Anita Bryant, the former Miss Oklahoma, Grammy-nominated singer and former face of orange juice who became known in the latter half of her life for her outspoken opposition to gay rights, has died. She was 84 years old.
Bryant died Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to a statement her family released Thursday to The Oklahoman. The family did not give a cause of death.
At the height of her visibility, she was a polarizing figure, embraced as a poster girl by the religious right and condemned by those in show business for her campaign against gay rights.
Bryant was a resident of Barnsdall, Okla., who started singing at an early age, and was just 12 years old when she hosted her own local television show. She was crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and soon began a successful music career, including her hit singles While you were gone, paper roses and My little corner of the world. A lifelong Christian, she received two Grammy nominations for Best Spiritual Performance and one for Best Spiritual Performance, for the album Anita Bryant … Of course.
By the late 1960s, she was among the entertainers who joined Bob Hope on his USO tours for troupes abroad, sang at the White House, and performed at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968. She also became a highly visible commercial spokesperson. her ads for Florida orange juice with the caption “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
The legacy of a fierce anti-gay crusade
But in the late 1970s, Bryant’s life and career took a dramatic new turn. Dissatisfied with the cultural changes of the time, she led a successful campaign to repeal an ordinance in Miami-Dade County, Florida that would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In an interview with Playboy in 1978, Bryant claimed that she was motivated to act because she believed that those who wanted the right not to lose their jobs simply because of their sexuality “were asking for special privileges that violated Florida state law, not to mention God’s law. “
During a 1977 televised news conference in Iowa about her crusade against homosexuality, gay rights activist Thom Higgins threw a pie in her face.
“At least it was fruit pie,” Bryant joked, then began praying for Higgins before bursting into tears.
“Always for the bigots,” said Higgins, who coined the term gay pride, before being escorted out.
The peeling was one of the early incidents of someone getting drunk in the face as a political protest, and it would become one of the most enduring moments in Bryant’s life. It was later immortalized in song when the beeping sound was featured in the 30-second intro to Chumbawamba Just desserts.
Although her campaign was successful, she also cemented Bryant in the public mind as a religious crusader against gay rights, rather than a former entertainer. It became a staple in shows such as Saturday night liveTV series Maude and The Carol Burnett Showwhere Burnett dressed as Bryant for a skit where she sang and served orange juice to drag queens and actors dressed as LGBTQ+ icons.
Supported by Reverend Jerry Falwell among others, Bryant continued to oppose gay rights across the country, denouncing what she called the “deviant lifestyle” of the gay community and calling gay people “human trash.”
Bryant, in turn, became the subject of much criticism. Activists organized boycotts against the products she endorsed, designed T-shirts mocking her and named a drink for her – a variation of the Screwdriver that replaced orange juice with apple juice. The boycott nearly cost her her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission, which eventually refused to renew her contract in 1980, and she lost other opportunities amid controversy, including a contract for her own TV show.
Her career in the entertainment industry faltered, her marriage to her first husband Bob Green fell apart, and she later filed for bankruptcy.
In Florida, her legacy was contested and perpetuated. The ban on gender discrimination was reinstated in 1998.
“She won the campaign, but she lost the battle on time,” Tom Lander, an LGBTQ+ activist and board member of the advocacy group Safe Schools South Florida, told The Associated Press on Friday.
But Lander also acknowledged that the “parental rights” movement, which has fueled a recent wave of book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Florida led by conservative organizations like Moms For Liberty, has its roots in the harmful rhetoric Bryant has been spreading.
“It’s so connected to what’s going on today,” Lander said.
Bryant spent the second part of her life in Oklahoma, where she ran Anita Bryant Ministries International. Her second husband, NASA test astronaut Charles Hobson Dry, died last year.
Bryant’s granddaughter, Sarah Green, Slate said in 2021 that she told her grandmother she was gay when she was 21, and that Bryant responded by telling her that “the devil” invented homosexuality “to lead people away from God.”
According to the statement of her family, she is survived by four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren.
