Editor’s Note: This story was originally going to be about Anita Bryant’s current ventures in Oklahoma City and Gossip Boy approaching her. Yet after talking with several of the younger LGBT community it was accepted that many did not know who Anita Bryant was or her significant effect on gays and over thirty years of political identity in America. Thus we’ve decided to begin this story starting in 1977 and show how much Bryant’s attack on homosexuality has had a direct impact on all Americans and the world. It is important to note that historical events, though long past and forgotten or unknown to some, do have repercussions that relate to us all today. We hope our readers will bear with the length of this article, which we’ve divided into three parts, as we think all the points within it are of great importance, not only to today and yesterday, but to the coming years as well.

AIN’T NO SUNSHINE: THE ANITA BRYANT STORY

PART ONE: THE MOTHER OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

By James Miko

October 4, 2008

On June 21, 1977 Robert Hillsborough lay feet away from his doorstep bleeding to death from fifteen stab wounds inflicted by a young man that stood over him screaming “FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!”

According to an eyewitness account, one of Robert’s four assailants looked at him and said, “This is for Anita Bryant.”

First blood had been drawn.

Mourners honor Robert Hillsborough

On March 11^th of this year, Anita Bryant received a ten-minute standing ovation in New Orleans during a national convention of conservative leaders. They were applauding someone who many consider a bigot, a charlatan, and someone that got an orgasmic thrill knowing she had the blood of many gay men on her hands.

Thirty one years prior to that night of laurels, Bryant had lodged an attack on gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians, that would give birth to a national gay rights movement and plant the seeds for the rise of rightwing fundamentalist groups, like the Moral Majority.

The biggest enemy to LGBTs in the 20^th Century would come to be known as The Mother of the Gay Rights Movement. It would be her actions that would motivate a nation of gays and lesbians to unite hand-in-hand to do battle with a woman who wanted to destroy them. There would be a rallying cry to all across the land and a fledgling gay rights group would find power and influence.

In 1977 Dade County, Florida, passed an ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Famous resident Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma, second runner up for Miss America, pop and gospel star, and celebrity spokesperson, found her cause célèbre and began organizing an effort to overturn the law. To advance her agenda, she founded the group Save Our Children. Bryant stated at the time that her group was formed for “Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation.”

She would go on to publicly claim in front of television cameras, “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.”

It was a surprise to many that nail biters shouldn’t have the rights afforded to non-nail biters. In reality, those Bryant mentioned already had the rights being denied to homosexuals.

"Homosexuality is nothing new. Cultures throughout history have dealt with homosexuals almost universally with disdain, abhorrence, disgust-even death.  The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality. Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.  And who better qualifies as a likely recruit than a teenage boy or girl who is surging with sexual awareness." From an Anita Bryant ad in the Miami Herald on March 20, 1977

She quickly gained an ally in Virginia, who went to Florida to work with and learn from her. That person was Jerry Falwell. Six years earlier Falwell had founded the Lynchburg Baptist College, which is now known as Liberty University. To fund the college Falwell marketed bonds to churches and other sources. Within a year the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Falwell with fraud and deceit. Falwell and his church, however, succeeded in their court battle with the federal entity. The university was left heavily in debt and was due to be closed, when a group came in and bailed them out. It was later found the group received $3,500,000 from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon a controversial cult figure of the time. 

        
Jerry Falwell

Working side-by-side with Bryant, Falwell became consumed with a passion to battle the “evils of immorality and homosexuality”. Gays, lesbians, and others would suffer the impact of their meeting for the next three decades and beyond. Thousands upon thousands of gay men would be ravaged by AIDS while the government turned its back on their suffering and brutal deaths, all due to the influence on the Reagan Administration by the hate Falwell embraced for homosexuality – a hate taught to him by Anita Bryant.

       
Anita Bryant at a Save Our Children rally

While working with Bryant, Falwell told reporters, “Gay people would just as soon kill you as look at you.”

Bryant successfully organized voters into overturning the Dade County ordinance and the homosexuals there lost their short-lived protections. It would now be legal in the county to fire workers for being homosexual, evict them from their homes, and refuse to do business with them. Her group also caused a 31-year-long ban in Florida on gay adoptions that has been a forefront in gay activism this decade. Thousands of children languished in Florida foster homes, because it was illegal for gays to adopt them.

[Editor’s Note: In 1998 Miami-Dade County reinstated protections for sexual orientation. An effort by the Christian Coalition to revoke the protections failed in 2003. On September 11, 2008, a Florida judge overturned that law. Judge David Audlin Jr. declared the ban unconstitutional and ordered that a gay man be allowed to adopt a boy he’d been fostering for seven years.]

She would take her mission nationwide and within a year protections for gays were overturned in Minnesota, Kansas, and Oregon. An effort she and Falwell led in California to outlaw homosexuals from teaching in public schools was overwhelmingly defeated by voters.

"I don't hate the homosexuals. But as a mother, I must protect my children from their evil influence." From an Anita Bryant 1978 fundraising letter.

