[Clipping: Anita Bryant on the march: The lessons of Dade County] Part: 2 of 8
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that the issues seemed drawn in
total, simple clarity. Numerous
complicated questions of sexuality
and sexual politics had been
obscured by both sides. From a
feminist perspective, the campaign
was additionally troublesome,
since the pro-gay forces were pre-
dominantly male and often sexist,
and because the person most asso-
ciated with the anti-gay position
was a woman, Anita Bryant.
The drama of Miami began un-
folding last winter, when Ruth
Shack, a Dade County Metropoli-
tan Commissioner, introduced a
bill banning discrimination on the
basis of "sexual or affectional pref-
erence" in housing, employment,
and public accommodations. Some
40 other U.S. cities and towns had
already passed similar legislation.
Bryant, a "born again" Baptist who
lives with her manager-husband
and their four children on a
$300,000 Miami Beach estate
equipped with a yacht, a- heart-
shaped sunken bathtub, and a
mini-prayer altar in the bedroom,
first heard about the proposed law
from her pastor. Even before it was
passed by the commission, accord-
ing to the gospel of Anita, she was
appointed by God as His personal
messenger in the War on Perverts:
"God drew a circle, and I stepped
inside, where He put fire in my
heart." Within weeks, she and an
army of mostly housewife volun-
teers, working under a specially-
created all-male advisory board
called "Save Our Children," had
gathered some 64,000 voter signa-
tures to force a June referendum on
repeal.
Led by Jack Campbell, the mil-
lionaire owner of a chain of gay
male bathhouses, the mostly male
Miami gay political community
began a national fund-raising drive
that collected a staggering $352,000
by June 7 referendum day (at least
five times more than the Florida
Equal Rights Amendment forces
could muster), and imported a
corps of New York and California
campaign talent.
One of the these was Bronx
Borough Presidential AssistantEthan Geto, the coalition's media
coordinator, who early on made
what he now feels was an honora-
ble but crucial mistake. "We de-
cided that we couldn't, in six
weeks, change a voter's mind
about homosexuality," said Geto.
"What we could do was to say to
voters-especially to Jews and
blacks and Cubans who know
about oppression-'okay, you
don't have to like us, but at least
give us our human rights like
everyone else.' " Geto's brilliantly
written ads focused not on sexual-
ity but on the American tradition of
freedom for all (one showed a copy
of the Constitution with a hand
blue-penciling out a list of minority
groups until no one was left), and
the coalition garnered an impres-
sive list of pro-human rights
endorsements from liberal politi-
cians, clergy, psychologists, and
the business community.
The trouble was that Bryant's
group was daily raving about
child-molesters and sex-crazed
sinners. (On the pro-gay side, one
small breakaway group, led by Bob
Kunst, a latter-day love-and-joy
flower child, did talk about sexual-
ity, but usually only in the most
superior-sounding terms. He pub-
licly told the secretary of Save Our
Children that he was "uptight"
and called Governor Reubin
Askew "a sexually insecure lame
duck" when he came out against
the ordinance.) Meanwhile Save
Our Children neatly co-opted the
coalition's civil rights theme by
supporting "the civil rights of par-
ents: to save their children from
homosexual influence."
Early on, when the polls showed
the gays winning, many people
saw the campaign both as an im-
portant political phenomenon and
as a piece of comic opera. I re-
member feeling disbelief when my
friend Perry Deane Young (co-
author of David Kopay's account of
coming out as a homosexual foot-
ball star) returned from Miami and
told me: "They're not just talking
about taking away our rights-
they're talking about killing us." In
fact, the sheer Yahoo brutality ofiI
Save Our Children was grossly
underreported in the national
press. Part of their press kit, for
example, was a paper entitled
"Why Certain Sexual Deviations
Are Punishable by Death," citing
scriptural proof that only two de-
terrents to homosexuality exist:
salvation through Christ, and the
death penalty.
"As barnyard animals become
restless, confused, and panicky
just before a hurricane, tornado, or
earthquake," the paper explained,
"so too these vile beastly creatures
evidently sense the coming judg-
ment. Their frantic efforts to obtain
acceptance and public approval
and their worldwide shameless
marches. . . are evidence of this as
it was in ancient Sodom and
Gomorrah." The paper went on to
condemn "racial mixing of human
seed" and a variety of sexual
acts, i.e., "Cunnilingus. Oral sex
where the tongue is used to stimu-
late the female clitoris producing
an orgasm and the discharge eaten.76/Ms./September 1977
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van Gelder, Lindsy. [Clipping: Anita Bryant on the march: The lessons of Dade County], clipping, September 1977; Arlington County, VA. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1787571/m1/2/?q=%22~1%22~1&rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.