Anita Bryant, a Grammy-nominated singer and former Miss Oklahoma who in the ‘70s channeled her fame as an entertainer and orange juice spokesperson into vehement opposition to gay-rights, passed away Dec. 16, 2024, in Edmond, Oklahoma. She was 84.
Bryant was a ubiquitous presence on American television screens in the ‘70s thanks to her commercials for the Florida Citrus Commission. But she’s now best remembered for leading the 1977 charge to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance in Dade County, Florida that offered legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation.
Among many falsehoods about gays, Bryant publicly contended that the ordinance would endanger schoolchildren by allowing them close proximity with gay people, a stance that repeatedly perpetuated false tropes about gays “recruiting” youths and homosexuality being correlated with pedophilia. The Florida Citrus Commission at the time gave its official backing to Bryant’s campaign, which was given the moniker Save Our Children.
“It was a big deal,” Chicago activist and photographer Jerry Pritikin told Windy City Times in 2018. “…Anita Bryant was famous. Everybody knew her TV ads for orange juice, and then she became famous as the face of the anti-gay movement. I remember hearing her on the radio, singing on the radio, sometimes. And her face was all over the TV from the juice commercials.”
The campaign, also supported by anti-gay activists such as Jerry Falwell, ultimately won the Dade County ordinance’s repeal. But Bryant’s work also had the unintended effect of galvanizing gay-rights supporters, many of whom, such as San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, organized a boycott against the Florida orange juice industry; “Anita Bryant cocktails”—vodka and apple juice—replaced screwdrivers in many gay bars, for example. In one especially famous episode, on Oct. 14, 1977, Bryant was hit in the face with a pie by gay-rights activist Tom Higgins.
In Chicago, a June 1977 appearance by Bryant at the Medinah Temple led to several thousand gay-rights supporters surrounding the building to register their opposition to her. A national gay-rights infrastructure fell into place post-Bryant as activists opposed subsequent initiatives, and fought for others, that affected their communities.
“Anita made the gay-rights movement a national story,” said Pritikin, who lived in San Francisco during the rise of Bryant’s activism. “She put the ‘movement’ in the gay-rights movement. All segments of the movement came together because of her. She was the best thing that happened to the gay community.”
Bryant’s views ultimately turned her into the subject of jokes in outlets ranging from Mad Magazine to The Carol Burnett Show, and her singing bookings dropped precipitously. In 1980, the same year she divorced her husband, Robert Green, she was fired by the Citrus Commission. She remarried in 1990.
Her hit songs included “Paper Roses” and a cover of The Music Man’s “Till There Was You.” But Bryant never recovered the foothold of her earlier music career. She fell into relative obscurity and settled with her husband in her home state of Oklahoma, where the couple operated the organization Anita Bryant Ministries. In 2021, her granddaughter, Sarah Green, publicly discussed coming out to Bryant as gay.
Sarah told the Slate One Year podcast that her grandmother had a difficult time accepting the news.
“I don’t hate my grandma,” Sarah said. “I just kind of feel bad for her. …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.”