As soon as I read the news, I shouted, “We need to get some pie and celebrate!” to the Complimentary Spouse in the next room.
“Why?” he said, peeking around the corner.
“Anita Bryant died.”
“That’s great,” he said.
My husband is gracious, and I don’t want to suggest that he delights in others’ deaths, so let’s all assume that he was excited only by the prospect of dessert.
But me? I was delighted to say farewell to Bryant. Pie was just the icing on the cake.
Apologies for using a cake metaphor there. Stupid, sloppy writing on my part. I should have said the pie was the cherry on the sundae.
Apologies again. I promise right now I will drop the dessert metaphors and get back to the matter at hand: Why Bryant’s death made me feel like … um …
I can see that disapproving look on your face. Since everyone finds my wordplay delightful, I assume you’re judging me because it sounds like I’m celebrating the loss of a human life.
I assure you I’m not.
I’m celebrating the loss of what that human life represented.
Bryant was a person just like you and me — she had a brain, a pulse, and, I assume, the ability to click on all of the squares containing bridges in a photo. You know, all the things that prove we’re human.
But, unlike most of us, Bryant was also a persona. She made discrimination her identity, her public image, and her mission — and, moreover, she did so intentionally apologetically unapologetically. Her persona had the perseverance, confidence, and soullessness of a bot trying to fool a Google CAPTCHA.
I find little joy in the death of Bryant, the human, but I’m giddy about the demise of her persona, the artifice she constructed to inflict harm on others.
In other words, I have no interest in pissing on the dead woman’s grave, but I’m gonna shit all over her legacy.
Let the shitting begin!
A Not So Long Time Ago in a County Not So Far Away
Picture it: Sicily, 1922 Greenwich Village, 1969 — The Stonewall Riots sparked the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement. With activism and pride, we began chipping away at the laws and prejudices that had forced us into the shadows.
It worked and, for a while, momentum was on our side. More states overturned sodomy laws. Gay men and lesbians were elected to public office. Some cities and counties began considering anti-discrimination laws.
Dade County, now known as Miami-Dade County, was one of those counties. On January 18, 1977, the county commission approved a wide-ranging anti-discrimination ordinance that banned discrimination based on “affectional or sexual preference” in areas such as housing and employment.1
We’ve Got Trouble … With a Capital T, That Rhymes With B, and That Stands for Bryant
Enter Anita Bryant, an outspoken Christian fundamentalist, Miss America runner-up, moderately successful caterwauler, and orange juice spokesperson.2
Bryant, apoplectic at the prospect of LGBTQ people being treated with dignity and respect, founded Save Our Children to fight the ordinance. She attracted an army of people filled with outrage (and, in some cases, flush with cash). Imagine the intensity and entitlement of a million Karens, aggrieved about an issue that didn’t impact them one whit, demanding to speak to your manager NOW.
Bryant couldn’t stop the county commission from passing the ordinance, so she doubled down by forcing a special election on the issue. It took place in June. She won by a margin of two to one.
Although this may have been a local ballot, people saw it as a national referendum on LGBTQ equality. Those fighting antidiscrimination laws in other parts of America were emboldened, and Bryant traveled the country to support their efforts. Let’s call it the Anti-Rainbow Tour.3
Now we get to the pie. At a stop in Des Moines, Iowa, a protester gave Bryant her just desserts.
It was a cathartic, iconic moment, but, as Marie Antoinette taught us, dessert does little to deter the people out to get you. We pushed ahead, of course, but wins would take longer and be more difficult to achieve than before.
The Anti-Gay Agenda
The Bryant/Save Our Children playbook will sound familiar because it’s still used today. It’s a toxic stew of lies, fear, and hatred, but sadly, it works.
Here are the main talking points and how Bryant articulated them:
I’m the victim
“I just want to share my faith.”
They’re a threat
“Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit.”4
“It is sad when a particular group of people, no matter what they are, are able to … thrust their way of life on a society.”
They’re sick
“[Their] sad and sick values belie the word ‘gay,’ which they pathetically use to cover their unhappy lives.”
