Everything about Anita Bryant totally explained
Anita Jane Bryant (born
March 25,
1940, in
Barnsdall, Oklahoma) is an
American singer. She is widely known for her strong views against
homosexuality, and for her prominent campaigning in the mid-1970s to prevent
gay equality, specifically her successful move to repeal a
local ordinance in
Miami, Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation. Bryant is a member of a conservative church congregation affiliated with the
Southern Baptist Convention.
Early life and career
Bryant's belief in God and the Bible had their roots in her childhood. She was initially declared dead at childbirth in her grandparents' tiny frame house in
Barnsdall, Oklahoma, but her grandfather wouldn't accept that the baby was dead. When the doctor told her grandfather to get him a pan of ice water, the new grandfather lost no time and the newborn Anita survived.
Her grandfather taught her as a baby to sing when she was six months old. Soon after her sister Sandra was born, her mother and father divorced. Her father went in the Army and her mother went to work, taking her children to live with their grandparents temporarily. When Anita was two years old, her grandfather taught her to sing
Jesus Loves Me. Bryant was singing onstage on local fairgrounds in
Oklahoma at age six. She sang occasionally on radio and television, and was invited to audition when
Arthur Godfrey's talent show came to town. Her father at first refused to allow her to go on Godfrey's show, relenting only when he was told his daughter had exceptional talent, and it would be a sin not to share it.
Bryant became
Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and was a second runner-up in the 1959
Miss America beauty pageant at age 19, right after graduating from Tulsa's
Will Rogers High School.
In 1960, she married
Bob Green (Robert Einar Green), a Miami
disc jockey, with whom she eventually raised four children, including Gloria and Robert Jr. (Bobby).
Her three biggest pop hits were: "
Till There Was You" (1959); "
Paper Roses" (1960) (successfully covered 13 years later by
Marie Osmond); and "
In My Little Corner of the World" (1960). She placed a total of eleven songs in the Top 100, plus some in the "Bubbling Under" chart.
There were several albums on the Carlton and Columbia labels. The 1959 Carlton LP
Anita Bryant contained "Till There Was You", "
Do-Re-Mi" (from
The Sound Of Music), and other show tunes. The 1963 Columbia
Greatest Hits LP contained both Carlton and Columbia songs, including "Paper Roses" and "Step by Step, Little by Little". In 1964 came
The World of Lonely People, containing, in addition to the title song, "Welcome, Welcome Home" and a new rendition of "Little Things Mean a Lot" arranged by Frank Hunter.
In 1969 she became a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission, and nationally televised commercials featured her singing "Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree" and stating the commercials' tagline: "Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine". In addition, during this time, she also did advertisements for
Coca-Cola,
Kraft Foods,
Holiday Inn, and
Tupperware.
She sang "
The Battle Hymn of the Republic" during the graveside services for
Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973, and performed the National Anthem at
Super Bowl III in 1969.
Political campaigning
Save Our Children
In
1977,
Dade County, Florida (now Miami-Dade County) passed a
human-rights ordinance sponsored by Bryant's former good friend
Ruth Shack, that prohibited
discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation. Anita Bryant led a highly publicized campaign to repeal the ordinance. The campaign was waged based on what was labeled "Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of
homosexuality and the perceived threat of
homosexual recruitment of children and
child molestation."
Her view was that "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'll lead such a
crusade to stop it as this country hasn't seen before." The campaign was called '
Save Our Children', the start of an organized opposition to
gay rights that spread across the nation.
Jerry Falwell went to Miami to help her.
Bryant made the following statements during the campaign: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals can't biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "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." On
June 7,
1977, Bryant's campaign led to a repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance by a margin of 69 to 31 percent.
The gay community retaliated against Bryant by organizing a boycott on orange juice. Gay bars all over North America took Screw Drivers off of their drink menus and replaced them with the "Anita Bryant" which was made with Vodka and Apple Juice. Sales and proceeds went to gay political activists to help fund their fight against Bryant and her anti-homosexual views.
