By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS: This article examines the rise of the homosexual rights movement in the 1970s and highlights Anita Bryant’s opposition through her Save Our Children campaign. It argues that Bryant’s biblical convictions shaped her activism, influenced conservative politics, and came at significant personal cost.
The 1970s was a decade pushing rights even further than the previous decade did for women in feminism. It was the decade of homosexual rights. At the center of it was one woman- Anita Bryant. Let’s take a look at history of 50 years ago.
The homosexual revolution is acknowledged to have begun in 1969 at the Stonewall riots. America of the 1950s and 1960s was legally against the sodomites and the lesbians, and Stonewall was the catalyst to their militant journey to forcing America to accept not just legalization but normalization of their perverse sexual behavioral choices.
According to Wikipedia about Stonewall,
Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars…Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn. Greenwich …Village residents quickly organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for gays and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested.
Within 6 months of the Stonewall riot, two pro-gay organizations were formed, and in June of 1970 the first “Gay Pride” parade was held In NYC. The rest of the 1970s was an accelerating snowball of forced homosexual acceptance into society that has never ended to this day.
For every 1970s homosexual parade, march, or gay push into the culture of America, there was a push-back. The push back came first in the form of Anita Bryant. The fight moved from Greenwich Village, NY to Miami, Florida. Again, according to Wikipedia,
Anita Jane Bryant (born March 25, 1940) is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and former spokeswoman (brand ambassador) for the Florida Citrus Commission (marketing orange juice). She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including “Paper Roses”, which reached #5. She later became known as an outspoken opponent of gay rights and for her 1977 “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal a local ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, an involvement that significantly affected her popularity and career in show business.
Have you heard the saying, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine”? It’s one of the most famous marketing slogans in American history. Anita Bryant popularized it in her commercials as the official Florida spokesman for orange juice.
It can’t be stated emphatically enough how popular Mrs Bryant was in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the emblem of American wholesomeness due to her success at the Miss America Pageant, she had a national platform due to her work as Florida Orange Juice spokeswoman, and her music career was a chart success. Mrs Bryant was a strong Christian and was public about it.
So in 1977, Dade County, Florida, passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination ‘on the basis of sexual orientation’. This was a new approach. In response, Bryant led a highly publicized campaign to repeal the ordinance. She founded an organization called Save Our Children. The campaign was based on conservative Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and at the time the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation.
We now know 50 years later, Bryant was right on both counts. Early on, Bryant saw where this was going.
She said- “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life. … I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before“…Anita Bryant, Washington Post, 1977.
And she did.
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.” ~Anita Bryant
“Bryant argued that [the Miami-Dade antidiscrimination law] discriminated against her and other parents who wanted to teach their children Christian values. The Miami ordinance was struck down in a special election with 70% of the vote. Save Our Children gained significant support among conservative Americans, and it led to increased participation of the Christian right in politics.” Source ‘Women & The American Story‘
In fact, the Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization founded just two years later, in 1979, by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. Bryant and Falwell became allies and partners in building the foundation of the modern Religious Right.
From the vantage point of nearly 50 years of American cultural history, we can see that Mrs Bryant was prescient. The Dade County ordinance was among the first of its kind in America to pass and the homosexual lobby was elated, but then shattered when it was overturned thanks to her campaign.
What the overturning did though, in addition to sparking Christians to become more involved in public politics, is it galvanized the homosexual lobby, too. They coalesced in order to oppose opposition to their efforts to legislate their homosexuality into public life.
Again, Mrs Bryant was right. She knew that once special rights were given to one lobby, other lobbies would then pile on and claim special rights based on their personal preferences too. From a Chicago Tribune article in March 1977, Mrs Bryant said,
“If people are discriminating now under the civil rights law they can take it to court. They come under the disguise of civil rights. They are not a race. It is not a birthright to be a homosexual: A lot of them are under the misconception they’ve been a homosexual all their lives, well maybe they have been since they were young children, but a homosexual is not born, they are made. So there has to be some recruitment.”
One legacy Mrs Bryant left during that heated time was that she led a legislative ban on gay adoptions in Florida that held up for nearly 40 years. The legislation forbid homosexuals from adopting children, a ban that was only overturned in 2015.
Bryant paid a heavy price
There was a famous incident that occurred when Mrs Bryant and her husband were being interviewed at a press conference in Des Moines Iowa in 1977. Mrs Bryant emphasized that she does not hate homosexuals. She has repeatedly said that she loves them as people because like all people, they are made in the image of God. Their sin of homosexuality, like any sin such as thievery, adultery, or any other sin, can be forgiven if the sinner repents. They can then be an ex-homosexual just like a thief can be an ex-thief and an adulterer can be an ex-adulterer.
A famous incident happened in all this. A homosexual activist named Thomas Higgins from Minneapolis drove to Des Moines Iowa where Bryant was announced to be speaking. As Bryant was politely answering questions of a reporter, Higgins smashed a pie in Mrs Bryant’s face.
Mrs Bryant asked that security not take the man out and she and her husband prayed on the spot for the Lord to deliver Higgins from his deviant lifestyle. Incidentally, it’s Higgins who is said to have coined the phrase ‘Gay Pride.’ Higgins died of AIDS in 1994.
Mrs Bryant continued throughout the decade to work toward legislative change through proper channels. However, her stand against homosexuality took its toll on both her career and her marriage. The homosexual lobby successfully boycotted Florida Orange Juice. Gay bars took the drink the screwdriver off the menu and swapped it for the “Anita Bryant”, made with vodka and apple juice.
Her music career fizzled as the homosexual lobby poisoned the well for her name, so the music industry was increasingly reluctant to touch her. And sadly, her Christian witness suffered also. She divorced her husband for what seems to be unbiblical reasons, and the Moral Majority began to decline inviting her for speaking invitations. Bryant later went bankrupt. Her career never recovered.
Anita Bryant died on December 16, 2024 from cancer.
Would you be willing to suffer national humiliation, career destruction, a toll on your marriage, and a name that is synonymous with hate and bigotry (according to today’s culture) just for taking a stand for biblical sexuality? Anita Bryant did. I applaud her for it and I consider her to be an American Christian heroine.
the-end-time.org 