Throwback Thursday Remembers the Impact of Anita Bryant. And Pie.

Throwback Thursday Remembers the Impact of Anita Bryant. And Pie.

It's always sad when someone in our community dies. And of course, it's important to remember them, their life, and the impact they had and continue to have. It's also important to remember our haters who also died with the shovelfuls of scorn and derision they justly deserve. Such is the case this week as Throwback Thursday remembers reviled homophobe and OJ junkie Anita Bryant who died December 16th at the age of 84. Her death was only recently announced publicly.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Zach Rickel | AFunctioningGay (@afunctioninggay)

Bryant, the 1958 Miss Oklahoma, was a popular Grammy-nominated singer in the 60s with three top-20 hits. She was famously the Florida Citrus Commission's spokeswoman from 1968 to 1980, hawking the stuff while smiling coquettishly, a vision of the perfect wife and mother. She had a varied career making TV appearances as well as USO tours and a slew of product endorsements. She also worked both sides of the political fence when she entertained at both the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions in 1968. Hey, what does integrity matter when the money's rolling in?

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lisa Ganser (@lmganser)

But it was her tireless and tiresome work as a Christian Evangelical crusader against the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the late seventies that marked her infamy and inevitable downfall. To overturn a ban on workplace discrimination in Miami-Dade County, she headed the Save Our Children campaign against gay rights, singlehandedly fomenting contemporary anti-gay rhetoric and political fury. It was her speeches and urgings that the "human garbage" were here to "recruit your children" that sparked a false-flag cry by frightened parents and political operatives everywhere.  Her efforts paid off, unfortunately, but those successes in Florida and elsewhere turned out to be the beginning of the end for her.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by lgbt_history (@lgbt_history)

She became a laughingstock and pariah in the entertainment industry. There was the famous pie incident in which, during a live press conference in October of 1977,  Thom L. Higgins slammed Bryant in the face with a cream pie. "At least it was a fruit pie," she quipped, then proceeded to pray while still dripping with cream. (Hey, been there!) A national boycott of orange juice helped to galvanize the queer community activism, not just in refusing to serve OJ in the bars (the "Anita Bryant" made of vodka and apple juice replaced the popular Screwdriver) but in creating a grassroots energy to combat anti-gay legislation in other areas.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by lgbt_history (@lgbt_history)

Bryant attempted to push the Briggs Initiative in California, barring openly gay employees and positive speech in CA schools. It was resoundingly defeated after such political figures such as President Jimmy Carter, Governor Jerry Brown, and former Governor Ronald Reagan all came out against it. The work against Briggs helped catapult a little-known candidate for San Francisco City Council Harvey Milk into the national spotlight.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Gerber/Hart Library & Archives (@gerberhart)

What followed were years of decline and ignominy.  From Johnny Carson on down, her name was ridiculed and her image as a Christian family woman was tarnished as an exhausting bigot. Even the TV shows Maude and Saturday Night Live got in on the joke. That lucrative orange juice money dried up when she was dropped as a spokesperson from that and other campaigns. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1980. The divorce led to religiously-minded sponsorships and theaters turning their backs on her singing career. In 1990 she and her second husband attempted a comeback with their own theater, which failed, and they skipped town with unpaid bills and payroll for their employees. Decades of increasing financial ruin, shakeups in her family (a granddaughter came out in 2014), and some substance abuse left Bryant a disgraced footnote on the national stage. But for a generation of gays everywhere, she was a symbol of the enemy to rally against.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Scotland Beavers (@scotlandb63)

Besides national gay marriage, Bryant lived long enough to see pretty much all of her political work unraveled.  The Briggs Initiative failed. That Miami-Dade County ban overturn was itself overturned in 1998. Her tireless striving for a straighter and less colorful world came apart bit by bit through the nineties, the Aughts, and beyond.

As far as having a lasting impact, Bryant would be horrified to know that her SOS campaign back in 1977 in Florida was the inspiration for a great moment in gay literature when Armistead Maupin used it as the catalyst for his character Michael Tolliver's coming out letter to his parents when his mother praised Bryant's work. That letter, from Tales of the City, often referred to as the "Dear Mama" chapter, was printed in the San Francisco Chronicle in late 1977 as a separate chapter of the serialization and was Maupin's own thinly veiled public coming out to his own mother as well. Through the years it was used by gay men, sometimes verbatim, as their own coming out letters to their own parents. It has been put to music, performed by men's choruses worldwide, and performed on stage by the likes of Sir Ian McKellen.

Now. Let's watch Bryant get hit with that pie.

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram.