearances on TV. She appears to have been making very good money, and was at one point worth several million dollars.
On 26 January this year, her husband of the time, Bob Green, was found dead at his home in Miami Beach, aged 80. This gives us an opportunity to reflect on the impact on them of Bryant's campaign.
As you may imagine, their activities attracted the attentions of gay rights campaigners, so that Bryant found herself frequently on the receiving end of a 'zap'(1) and even on one occasion got a pie in the face on TV. The regular zapping led to them losing work and lost Bryant a TV series, which was to have been sponsored by Singer Sewing Machines. That didn't deter them - they set up Anita Bryant Ministries to counsel gay people ['ex-gay', rather than supportive, would be my guess] and built a radio
studio for a planned Anita Bryant Christian show
In 1980, Green came home one day to find Bryant was gone. The breakup caused many of her religious conservative folowers to abandon her, accusing her of not being a good role model. The ministry failed and the radio show never happened.
Bryant divorced and later married Charlie Dry, a former astronaut test pilot, moving to Oklahoma. They have apparently had a series of bankruptcies and tax troubles. Bryant still
performs occasional gospel concerts.
Green became a recluse and lived, resentful, in Florida. "Blame gay people? I do. Their stated goal was to put [Bryant] out of
business and destroy her career. And that's what they did. It's
unfair.''
(1) - zap (fr hip sl // onomatopoeic comic bookese) to embarrass publicly; defeat; cause a disturbance, such as by boycotting [from The Queen's Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon by Bruce Rogers]
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant
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ReplyDeleteIt is 40 years ago this summer (1977-2017) when the notorious homophobic and anti-gay religious fanatic Anita Bryant started her campaign "Save Our Children" in Dade County, Florida. Famous for being a beauty queen, singer and Florida orange juice national spokesperson in the mid to late 70's, she took it upon herself to call all good and concerned Christians to fight legislation intended to protect homosexuals from discrimination. Her mission was to flush-out and get all suspected homosexual teachers fired from the county school system because she was convinced they were out to recruit and molest the children they were assigned to teach. As outrageous as that sounds today, back in 1977 gays were largely invisible and powerless and most Americans did not believe they even knew any homosexuals, no less wanted to see them protected in any way, shape or form ! The backlash was swift and she was soon discredited as a mean-spirited and hate-filled witch and eventually dropped as spokesperson for the orange juice industry. Gay now give the LGBT rights movement credit to her for making them mobilize, demand fair treatment and become more visible to Americans as people that were all around them and the only thing they were guilty of was not being heterosexual !
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