A Life of Hate Has Come to an End

Anita Bryant, the former singer and much-reviled bigot, has died of cancer and will finally (according to her beliefs) face her maker and be held accountable for her lifetime of hate. She was 84.

Bryant leveraged her pageant title of Miss Oklahoma 1958 (and second runner up to Miss America a year later) to launch a career as a singer.   Bryant released several albums on the Carlton and Columbia labels, which generated a handful of top 20 hits in the early 60's.  Faced with uncertain prospects in the music business, she pivoted to making multiple appearances with Bob Hope on his USO tours and on television.  Later in that decade, she attempted a transition to gospel music, which resulted in little success. 

In 1969, Bryant reinvented herself as a television spokesperson, most famously appearing in commercials and at live events for the Florida Citrus Commission. Her career prospered for a number of years until 1977-- when Dade County, Florida passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant led a successful campaign to repeal the ordinance, saying, “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.”  The campaign marked the beginning of an organized opposition to gay rights that spread across the nation. Later the same year, Florida legislators approved a measure prohibiting gay adoption (which was overturned more than 30 years later when it was declared unconstitutional).

However, the success of Bryant's campaign galvanized her opponents, who organized a boycott of orange juice which gained traction with many celebrities.  Bryant's outrageous comments and unabashed bigotry made her a regular target of ridicule by comics and on late-night talk shows.  During a live TV appearance in 1977, she was hit in the face with a pie by a gay activist-- after which she cruelly ad-libbed, "at least it was a fruit pie."  By the next year, her efforts led to the Briggs ballot initiative in California, which would have made pro-gay statements regarding homosexual people or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal. Grassroots organizations, buoyed by public statements against the measure by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Jerry Brown led to a massive defeat at the polls.

The fallout from Bryant's political activism devastated her business and entertainment career.  The Singer Corporation rescinded their offer for Bryant to sponsor a variety show because of the "extensive national publicity arising from [Bryant's] controversial political activities." In 1978, she lost her bid to become vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and divorced her husband a few years later.  Bryant lost a major source of income after Christian fundamentalist audiences and venues shunned her due to the divorce.  The Florida Citrus Commission quietly allowed her contract to lapse, stating that Bryant had "worn out" as a spokesperson.

Bryant rapidly became an object of ridicule, as her image shifted from being a model Christian spokeswoman to that of a self-righteous bigot. This led to many of her endorsements being cancelled and sponsors abandoning her, as she was seen as a major liability.  Bryant tried to revive her music career in a series of small venues.  Her investment in a theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee was a complete failure, leaving behind a series of unpaid employees and creditors.   A venture in Branson, Missouri ended with the state and federal governments both filing liens claiming more than $116,000 in unpaid taxes. Bryant also filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas, after piling up bills from a failed venture in Eureka Springs-- among the debts were nearly $200K in unpaid state and federal taxes.

The sort of public discrimination Bryant fostered has long caused LGBTQ+ people to suffer from higher rates of financial hardship, suicidal ideation, and drug addiction.  To the very end, Bryant was an unrepentant bigot. In the years afterward, she continued to call homosexuals “human garbage” and members of a “deviant lifestyle” who groomed children through sexual abuse.  In 2011, Bryant told an Oklahoma newspaper, “I’ve never regretted what I did.”   Near the end of her life, she even condemned her own granddaughter for being gay.  Good riddance to a truly horrible woman.