X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Anita Bryant


1970s in LGBT rights

Dade County, Florida enacts a Human Rights Ordinance; it is repealed the same year after a militant anti-homosexual-rights campaign led by Anita Bryant.

In perhaps the most discussed anti-gay rights campaign of the decade, singer Anita Bryant led a successful drive in 1977 to repeal a gay-rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida.

Briggs Initiative

The Briggs Initiative was the first failure in a movement that started with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida, to repeal a local gay rights ordinance.

Singer and Florida Citrus Commission spokesperson Anita Bryant received national news coverage for her successful efforts to repeal a Dade County, Florida, ordinance preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Cousin Liz

"Cousin Liz" aired at a time when Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children coalition were sponsoring a series of ballot initiatives to repeal gay anti-discrimination ordinances across the country.

Midge Costanza

Costanza caused controversy when she invited fourteen National Gay Task Force leaders and gay rights activists to the White House at the height of Anita Bryant's homophobic "Save Our Children" campaign.

Super Bowl V

The Southeast Missouri State Indians Band was featured during the halftime show along with singer Anita Bryant.

Think of the children

Anita Bryant led a campaign called Save Our Children. By focusing on the idea that gays and lesbians were somehow threatening to children and biblical morality, Bryant created a rhetorical focus which rallied 70% of the vote to repeal the ordinance, removing those civil rights protections.

Troy Perry

Perry worked in political arenas to oppose Anita Bryant in the Save the Children campaign in 1977, that sought to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by the city of Miami.


City Lights: Country Favorites

It included Smith's covers of Petula Clark's "Downtown" and Anita Bryant's "Paper Roses," as well as a single by Smith, "Burning a Hole in My Mind."


see also