Anita Bryant has died...

[NYBBGUY58]

Does it matter? She served as a figurehead for anti-gay hatred, and was rendered irrelevant. Her music career was destroyed and her entertainment venues went bankrupt. Plus, her views are now apparently mainstream GOP. It's at best a pyrrhic victory in which I take little satisfaction.

 

A joke circulated during the early years of her ascendency:

I saw Anita Bryant on TV and she looked AWFUL. You know why?

She can't find anyone to do her hair!

[ellentonboy]

If we learned anything from the Anita Bryant fiasco it's  that, with some coordination, you can run the homophobes "out of town".  Sure she had her time in the spotlight.  It did revitalize a lack luster career, where winning Miss Oklahoma  didn't translate into a successful vocal career.  Her book "The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality " was released in 1977.  She did have two top 10 Billboard hits, and even appeared on "Dick Clark's American Bandstand".  She  managed to grab three Grammy nominations, and sang at the 1971 Super Bowl.  But those things don't translate necessarily into long term cash.

What hurt Bryant was the fact the Florida Citrus Commission dropped her as a spokeswoman.   Since the 1977 referendum, Bryant divorced her husband and left south Florida for good.   Though she continued to perform her one time conservative friends dropped her as well, stating her divorce was not in line with being a good role model.

She may have taken a pie in the face, but reports state that she had no regrets about her decisions and her stance against gay rights.  She's just a joke from the past, and considering what gays are facing with the current administration in the US, frankly we have more things to be concerned about.

[Olderkinkybiguy]

I grew up in Florida and remember having to see her sorry ass on TV as a young non-heterosexual. I never paid her much mind. I learned early in life that some people just suck. 

[757neg4poz]

If she wasn't utterly hostile to the gays, she would have been set for life with a gay fandom. Gloria Gaynor for example may have been deeply religious and may have harbored some homophobic thoughts in her private life, but she was smart enough to largely keep them to herself. The gays literally make or break your career.

[scarnick]

Finally some good news

[hntnhole]

I have a grrrrrrrrreat A.B. even to share:

Years ago (still lived in Chicago) when the Orangeblossom was still in bloom (fading, but ...), she was hired in to perform at an enormous, stone Masonic Lodge on Chicago Ave in Chicago.  She was at the height of her "Hate Gays" schtick, and word got out she was coming to perform at that venue for the Masons.  This was long before cellphones, but the gay network in Chgo responded:  everyone started calling everyone, a demonstration of our own was being planned, and get to the area asap.  Well.  That area was infamous for lack of parking, and everyone jumped on the el trains headed for the Chicago Ave station (in that area, it was the subway).  

We told the secy that we'd be gone for an indeterminate amount of time, and took the elevated for the Near North side.  By the time the train was half-way to Chicago Ave, it was  jammed full of guys, all excited, all itching for a confrontation.  The train cars were s.r.o., everyone laughing, carrying on, it was great.  Got to the Chicago Ave (it was the subway at that point), and every stairwell up to grade was jammed with gay guys pouring out of the subway.  Thousands.  It was fan-fukkin-tastic.  

The queen of cuntery was due in about an hour, so we heard, and as we worked our way closer to the Masonic Temple, the cops started attempting their version of "crowd control", but the demonstrators outnumbered the cops by at least 100 - 1, and we started circling the temple chanting, all of that.  As the time for her appearance approached, there were thousands of gay men, pissed off to the enth degree, and no chance of any car getting within a couple of blocks of that big old stone Masonic Temple.  The rest is mostly gossip - we weren't so close to the temple we could see anything, but guys had climbed up on rooftops of one-storey stores to see, and hollered stuff down.  And when all was said and done, the bitch told her driver to turn around (apparently, she'd been driven from the W side of Chicago Ave, and most of the crowd was on the E and S side).  And, she took her wobble*, turned around and the cops escorted her car out to O'Hare.  The whole thing was fantastic from start to finish - literally thousands of gay men, dropping what they were doing, coming together to demonstrate against one of the more vocal critics of who and what we are.  That cunt hasn't even crossed my mind again until just now.  

I'll be more generous than she was to us:  I hope she goes to purgatory**, now that we're rid of her filth.  Not to Hell, mind you - just to purgatory (which I don't believe in anyway).

