Anita Bryant, Whose Anti-Gay Politics Undid a Singing Career, Is Dead at 84

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Anita Bryant, Whose Anti-Gay Politics Undid a Singing Career, Is Dead at 84

The former beauty queen and spokeswoman for Florida orange juice was an all-American entertainer before she began crusading against L.G.B.T.Q. rights.


Anita Bryant at her home in Miami Beach, Fla., in 1978. Kathy A. Willens/Associated Press

By Anita Gates
Jan. 9, 2025

Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen who had a robust and flourishing music career, including hit songs like “Paper Roses,” in the 1960s and ’70s, but whose opposition to gay rights — she called homosexuality “an abomination” — virtually destroyed her career, died on Dec. 16. She was 84. … The death, at her home in Edmond, Okla., was caused by cancer, her son William Green said. The family placed an obituary in The Oklahoman, a newspaper in Oklahoma City, on Thursday.

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Ms. Bryant as Miss Oklahoma in 1958. She later was second runner-up in the Miss America contest. Associated Press

Most memorably, she represented the Florida Citrus Commission in a long campaign of television commercials, in which she sang “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and offered the tagline: “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” Wearing gingham, ruffles or both, she sauntered down country lanes (juice pitcher in hand), talked to cartoon birds and beamed with joy about the wonders of vitamin C.

Then, 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. “The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children’s rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community,” she said. … She founded Save Our Children, an anti-gay organization that gave rise to the modern-day religious right's strategy of tying homosexuality to perceived threats against children. Her public image (many called her a “Christian celebrity”) was changed forever.

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In October 1977, at a news conference in Des Moines, a demonstrator walked up to Ms. Bryant and pushed a banana cream pie into her face. “At least it was a fruit pie,” Ms. Bryant ad-libbed. … Some took that remark as an innocent allusion to her job promoting fresh produce; others saw it as a pointed comment on a longtime epithet for gay men. As the cameras rolled, and pie filling clung to her cheeks, she began to pray — “We’re praying for him to be delivered from his deviant lifestyle, Father” — then broke down into tears.

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Sara Ruberg contributed reporting and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

[RandySF]

1. I wonder

if San Francisco bars still serve Anita Bryants.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

2. There were those

Who sought, by forming alliances and bridging divides to overturn the American caste system. There were also those who fought to maintain their place in the hierarchy by stepping on the people perceived to be “beneath them”.
Change was possible in Anita Bryant’s time and she fought it.

[Voltaire2]

3. She lived too long. Nt.

[quaint]

4. I continue my decades-long boycott of Florida orange juice.