In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Anita Bryant, Whose Anti-Gay Politics Undid a Singing Career, Is Dead at 84. (Anita Gates, NY Times, January 11, 2025)
In October 1963, our UN Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, was spat upon in Dallas by an angry right-wing mob. Ambassador Stevenson replied, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of ignorance." Justice Antonin Scalia used the term "Kulturkampf" in a Supreme Court decision to describe the anti-Gay haters' sick schtick. Jerry Falwell called for a "Thirty Years War" against homosexuality. Bigots' bumptious bloviating helped elect candidates who used bigotry as a weapon in their culture war. The bigots lost that war. Bigtime. Gay marriage is legal now. Gay rights are respected now. The tawdry tedious termagants angry attack on diversity have failed. As Langston Hughes said, "Let America be America again." Pray for the soul of Anita Bryant. From The New York Times:
Anita Bryant, Whose Anti-Gay Politics Undid a Singing Career, Is Dead at 84
The former beauty queen and spokeswoman for Florida orange juice was an all-American entertainer before she began crusading against L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen who had a flourishing music career in the 1960s and ’70 but whose opposition to gay rights — she called homosexuality “an abomination” — virtually destroyed her career, died on Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Okla. She was 84.
The cause was cancer, her son William Green said. The family placed a paid obituary in The Oklahoman, a newspaper in Oklahoma City, on Thursday.
Ms. Bryant was just 18 when she won the Miss Oklahoma beauty title and was named second runner-up in the Miss America pageant. She promptly turned that success into a lucrative show business career.
For almost two decades, she had a smooth run — entertaining troops on U.S.O. tours with Bob Hope, performing during Billy Graham’s evangelical tours and co-hosting nationally televised parades. She sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s graveside.
Most memorably, she represented the Florida Citrus Commission in a long campaign of television commercials, in which she sang “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and offered the tagline: “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
Wearing gingham, ruffles or both, she sauntered down country lanes (juice pitcher in hand), talked to cartoon birds and beamed with joy about the wonders of vitamin C.
Then, in early 1977, Dade County, Fla. — which includes Miami, where Ms. Bryant lived — gave its final approval to an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals. A group of opponents, led by Ms. Bryant, turned up to protest. “The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children’s rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community,” she said.
She founded Save Our Children, an anti-gay organization that gave rise to the modern-day religious right's strategy of tying homosexuality to perceived threats against children. Her public image — many called her a “Christian celebrity” — was changed forever.
Less than two months later, a television producer told her that the publicity around her “controversial political activities” meant that she would not be hired for a planned variety-show pilot.
“The blacklisting of Anita Bryant has begun,” Ms. Bryant announced to the press. Although the citrus commission said publicly that her activism would not affect her $100,000-a-year arrangement, the contract was canceled before the decade ended.
Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen who had a flourishing music career in the 1960s and ’70 but whose opposition to gay rights — she called homosexuality “an abomination” — virtually destroyed her career, died on Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Okla. She was 84.
The cause was cancer, her son William Green said. The family placed a paid obituary in The Oklahoman, a newspaper in Oklahoma City, on Thursday.
Ms. Bryant was just 18 when she won the Miss Oklahoma beauty title and was named second runner-up in the Miss America pageant. She promptly turned that success into a lucrative show business career.
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