Victory and defeat
In the aftermath, legislation was passed outlawing
adoption by gays and lesbians in the state of
Florida and Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances. Her success led to a proactive effort to pass landmark anti-homosexual legislation in
California that would have made pro- or neutral statements regarding homosexuals or
homosexuality by any
public school employee cause for dismissal. Grass-roots
liberal organizations, chiefly in
Los Angeles and the
San Francisco Bay Area, sprang up to defeat the initiative. Days before the election, the
California Democratic Party (wary of appearing pro-gay) opposed the proposed legislation, causing it to go down to narrow defeat at the polls.
In 1998 Dade County repudiated Bryant's successful campaign of 20 years earlier, and re-authorized an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting individuals from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by a 7 to 6 margin. In 2002, a ballot initiative to repeal the 1998 law called Amendment 14 was voted down by 56% of the voters. The Florida statute forbidding
adoptions by gay persons, however, remains law; in 2004, a federal
appellate court upheld Florida’s adoption law against a constitutional challenge.
Anita Bryant's political success galvanized her opponents. She became one of the first persons to be publicly "
pied" as a political act (in her case, on television), in
Des Moines in 1977; Bryant quipped, "At least it was a fruit pie", apparently making a pun on the derogatory term for a gay man, "fruit". Police authorities refused to prosecute for the assault. Gay activists organized an orange juice
boycott. Many celebrities including
Barbra Streisand,
Bette Midler,
Paul Williams,
John Waters,
Carroll O'Connor,
Mary Tyler Moore, and
Jane Fonda publicly supported the boycott. The story was told in the book,
At Any Cost (1978). To this day, Bryant is still viewed as one of the most loathed public figures of all time by the gay community, her name being synonymous with homophobia.
Career decline and bankruptcy
The fallout from her political activism had a devastating effect on her business and entertainment career. Her contract with the
Florida Citrus Commission was allowed to lapse in 1979 because of the
controversy and the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns and the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice.
Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time, and in 1980 she divorced him, although he reportedly has said that his fundamentalist religious beliefs don't recognize civil divorce and that she's still his wife in God's eyes. Some observers feel that her husband pushed her to get involved in the political activism that eventually led to her downfall and loss of income.
Kathie Lee Gifford, who worked as a live-in
secretary/
babysitter for the Greens in the early 1970s said in her
autobiography that Green had a ferocious temper and could be very possessive and emotionally abusive and that Anita wasn't very happy.
Due to her divorce, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income. With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a
Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."
In the 1980s she even renounced her anti-gay ways. In the same article in
Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she'd said and done during her campaign. She said that she'd a more "Live and let live" attitude now.
She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive, however, due to the controversy from the past; and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book,
A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in
Arkansas (1997) and in
Tennessee (2001).
Anita Bryant returned to Barnsdall, Oklahoma, in 2005 for the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue. She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International.
Notable Songs
Cultural References
On
Will & Grace, the character
Karen Walker refers to Anita Bryant as being her enemy who fell in love with her.
On
Designing Women, Bryant is mentioned on more than one occasion by
Suzanne Sugarbaker, referencing both her
beauty pageant history, as well as her political activism.
On an episode of
The Golden Girls, an effeminate male guest star is overcome with emotion, causing character
Blanche Devereaux to comment, "you're about to go flying right outta here, aren't ya". The man replies, "well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant!".
In the film
Airplane!,
Leslie Nielsen's character, Doctor Rumack, upon seeing a large number of passengers become violently ill, vomit, and suffer uncontrolable flatulence, says, "I haven't seen anything this bad since the Anita Bryant concert."
In the song,
Fuck Anita Bryant, on his
Nothing Sacred album,
David Allan Coe expresses his feelings for Anita.
On
Gilmore Girls, Lorelai says to her father that he could fill a huge gap after Anita Bryant because her father always has half of grapefruit for breakfast. (Season 2 Episode 12: Richard In Stars Hollow)
In the song "Manana" by Jimmy Buffett, Buffett says he hopes Anita Bryant never sings one of his songs.
Anita Bryant also narrated the infamous anti-drugs film, "Drugs Are Like That."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Anita Bryant'.
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