Anita Bryant

Family values and Florida go hand in hand. No other person embodied those two things more than Anita Bryant. Anita showed us that with a little vitamin c and a lot of hatred in your heart you too can be a winner.


Bryant was crowned 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, 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.


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". Here she is in all her beauty.


In 1977, Dade County, Florida (now Miami-Dade County) passed a human-rights ordinance 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 will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not 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 cannot 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 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 do not recognize civil divorce and that she is 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 was not 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."
She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International.

They Always Come Back:
Florida still hates Gay folk. Anita has revived her career. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue.

14 comments:

WAT said...

Anita can stick a couple of oranges up her cooch for all I care.

LadrĂ³n de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

She paved the way for many contemporary right wingers but seemed to be more out there and vulnerable than them. I've heard quotes of her saying she has moved on from her 1970s stance and learned to live and let live, but she has never made an outright apology. I had always hoped that she'd do a 360 turn and make a public apology. She has been defanged, but her original damage still stings.

Anonymous said...

Is Florida's current Gov. Gay?

Anonymous said...

Ask to suck his dick and see what his answer is.

Anonymous said...

Wat, you are FUNNNNy! lol

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Ladron, that is so telling. A 360 degree turn would mean coming back to the same spot. You meant a 180 degree turn, but your basic math can't sustain your argument.

I hated Anita Bryant then, and found her irritating even in later years. But what part of "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..." turned out to be untrue? Remember, that was hotly denied by gay-rights groups at the time. You may think their current advocacy reasonable, but it doesn't obscure the dishonesty then.

Anonymous said...

Well, I feel quite sorry for her- her 'husband' seems to have been emotionally abusive to her, she lost a lot of money and respect, and she has not recovered from this.

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Anonymous said...

Florida doesn't necessarily hate gay people as much as it does the poor and working class and the homeless.
Florida is not a great state to live in nowadays with low wages,anti worker laws,anti union, high property and home taxes,high rent,high cost of housing. Not worth living there.
As for Anita Bryant, karma works. One day she will get the karma she did to many murdered gays and lesbians due to her hateful vendetta.

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She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International. korean blanket price in pakistan , what are the best cotton percale sheets

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