Anti-Gay Crusader Anita Bryant Dead at 84

Anita Bryant – the former beauty queen who enjoyed a successful singing career and a stint as a pitchwoman for Florida orange juice before spearheading a campaign against LGBTQ+ equality – died on Dec. 16, reports say.

The New York Times noted that though Bryant enjoyed success as a singer and TV pitchwoman for the Florida Citrus Commission – making the catchphrase "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine" into something of a national phenomenon – she essentially torched her career when she became the public face of a movement to protest and undo LGBTQ+ progress in the area of civil rights.

The Times recounted that "in early 1977, Dade County, Fla. – which includes Miami, where Ms. Bryant lived – gave its final approval to an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals. A group of opponents, led by Ms. Bryant, turned up to protest."

Bryant's claim, the Times recalled, was that "The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children's rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community."

In a kind of modern twist on the ancient "Blood Libel" – an antisemitic lie targeting Jews that dates to mediaeval times and claims that Jewish people used the blood of Christian children in cannibalistic rites – Bryant launched a campaign to smear gays as predators targeting children for "conversion" to a homosexual "lifestyle." As PBS reported in "Out of the Past," Bryant "based the campaign on the idea that 'Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit'" underage people.

Medical science does not support the idea that heterosexual people can be "converted" to homosexuality, and the idea that the reverse is true – that LGBTQ+ people can be "converted" into heterosexual or cisgender people – has been thoroughly discredited.

That anti-LGBTQ+ slander has, however, persisted into the present day, with contemporary culture warriors pushing the falsehood that gays are "pedophiles" intent on sexually abusing children and spinning the fable that transgender youth have somehow been pressured by social media into gender dysphoria. NBC News noted the direct link between Bryant's anti-gay crusade in the 1970s and Florida's 2022 criminalization of classroom acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ people.

Bryant, born in 1940 in Barnsdall, Oklahoma to Warren G. Bryant and Lenore Annice Bryant, was discovered by a talent scout at age 16 and made her first television appearance on Arthur Godfrey's variety show, Variety recalled. A record deal followed, as did other TV appearances.

In another coup, Bryant "won the Miss Oklahoma beauty title and was named second runner-up in the Miss America pageant" at age 18, The New York Times detailed, with those wins further propelling her career as an entertainer.

"For almost two decades, she had a smooth run – entertaining troops on U.S.O. tours with Bob Hope, performing during Billy Graham's evangelical tours and co-hosting nationally televised parades," The Times recalled. "She sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl and 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' at President Lyndon B. Johnson's graveside."

"Her biggest charting song was 'Paper Roses,' which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960," Variety noted. "It was followed by one other top 10 song, 'My Little Corner of the World.'"

Bryant's campaign to roll back Dade County's equality ordinance succeeded, and it wasn't for another two decades that a rights ordinance was restored there. In the meantime, however, her crusade – Bryant called gays "human garbage" at one point – turned off swaths of the public, as well as advertisers and producers, and led to the end of her long gig of appearing in orange juice commercials. She also lost a planned TV pilot for a variety show, the Times recalled.

Bryant claimed to be a victim, saying she had been subjected to "blacklisting" and describing herself, decades later, as a "sacrificial lamb."

The fading embers of her career did enjoy a brief resurrection in 1980 with a TV special, but there, too, fell the shadow of her anti-equality crusade.

The Times recalled its own critic, John J. O'Connor, writing of "The Anita Bryant Spectacular" that "Miss Bryant's cause is never defined too clearly, but seems directed at anyone who may differ from her particular concepts of godliness and cleanliness."

Bryant went on to alienate a major portion of her Christian followers with a divorce in 1980. She remarried in 1990.

"In 1988," the Times said, "she attempted a comeback tour, performing in Florida trailer-park rec rooms."

In her later life, Variety detailed, and "out of the limelight," Bryant "worked on writing inspirational books and founding Anita Bryant Ministries International."