Anita Bryant, the former Miss Oklahoma, Grammy-nominated singer and one-time face of orange juice who became known in the second half of her life for her outspoken opposition to gay rights, has died. She was 84 years old.
Bryant died on December 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to a statement published by her family on The Oklahoman news website. The family did not provide a cause of death.
At the height of her fame, she was a polarizing figure, hailed as a poster girl by the religious right and condemned by show business executives for her campaign against gay rights.
Bryant was a resident of Barnsdall, Oklahoma, who began singing at a young age and hosted her own local television show when she was just 12 years old. In 1958, she became Miss Oklahoma and soon began a successful recording career, including: Until it was you, paper roses AND My little corner of the world. A lifelong Christian, she received two Grammy Award nominations for the album, for Best Sacred Performance and one for Best Spiritual Performance. Anita Bryant… Naturally.
In the late 1960s, she was one of the artists who joined Bob Hope on his USO tour for troops overseas, sang at the White House, and performed at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968. She also became a highly visible sales spokesman, her Florida orange juice advertisements with the slogan “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
The legacy of a virulent crusade against gay rights
However, in the late 1970s, Bryant's life and career began on a completely new path. Dissatisfied with the cultural changes of the time, she led a successful campaign to repeal an ordinance in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
In a 1978 interview with Playboy, Bryant stated that she was moved to act because she believed that those who wanted the right not to lose their job simply because of their sexuality were “asking in this way for special privileges that violate Florida 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 a fruitcake,” Bryant joked, before beginning to pray for Higgins before bursting into tears.
“It's always for the bigots,” said Higgins, who also coined the term gay pride before it was brought out.
Pieing was one of the first times someone was punched in the face as part of a political protest, and it became one of the most enduring moments of Bryant's life. This was later immortalized in song when the sound of cake appeared in the 30-second intro of the song Chumbawamba Only desserts.
Although her campaign was successful, it also cemented Bryant in the public mind as a religious crusader opposed to gay rights rather than a former entertainer. She became a punch line on shows like Saturday Night LiveTV series Maude AND The Carol Burnett Showwhere Burnett dressed up as Bryant for a skit in which she sang and served orange juice to drag queens and actors dressed as LGBTQ+ icons.
Bryant, supported by Reverend Jerry Falwell among others, continued to oppose gay rights across the country, denouncing what she called the gay community's “deviant lifestyle” and calling gays “human trash.”
In return, Bryant became the target of much criticism. Activists organized boycotts of the products she promoted, designed T-shirts mocking her, and named a drink after her – a version of a screwdriver that replaced orange juice with apple juice. The boycott nearly cost her her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission, which ultimately refused to renew the contract in 1980, and in the wake of the controversy, she lost other opportunities, including a contract for her own television show.
Her career in the entertainment industry declined, her marriage to first husband Bob Green fell apart, and she later filed for bankruptcy.
In Florida, her legacy was questioned and perpetuated. The ban on gender discrimination was reinstated in 1998.
“She won the campaign, but she lost the battle in the nick of 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 spurred the recent wave of bans, and Florida's anti-LGBTQ+ laws, spearheaded by conservative groups like Moms For Liberty, are rooted in the harmful rhetoric spread by Bryant .
“This is very relevant to what's happening today,” Lander said.
Bryant spent the latter part of her life in Oklahoma, where she headed Anita Bryant Ministries International. Her second husband, NASA test astronaut Charles Hobson Dry, died last year.
Bryant's granddaughter, Sarah Green, he told Slate in 2021 that she told her grandmother at age 21 that she was gay, and that Bryant responded by telling her that “the devil” invented homosexuality “to lead people astray from God.”
A family statement says she left behind four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren.