Reuters USA reports that film companies are preparing a film about 1970s anti-gay campaigner Anita Bryant, whose efforts to turn gays into straights put gay rights back for years in the USA.
In 1959 and ‘60, she was a major pop star with three million-selling records. After marrying and settling in Florida, she reverted to Christian music and, projecting a wholesome image, began plugging such blue-chip companies as Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and Holiday Inn.
Her most famous celebrity endorsement gig was for the Florida Citrus Commission, for which she sang in a series of TV commercials, closing each ad with the tag line, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
By the mid-’70s, Bryant was a Christian celebrity. She published several best-selling books and won Good Housekeeping’s “Most Admired Woman in America” poll for three consecutive years.
In 1977, she switched to political activism, launching a crusade to repeal a new Miami-Dade County ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children,” she said. Her Save Our Children coalition got the new law overturned within a year, and it took 20 years for it to be reinstated.
Note that recruit. Such language is today regarded as homophobic.
Anita Bryant belongs in the history book.
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