Anita Bryant (1940 – 2025) started out as a pop singer, beauty pageant winner, and brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission. What she will be most remembered for, however, is her involvement in the Save Our Children campaign, beginning in 1977.
During the late 1970s, Save Our Children was a political movement that sought to repeal recently enacted Florida laws protecting (gay) sexual orientation. (This narrow definition is not a coded message on my part. In the 1970s, “gay” was the only portion of the currently defined LGBTQ spectrum that got much awareness, at least at the public policy level.)
I was just a kid in the late 1970s, and completely oblivious to the specific controversy in Florida. I do recall, however, that this was a period in which Americans were rethinking the changes and excesses of the recently concluded 1960s, both for good and for bad.
Conservatism was making a comeback, and gay rights were far from the only topic of debate. Abortion, pornography, the ERA, laissez-faire capitalism, the death penalty, gun control, the war on drugs…both sides of all of these issues were constantly being shouted in the public space.
Sounds a lot like the 2020s, doesn’t it? And yet that was almost 50 years ago. Americans will constantly debate what individual freedom means, and what the right to privacy means. Where does the individual right to pursue happiness (as defined by an individual) end, and where do the greater needs of society begin?
As at least one recent post should tell you, I personally come down on the side of maximum freedom for consenting adults, where matters of the bedroom are concerned. I don’t care who sleeps with whom, or if they exchange money beforehand, so long as only consenting adults are involved. The way I see it, such matters are none of the government’s business.
But then, I am left of center on some issues, and right of center on others. I was never in favor of the maximum legalization of weed, to the point where legal marijuana has now become an industry. I also favor more gun control than most of my fellow conservatives would agree with.
As for LGBTQ issues? In the 1970s, I probably would have been regarded as a relative liberal on such matters. In 2025, my views (while mixed) would land in the Venn diagram sphere of “somewhat conservative”. But what the LBGTQ lobby is asking for today is not what the gay lobby was asking for in 1977. The context is different.
Today I’ve seen a lot of mean-spirited progressive virtue-signaling on social media about the death of Anita Bryant, a woman who hasn’t been active in the public sphere since Jimmy Carter was POTUS. Most of the people decrying Bryant as the Second Coming of Hitler weren’t even born in 1977. (In fact: I poked around on some of the X and Bluesky profiles that weren’t pure sock puppets. Many of those folks wouldn’t be born for decades.)
Could Anita Bryant have used her considerable talents and influence in a better way? Could she have championed a conservative culture without zeroing in on the issue of sexual orientation? Did she do more harm than good?
We could certainly have a spirited debate about all of that. But given the revisionist political environment of post-1960s America, Bryant was articulating positions that millions of American adults (most of whom are deceased at the time of this writing!) were already taking. 1977 was not 2025. Beware the pitfalls of presentism.
When struck with a pie by a leftwing activist at a 1977 press conference, Bryant asked those around her to forgive the man, then—her face still covered in pie—said a prayer for his redemption. That is the Anita Bryant I will choose to remember, to the extent that I remember her at all.
Anita Bryant, 84, RIP
-ET