In the end, due to rising resistance and heavy-handed tactics by gays and their supporters, Bryant ended a national campaign and retreated from the public eye. There were threats on her family, boycotts of products she had endorsed in commercials like Coke and Florida orange juice, petitions and pickets.

And then there was an attack with a pie…

There were, however, many others anxious to take up her cause.

Empowered by Bryant’s successful assault on gays, the Old Testament religious right set their eyes on the White House. Falwell, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schlafly (Sally Kern belongs to Schlafly’s group the Eagle Forum) would organize and found the religious right with Anita Bryant being its seed.

[Editor’s Note: It is a point of interest that Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schlafly, and Sally Kern – three very vocal critics of homosexuality - all reportedly have gay sons.]

These groups would use Bryant’s attacks on gays to ignite conservative Republicans and turn Southern Democrats into rightwing religious fanatics, who abandoned their party to join the newly founded Moral Majority. Their large electoral might would thrust Ronald Reagan into office followed by George H. Bush and later by George W. Bush. Reagan would go on to hinder research into a plague decimating gay men across America – AIDS. The latter Bush would advocate the changing of the United States Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.

The Moral Majority found themselves in the hot seat in the latter 1980s, when well known religious leaders like Jim Bakker (then husband to the now late Tammy Faye Messner) and Jimmy Swaggart became embroiled in highly-publicized sex and finance scandals. With Falwell taking over Bakker’s ministry the black-eyed Moral Majority needed a new image and so the Christian Coalition was founded. At the time, Falwell was also fighting against the sanctions in South Africa and did not want the United States interfering in Apartheid. He urged his followers to support Apartheid, a system in which the white-controlled government would practice racial segregation, by buying up South African gold.   

In 2004, Falwell, who was often referred to as an “agent of intolerance”, emboldened by the sweeping re-election of George W. Bush, revived his group as the Moral Majority Coalition, which he called, “the 21^st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority.” Gay marriage was becoming a wedge issue across the country and Falwell sought to finance candidates that would, when elected, ensure that gays not achieve equal status in America. The following year both Falwell and Pat Robertson would declare that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment by God for the homosexuals in New Orleans. Prior to this Falwell had become an object of ridicule with his constant declarations that fictional characters like the Teletubbies and SpongeBob Squarepants were all agents of a gay agenda.

In the days following the September 11th terrorist attacks Falwell, Pat Roberston and Fred Phelps of God Hates Fags fame all claimed that the events were God's punishment for America allowing the sin of homosexuality.
 

The re-born group’s purpose was to lead a revolution and cause voters to “vote Christian”. They had three main objectives: The confirmation of pro-life U.S. Supreme Court Justices; the passage of a constitutional Federal Marriage Amendment that would limit marriage to one man and one woman; and the election in 2008 of a conservative candidate to the White House.

To the satisfaction of many, Falwell died on May 15, 2007.  Yet the Moral Majority Coalition has survived and has endorsed John McCain and Sarah Palin in next month’s presidential election. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia, an important swing state, has over 10,000 students (and some 25,000 distance learners), who are all being registered to vote and who will be given November 4^th off from class to board buses to their voting precinct. Election watchdogs are warning that Liberty University may be violating federal law and have failed to inform students that Virginia law requires them to first declare residency in that state in order to be eligible to vote there.  Were John McCain to take swing states with large electoral votes, such as Ohio and Florida, an Obama win could come down to a state like Virginia. A large influx of new voters casting ballots from Liberty College for McCain could possibly give the Republican the Oval Office.

Bryant’s victories over homosexuals did not come without cost. She would go into virtual obscurity in the 1980s, endure bankruptcy, and a bitter divorce that would see Christian fundamentalists turning their backs on her. The entertainment and advertising industries made her an untouchable and in an attempt to save face, Bryant made herself out to be a sacrificial lamb claiming that the attacks on homosexuals were orchestrated by husband Bob Green, a Miami disc jockey.

Anita would eventually re-marry this time to childhood sweetheart and retired NASA flyboy Charles Dry. The duo would spend years fleeing a number of states after business ventures soured, leaving the pair owing money to employees and various state tax coffers.  Still owing millions to others, Bryant and her husband have taken up residence in an $800,000 Edmond, Oklahoma home.    

Mike Huckabee and Anita Bryant in Oklahoma City last year

Gossip Boy has uncovered evidence that the 1977 Anita Bryant is back with her anti-gay agenda and launching it from her home in Edmond and an office in Bricktown in which she runs the Anita Bryant Ministries International and her husband Charles operates a very suspect government contract and influence peddling operation with partner JC Watts - former U.S. Congressman and Sooner football player.

Our investigation has taken us across the South in which many are claiming the pair swindled them. We’ve interviewed spokespersons for Dolly Parton and Kathie Lee Gifford and attorney general offices in three states.

We’ve talked to a number of people involved with Bryant over the years and pored over her finances, tax returns, and ministry and business records.

Then this past Friday, Gossip Boy showed up on her porch and rang the doorbell.

Stay tuned.

Part II: The Life of Anita Bryant and the Rise of the National Gay Rights Movement will be published Tuesday, October 21st.

Part III: The Return of Anita Bryant will be published Thursday, October 23rd.