This has nothing to do with civil rights
“The attempt by homosexuals to label this as a civil-rights issue was nothing but camouflage. If we as a nation eventually came to the place where this is sanctioned as a legitimate civil-rights issue, then what is to stop the adulterer from claiming ‘adulterer rights,’ the murderer from shouting ‘murderer rights,’ the thief to claim ‘extortioner rights,’ and a rebellious young person to insist on “rebellious-child rights’?”
“It is simply not true that all human beings have the same rights.”
I’m doing this out of love
“Look, I don’t hate homosexuals. I’ve always said that I love the sinner but I hate the sin.”
A Symbolic Life. A Symbolic Death.
So, here’s where my take gets controversial.
Bryant reduced LGBTQ people from individuals to abstractions. This dehumanization makes it easy to justify discrimination and excuse bigotry.
But here’s the thing: You can’t turn others into abstractions without turning yourself into one as well. Bryant willingly became the archetype for anti-gay activism. She succeeded not as an individual but as an idea, an ideal, an inspiration.
Think of this as a human form of synecdoche.
OK, you’re making that face again. You’re about to ask if I’m giving you free rein to party when someone you don’t like dies.
Nope.
Grace compels us to mourn the death of any person, even those whose personality, politics, and pasts we don’t agree with. But it doesn’t require us to mourn the demise of a public persona designed to fuel hate and support discrimination.
So, break out the champagne. We can quickly pour one out for the life that was lost, then raise a glass to celebrate the symbolic end of the source of so much pain and misery.
And Nothing but the Truth
You may not agree with the section above, and that’s fine. You can mark Bryant’s passing any way you want. But no one has a pass to bestow on her the dignity in death that she didn’t earn in life.
There is a tendency to treat obituaries like glamour shots: highlight the attractive features and airbrush the flaws. Doing so might seem respectful or, at least, an attempt at objectivity. But we can’t learn from history if parts of it have been distorted or omitted. We must record and remember the very real pain and anguish these people inflicted.
Bryant and her kind became icons in life. We must not be complicit in turning them into myths or martyrs in death.
This doesn’t mean we can’t recall their life stories with context and even compassion. It means we can’t ignore the ugly bits out of a sense of decorum.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg put it this way after Rush Limbaugh died in 2021:
Hope You Had the Pie of Your Life
The post-pie, pre-death years were not good to Bryant. Some continued to laud her, others vilified her, but most simply forgot about her except as a punchline.5
After Miami, Bryant continued pushing for anti-LGBTQ legislation in several cities, with mixed success. She also fought for the Briggs Initiative in California — which failed, thanks to the efforts of Harvey Milk and others.
Her anti-gay crusade was bad for her career: She lost her job as an orange juice spokesperson and was spurned by Hollywood.6 She filed for bankruptcy protection twice.
She ran for vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1978. And lost. Some voters said her views on civil rights were too noxious.7
Her personal life was filled with irony (for her) and schadenfreude (for us). When she filed for divorce, her husband objected, citing … wait for it … his fundamental Christian beliefs. (She eventually divorced him and remarried.) Then, in 2021, her granddaughter came out as a lesbian when she announced her engagement. I don’t know if Bryant was invited to the wedding.
I can afford Bryant a sliver of sympathy here. This couldn’t have been an easy life for her. At one point, her future looked bright. If things had worked out differently, her life could have been filled with fame, financial security, and admiration.
But then I remember why things didn’t work out that way for Bryant. How she invested whatever potential and talent she had into a crusade of hate and lies.
That’s when I push that sliver of sympathy aside and reach instead for a huge slice of pie.
Footnotes
- At the time, this was the largest and best-known county to embrace an anti-discrimination ordinance. It was a national news story. ↩︎
- “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.” — Attributed to Dorothy Parker ↩︎
- Apologies to Eva Peron and the entire country of Argentina. ↩︎
- Here’s how Harvey Milk began his famous Freedom Day speech in 1978: “My name is Harvey Milk — and I want to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve your democracy from the John Briggs and the Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry.” ↩︎
- Many people I know were surprised by her death because they thought she was already dead. She faded from view years ago. She was just another embarrassing thing from the 1970s we all wanted to forget, like pet rocks and harvest gold appliances. ↩︎
- I hear Hollywood is rife with gays. Broadway too! Who woulda thunk it? ↩︎
- I suspect the group would consider her views too lenient today. ↩︎
- Director’s note: Use this reference for your line reading. ↩︎