In 1977, Anita Bryant launched a "Save Our Children" campaign in Miami-Dade County, Florida to repeal a local ordinance that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation — and although that initiative was successful, it also led to her financial ruin.
Ken Hawkins / Alamy Stock PhotoAnita Bryant holding a Bible as she sings before a Christian gathering in Atlanta.
In a different world, Anita Bryant might have been fondly remembered for the music she produced in the early 1960s. However, today, she’s better known for her anti-LGBTQ activism. In the late 1970s, Bryant ran a “Save Our Children” campaign that aimed to repeal an ordinance in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Her anti-gay views were loudly proclaimed, and although her campaign was successful, it also shattered her public image.
Many gay rights activists condemned Bryant, and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry followed suit. Bryant was a spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission and her campaign led to a massive orange juice boycott. This damage to the industry caused the commission to sever ties with Bryant, and her subsequent divorce only furthered the financial damage she suffered. She never recovered from it.
Neither did her legacy. From the late ’70s onward, Bryant was regularly lampooned in the media. Television shows poke fun at her, musicians have written songs critiquing her, and a musical called The Loneliest Girl in the World was made about her rise and fall.
In the end, Anita Bryant’s reputation remained tarnished until her death on December 16, 2024 at age 84.
Anita Bryant’s Early Life, From Beauty Queen To Pop Star
Anita Bryant was born in Barnsdall, Oklahoma on March 25, 1940, to Lenora and Warren Bryant, though her birth was not an easy one. Speaking to Edmond Life & Leisure in 2008, Bryant recalled that she was “born dead.” Her grandfather refused to accept the doctor’s declaration, though, and dipped her into a pan of ice water that, apparently, gave her heart the jumpstart it needed.
Michael Levin Photography / Alamy Stock PhotoAnita Bryant with Dick Clark and Bobby Rydell in Atlantic City, New Jersey, circa 1960.
As a young girl, Bryant often sang at her church, and she eventually began performing at local fairgrounds. She garnered attention quickly, and by the time she was just 12 years old, she had her own television show, The Anita Bryant Show, which aired on a local station.
“I always had this voice that was bigger than I was,” she told Edmond Life & Leisure. In high school, the choir director encouraged her to try out for the school musical. When she landed the lead role, it gave her even more confidence to perform onstage. That eventually led to her entering various pageants. In 1958, she became Miss Oklahoma and represented her state in the Miss America Pageant, winning second runner-up.
The money from the pageants helped her pay for college, but her voice and success also landed her a contract with Carlton Records, and she produced several hit songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her music even gained the attention of President Lyndon B. Johnson, for whom she made 14 official appearances.
Anita Bryant was undoubtedly a star in the 1960s. That continued into the early 1970s, as well, and could very likely have lasted into the 1980s had Bryant not made the decision to throw her entire self behind anti-gay activism.
Anti-LGBTQ Activism And The Downfall Of Anita Bryant
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoAnita Bryant performing in Vietnam in 1966.
Throughout her life, Anita Bryant wrote several autobiographical books, all of which make particular note of her Christian faith and how it influenced her life and music. In The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality, which she published in 1977, Bryant wrote that she believed God tapped her on the shoulder and gave her “direct marching orders” to stand up against gay rights.
This came in the wake of a Miami-Dade County ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination in housing and employment on the basis of sexual orientation, and Bryant’s biggest fear was that this would give authorization for queer folks to work in Christian schools and become role models to children. Worried that gay people would corrupt her kids, Bryant launched a highly-publicized campaign and coalition that she called “Save Our Children.”
Public DomainA fundraising card for Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign.
According to a 1977 report in The New York Times, Bryant stated, “Behind the high-sounding appeal against discrimination in jobs and housing, which is not a problem to the ‘closet’ homosexual, they are really asking to be blessed in their abnormal life style… What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that there is an acceptable alternate way of life — that being a homosexual or lesbian is not really wrong or illegal.”
She also claimed that the queer community was “recruiting” children to “freshen their ranks” as “homosexuals cannot reproduce.” While her campaign was ultimately successful — the ordinance was repealed and wasn’t restored until 1998 — Anita Bryant damaged her public image irreparably.
The Response To Anita Bryant’s Anti-Gay Campaign
Robert Clay / Alamy Stock PhotoMarchers carrying signs at the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco in June 1977, including pictures of Adolf Hitler and Anita Bryant side by side.
In retaliation to Anita Bryant’s campaign, the gay community formed the Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign, which organized a massive boycott of orange juice due to Bryant’s contract with the Florida Citrus Commission.
Gay bars across North America replaced screwdrivers on their menus with the “Anita Bryant Cocktail,” which consisted of vodka and apple juice instead of orange juice. Protesters also mass-produced buttons that read “Anita Bryant Sucks Oranges” and organized various demonstrations to prevent other companies from working with Bryant.
Keystone Press / Alamy Stock PhotoA demonstration against Anita Bryant and her potential brand partnership with Singer sewing machines calling for Singer to drop Bryant as a partner.
However, the defining moment of this retaliation came on Oct. 14, 1977, when Anita Bryant gave a speech during a televised appearance in Des Moines, Iowa. During the speech, as The Des Moines Register reported at the time, Bryant claimed that she “loves homosexuals, but hates their sin.” In response, a gay man named Thom Higgins threw a banana cream pie in her face, which he called “an act of pride.”
“There will not be a bigot left unpied in Minnesota,” Higgins told the paper.
With a pie-covered face, Bryant began to pray to God to forgive Higgins’ “deviant lifestyle.” She then burst into tears while the cameras continued rolling.
The incident came to overshadow anything else Bryant said or did. Carol Burnett parodied the incident on her own show, and things just continued to get worse for Bryant from there. Celebrities like Jane Fonda, Paul Williams, Vincent Price, and Johnny Carson all came out in support of the boycott on Florida oranges while poking fun at Bryant regularly. Meanwhile, her personal life also began falling apart.
In 1980, she and her husband, Bob Green, divorced. According to an interview he gave to the Miami Herald in 2007, he blamed gay people for the split. “Blame gay people?” he said. “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.”
Robert Clay / Alamy Stock PhotoA man at a Gay Pride Parade in San Fransisco in 1977 holding a sign about Anita Bryant.
But the divorce also cost Bryant the support of the fundamentalist Christians who had supported her, as they stated that she was not the religious role model she claimed to be. As the years went on, she stuck by her views and continued to say that gay marriage should not be legalized or “flaunted.” She also continued to face struggle after struggle financially, filing for bankruptcy not once but twice.
However, the damage she caused to the gay community, in Florida in particular, continues on to this day as the “culture war” surrounding LGBTQ+ rights rages on. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, though, in 2021, Bryant’s own granddaughter, Sarah Green, came out as gay and announced her engagement to another woman. In response, Bryant reportedly told her that homosexuality is a delusion invented by the Devil and that God would one day make her realize she’s straight.
“It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” Green told the host of the Slate podcast One Year. “I just kind of feel bad for her. And I think as much as she hopes that I will figure things out and come back to God, I kind of hope that she’ll figure things out.”
Ultimately, Anita Bryant kept a low profile in her later years, before dying of cancer in her home in Edmond, Oklahoma at age 84 on December 16, 2024.
After reading about Anita Bryant’s self-inflicted downfall, read all about Willem Arondeus, the gay man who sacrificed his life to save Dutch Jews from the Nazis. Then, read about how the Stonewall riots changed the course of the gay rights movement.
