Anita Bryant, a Grammy-nominated singer, former Miss Oklahoma, and well-known advocate for orange juice and other businesses, passed away. She gained notoriety in the latter half of her life for her vocal opposition to homosexual rights. She was eighty-four.
According to a statement her family placed on the news website The Oklahoman on Thursday, Bryant passed away in her Edmond, Oklahoma, home on December 16. The cause of death was not disclosed by the family.
Born in Barnsdall, Bryant started singing at a young age. At the age of 12, she presented her own local TV program. After winning the title of Miss Oklahoma in 1958, she quickly launched a lucrative music career. “Paper Roses,” “My Little Corner of the World,” and “Till There Was You” were among her successful hits. Her CD “Anita Bryant… Naturally” earned her two Grammy nominations for best religious performance and one for best spiritual performance. She has been a lifetime Christian.
She had sung at the White House, appeared at the 1968 Democratic and Republican national conventions, and by the late 1960s, she was one of the entertainers accompanying Bob Hope on his USO tours for troops abroad. With her Florida orange juice advertisements that used the slogan, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine,” she also rose to prominence as a commercial spokeswoman.
However, her life and career took a drastically different turn in the late 1970s. Bryant spearheaded a successful effort to overturn a Miami-Dade County, Florida, ordinance that would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation because he was dissatisfied with the cultural shifts of the day. Bryant and her “Save Our Children” organisation, which was backed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell among others, persisted in opposing homosexual rights across the nation, criticising the “deviant lifestyle” of the gay community and referring to gay people as “human garbage.”
Bryant received a lot of backlash in response. Activists created T-shirts that made fun of her, planned boycotts of the goods she promoted, and named a screwdriver drink after her that substituted apple juice for orange. An activist shoved a pie in her face while she was in Iowa. She filed for bankruptcy after her marriage to her first husband, Bob Green, ended and her entertainment career deteriorated.
Her legacy was contested and continued in Florida. In 1998, the prohibition against sexual discrimination was reinstated. “She won the campaign, but she lost the battle in time,” LGBTQ+ activist and board member of Safe Schools South Florida Tom Lander told The Associated Press on Friday. However, Lander also recognised the “parental rights” movement, which has sparked a new wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and book bans in Florida, spearheaded by hardline groups like Moms Against Liberty.
“It’s really related to what’s going on right now,” Lander remarked.
Bryant led Anita Bryant Ministries International in Oklahoma during the last years of her life. Charles Hobson Dry, her second husband and a NASA test astronaut, passed away last year. Her family has stated that she is survived by seven grandchildren, two stepdaughters, and four children.