*a vocal pedagogist's term, and not a flattering one

** I think that's where the souls of dead people go to .... well ..... think things over?  

[PrisonbaiT]

She is a cause for many suicides of young gays.   I cannot feel sorry for her dead.  Sadly recently with the republicans back on the force hatred against gays is back on the rise

[gimpsub69]

26 minutes ago, PrisonbaiT said:

She is a cause for many suicides of young gays.   I cannot feel sorry for her dead.  Sadly recently with the republicans back on the force hatred against gays is back on the rise

Only person responsible for some unaliving themselves is the person who decided to unalive themselves. Plenty of people who haven't unalived themselves have faced the same hatred or worse and didn't take their life. 

 

This reminds me of when Pat Robertson died and gays were celebrating as well. Like you realize that shows how much control their opinions actually had on you, no matter what you said previously. 

[PrisonbaiT]

17 minutes ago, gimpsub69 said:

Only person responsible for some unaliving themselves is the person who decided to unalive themselves. Plenty of people who haven't unalived themselves have faced the same hatred or worse and didn't take their life. 

 

This reminds me of when Pat Robertson died and gays were celebrating as well. Like you realize that shows how much control their opinions actually had on you, no matter what you said previously. 

Sadly a good friend of mine took his own life, his parents where followers of Bryant.  They made his life hell,  he no longer could take it, and he did end it, so you cannot change ML y idea about her.

[hairyone]

My mother taught me to never talk bad about the dead, only good. Anita Bryant is dead. Good!

[onlyraw]

I actually was a bit surprised to hear that she was still alive.

While I never got the chance to join an in person protest- I was part of tge boycott OJ crowd back then

and it was hard as, while I have never been a coffee drinker…my morning glass of Orange Juice was got me up and going in the morning…. that was my senior year of college and I was not out yet so had a hard time when I was home for Christmas break explaining to my mother why I was skipping my morning OJ

(and I had to give up OJ and Meyers’s dark rum - very tasty - but worth it for the community)

I recently restarted my Florida OJ boycott when the current gov started really going after our community.  (Now at least you can find oranges and other citrus fruits from places other than FL  - thank you globalization)

Interesting how times change…. The Christian right dumped her after her divorce…. And yet they think that two time divorced and serial adulterer Trump is somehow anointed by god and voted for him in droves 

[hntnhole]

22 hours ago, PrisonbaiT said:

She is a cause for many suicides of young gays.   I cannot feel sorry for her dead

Neither can I. 

The creature was drawing breath at the time she came to Chicago to spread her hateful message, and I regret not one second of that afternoon.  I'd do it again.  When some public figure decides to spew hateful commentary regarding a segment of the human family - any segment - I will gladly resist, and do so publicly.  

Hatred, when experienced by one group of human beings, is easily recognized as such when directed at some other group of fellow humans, and subsequently resisted by other disrespected/marginalized groups of people.  Ideally, that should extend to the rest of that society, but the ball has to start rolling somehow.  

The more we resist hatreds aimed at any group, the better it becomes for everyone.  We don't need to physically harm others when they prove themselves deserving, but there's nothing at all wrong with resistance, and everything right about it.   Unless I miss my guess, we've got an enormous plate of hatreds about to be set in front of us, and the more we defend others, the more we defend ourselves.  

[BBBxCumDumpster]

And like revenge, it will be served cold.

Edited January 11 by BBBxCumDumpster
Added a period.

[rawfuckingonly]

On 1/10/2025 at 8:46 PM, onlyraw said:

And yet they think that two time divorced and serial adulterer Trump is somehow anointed by god and voted for him in droves 

Well they're wrong. Trump wasn't anointed by god. Trump was anointed by the vast majority of American people who voted for him in droves. Lol! "Serial adulterer" .....please. 

You know, if it wasn't for double standards, the REgressive Left wouldn't have any at all! 

 

[BootmanLA]

3 hours ago, rawfuckingonly said:

Well they're wrong. Trump wasn't anointed by god. Trump was anointed by the vast majority of American people who voted for him in droves. Lol! "Serial adulterer" .....please. 

You know, if it wasn't for double standards, the REgressive Left wouldn't have any at all! 

 

Vast majority my ass. Trump won by one of the smallest popular vote margins in the last 100+ years, his lying lies to the contrary not withstanding.

Put another way, the margin of Biden's victory over Trump in 2020 was more than double the margin in 2024. So if that pathetic finish counts as "vast majority", what did Biden's finish counts as?