ADVOCATE: It’s most likely Anita Bryant’s worst nightmare: Her granddaughter is gay and marrying a woman. Granddaughter Sarah Green talked about her relationship with the notorious antigay crusader on a recent episode of Slate’s podcast One Year, hosted by Josh Levin and focusing on 1977, a year when the nation seemed on the verge of great change.
Bryant, a beauty queen and pop singer, was a spokeswoman for Florida orange growers in the 1970s when she gained new fame with her opposition to gay rights. Miami-Dade County’s government adopted an ordinance in 1977 banning employment and housing discrimination based on sexual orientation, making it one of the first municipalities to do so. Bryant, who had testified against the ordinance, was outraged at its passage and led a campaign dubbed “Save Our Children” to persuade voters to repeal it.
Along the way, Bryant became a darling of her fellow conservative Christians and an enemy of gay people and their allies; at one point, an activist threw a pie in her face. Miami-Dade citizens did repeal the ordinance, with over 70 percent voting to do so. The city-county government restored the ordinance in 1998 and added gender identity to it in 2014. » | Trudy Ring | Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Life is funny: So often in life, the very thing you have criticized others for doing comes back to you so that you yourself must deal with it. Moral and takeaway: Be careful what you criticize others for doing! – Mark
Watch Anita Bryant’s ‘pie-in-the-face’ incident here.
