(NEXSTAR) — Anita Bryant Dry, also known as Anita Bryant, a singer and activist against the advancement of gay rights, has died at the age of 84, her family announced. obituary Posted on Thursday. She died on December 16th at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Bryant, a native of Barnsdall, Oklahoma, rose to fame in the 1950s, becoming Miss Oklahoma and having a career on the music charts. Bryant's notable hits include “Till There Was You” and “In My Little Corner of the World.”
Bryant was a well-known singer for television broadcasts and political events, including singing at the 1971 Super Bowl V halftime show. He was also known as a television spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice, appearing in national commercials throughout the 1970s.
But much of Bryant's notoriety is due to her campaign for gay rights in the late 1970s, which began with her advocacy against Florida's ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bryant led a coalition called “Save Our Children” that opposed the gay rights movement.
Bryant's published views also included the pernicious historical fallacy that homosexuals “recruit” children through sexual abuse. This concept has been disproven in various ways the study These show that there is no correlation between sexual orientation and whether someone abuses a child.
Bryant's anti-gay focus made him a distinctly conservative figure, persona non grata. It is also claimed that Bryant was one of the first people to be “piped” in public. The incident occurred during a television appearance in Iowa, where author and gay rights activist Tom L. Higgins hit her in the face with a pie.
History says Bryant joked that the pie was a “fruit pie” and then began praying for God to forgive Higgins' “deviant lifestyle.”
Bryant faced a lot of backlash from the entertainment industry for participating in this advocacy, including having his offer to appear on his weekly variety show rescinded; Lost as vice presidential candidate of the Southern Baptist Convention. In the 1970s and '80s, Bryant became a joke in the entertainment industry, with her name often appearing as a punch line on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Loss of revenue and opportunity led to Bryant file for bankruptcy.
Bryant's divorce from her first husband, Bob Greene, led to her being shunned by many conservative and religious people. According to Green, in 2007 miami herald According to the article, some of Bryant's fans felt that her divorce was a hypocritical move by someone who preaches “family unity.”
In her later years, Bryant focused on the faith organization she founded in the 1960s, Anita Bryant Ministries International. She married her second husband Charlie Dry, a former NASA test crew member, in 1990.
She spent much of her subsequent life away from the spotlight, stating: washington post In 1996, she said she often reflected on the anti-gay rights movement and had no regrets about it.
“Would I do it again? I've asked myself that question over and over again,” Bryant told WaPo. “I still feel that what I did was right. When you rebel against what God says is wrong, there are repercussions. That's the sad part. It's not just gay people, it's straight people. This also applies to
Back in 2021, Anita Bryant's granddaughter Sarah Greene She announced that she is gay and plans to marry her girlfriend. Sarah Greene said that when she came out to her grandmother, she told her that “homosexuality was a delusion concocted by the devil” and that she should pray until she realized she was straight. At the time, Sarah expressed confusion about whether or not to invite Bryant to her wedding.
In addition to her parents and several siblings, Bryant was preceded in death by Dry, according to her obituary. She is survived by four children, two stepdaughters, seven grandchildren and their spouses.
