Anita Bryant, one of the original culutre warriors, died last month at the age of 84. Bryant was an early anti LGBTQ influencer and reflecting on the national reaction to her one could gloomily conclude we've gone backwards No one's quite sure who is the original culture warrior - Shirley Temple, who protested sex in movies? Even if they did work out the title holder, any awards ceremony would be fraught; someone who find out the caterer hadn't cut off their trans sister and the entire thing would be a meltdown.
Ms Bryant spun her Miss Oklahoma 1958 title into a B level pop star career, and became famous as the face of Florida Orange Juice in national TV advertising campaigns. Bryant married, had children, and combined her promotional career with family life.
Then disaster struck.
At the age of 37, Anita Bryant realised that gay people have gay sex, and the details curled her hair.
The year was 1977, and Dade County Florida where Bryant lived at the time passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (Florida has gone backwards in 48 years). Something tipped Bryant off and she headed the movement to repeal the ordinance. Bryant's campaign was a success, the ordinance repealed, but Anita Bryant was just getting started; tomorrow the world she thought, and Bryant's world was free from gay people.
Ms Bryant's particular opposition to homosexuality was .. odd. In 1977 she agreed to an interview with Playboy (I've my issues with Playboy but their long form interviews were some excellent journalism). Playboy asked questions no one else would, and so we learned what Ms Bryant thought. (Warning - Ms Bryant's descriptions of a perfectly normal thing for consenting adults to do are rather odd, not to mention graphic, so you might not want to read this while eating)
PLAYBOY: Didn’t your biggest shock about homosexuals come when you realized that male homosexuals eat each other’s sperm? A Miami reporter briefly quoted you as saying the reason God calls homosexuality an abomination is that homosexuals eat spermatozoa, the building block of blood, so, therefore, homosexuals are swallowing, and presumably digesting, the essence of life?
BRYANT: Yeah, when I read about it, I about fell through my chair. I said, “Oh, God, this can’t be true.” That was the first time I really knew. I mean, I had seen in writing before what they did in bed, and so forth, but I never knew that they ate the male sperm. I just wanted to fall off the chair.
[...]
[T]hroughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, men are referred to as trees. Even in the Garden of Eden, when God referred to the tree of life, He was talking about the whole spiritual salvation of men, and so forth. And in the New Testament, it says Jesus was called the fruit of the womb–which is very interesting, because even the homosexuals know this. Did you know there is a group in Seattle that calls itself The Fruit Loops?
PLAYBOY: So?
BRYANT: Why do you think the homosexuals are called fruits? It’s because they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. God referred to men as trees, and because the homosexuals eat the forbidden fruit, which is male sperm…. There is even a Jockey short called Forbidden Fruit. Very subtle. Did you know that?
PLAYBOY: No. We’ve heard only of Fruit of the Loom.
There's much to unpack, that Bryant's main problem with homosexuality was blow jobs and not, you know...
... the love many gay people have for show tunes.
For all we hear of cancel culture as a construct evil milennials, Bryant was actually cancelled in the 1970s - her advertising contacts cancelled, her name a national laughing stock - at a time when the right to same sex marrige wouldn't be legally recognised at national level for 38 years. Sodomy laws, at least those pertaining to same sex sex, were still on the books in most states.
If she was campaigning today, she'd look up any number of sympathetic groups online, get some media savvy, and in the unlikely event her views caused a company to drop her as a spokesperson would make $5000 a pop on the endless conservative media circuit complaining that she was being silenced.
Remember the days when we thought things would get better, not worse?
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