(Another moment in Gay History)

The anniversary of the moment when Anita Bryant was pied in the face by Gay rights activist Tom Higgins during her interview for her crusade against homosexuals was just a few days ago.

While most people knew her as an American singer who had four Top 40 hits in the late 50s and early 60s, the former Miss Oklahoma1958 who made it to Second Runner-Up in the 1959 Miss America Pageant, and then the face of the Florida Citrus Commission, smilingly reminding us that a day without orange juice was like a day without sunshine, for some, and a sizable some, there was the side, the nasty, demeaning side hidden behind the orange juice smile that the general population didn’t see because it didn’t touch them directly.

She was also an outspoken opponent of Gay rights running the Save Our Children” campaign to repeal the local ordinance in Dade County, Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, using the false Christian belief that Homosexuals were after children for recruitment to some “lifestyle” they insist exists, and molestation as her weapon.

She said such things as,

  “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children”;

“If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters”

And,

“All America and all the world will hear what the people have said, and with God’s continued help we will prevail in our fight to repeal similar laws throughout the nation,”

all while referring to Gay people as “human garbage”.

Not content with her activities in Florida, which, although successful at the time, brought about a national boycott of Florida orange juice with Gay bars not serving any drinks with orange juice and the idea spreading to ally bars, politicians, and social justice advocates, an action that would bear results, she went national most notably with her anti-Homosexual campaign inspiring the Briggs Amendment in California which would have made pro-gay statements regarding homosexual people or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal in effect, besides preventing GLBT students access to, at times, lifesaving information while making verbal harassment and bullying on school campuses directed toward GLBT students unstoppable, Gay teachers could be purged throughout the state.

It failed. 

When I taught in Los Angeles I worked with and knew many fine teachers who would not have been there had Anita Bryant been successful, nor would I have even been hired as I would not be allowed to teach.

Times were changing, and Gay people, in becoming more open and visible, revealed that we were as normal as Straight people, and reality began to push aside religious based false fantasies.

Her activism began to be seen as the fanaticism it was, and there was fallout from it.

The Singer Corporation rescinded an offer to sponsor a possible weekly variety show, and the Florida Citrus Commission allowed her contract to lapse after her divorce, a divorce that killed off her Christian fundamentalist audience with invitations to appear at their events drying up which meant the loss of a major source of income.

Although divorce went against her firmly held religious beliefs, since it affected her directly, she eventually came to the belief that,

“The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women’s problems.”

A series of failed businesses in which she was involved with her second husband ended in bankruptcies, a series of unpaid employees and creditors, and unpaid state and federal taxes.

In explaining their divorce, Bryant’s first husband blamed the Gays by playing the victim, claiming those who reject being victimized by him and the Missus were in the wrong for not accepting it, saying,

“Blame gay people? I do. Their stated goal was to put her out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.”

It would appear that the people who rallied others to victimize people based on lies so they could lose their jobs and homes is what was unfair, not those people refusing to be further victimized. 

The woman who had worn her religion on her sleeve and worked to have her religion the basis of civil laws applicable to all citizens, when asked just a few years ago her views on Gays, she said, in my opinion patronizingly, dismissively, and hypocritically,

“I’m more inclined to say live and let live, just don’t flaunt it or try to legalize it”.

She had caused such damage to Gay people and threatened to do more.

So that is why the pie was thrown.

During Bryant’s fading years, I was living in Oklahoma when Brad Henry was elected governor. He was young, a Democrat, and a creature unique in that state at that time, a Liberal politician. I was on the Board of a political committee in the GLBT Community of Oklahoma City who backed him during his campaign as he spoke strongly for the rights of GLBT people. We helped on his campaign with time and money, and this resulted in our getting an invitation to his inaugural ball after his election.

Henry was popular and this led to having three settings at the ball. On one floor there was a child-oriented room with games, child friendly eats, and adult supervision. The governor had children. Another floor had the Blue Room for those who had donated money and/or given of their time up to a certain level. The third floor had the Gold Room for the high-end donors. Most such events would have just had the one Gold Room for the moneyed and influential, but, because of the guy he was, Brad Henry extended the invites beyond the “elites” while still keeping them feeling special.

 The Board I was on met the requirement for the Gold Room, and, as with other organizations being appropriately identified, our table had a sign sticking out of the centerpiece with our organization’s name on it. 

We had opted to abandon the totally irrelevant boy/girl seating pattern for the more relevant boy/boy/, girl/girl or whomever you came with pattern, and at dessert were chattering like children planning to do something naughty about going to the dance as the true couples we were, rather than dancing like Heterosexuals.

It may not seem so now, but this was in the Buckle of the Bible Belt that was Oklahoma in 2003, quite close to what 1958 had been in other states when it really had been 1958, at a state wide function of the state’s movers and shakers where there was a lot of press, and where such an action would not go unnoticed, perhaps the very opposite with unknown reactions, so this was one of those little moments that was actually a pretty big deal.

It was a time in that place when anything done by a GLBT person openly as themselves with no shame or fear was most likely the first time it was done out of the closet making it “A First”.

While we were whispering, the MC for the evening had introduced the local, well known dance band whose leader then introduced its guest performer for the first set as the woman who used to sing with them way back before she became famous, and the dancing began. We hadn’t heard the singer’s name over our and the tables’ around us talking.

We walked into the middle of the dance floor and added a little Gay club spirit to it, dancing men with men and women with women, cutting in and mixing up couples, ending up most of the time right below the singer and getting a lot of thumbs up from the other dancers who I thought were signaling that they supported what we were doing.

That would have been enough to show we were among allies.

However, as it turned out, it wasn’t just that we were unabashedly dancing as the Gay people who had earned our invite just as the other people on or near the dance floor that they thought was great, but more that we had been dancing right below Anita Bryant, herself, as she sang her set just above our heads.

Those of us dancing had no idea of this until the set ended and we were approached by a lot of happy people as we left the dance floor who could not believe we had not only taken the bold step of dancing as Gay couples so freely and proudly, but we had taken the further step of doing it blatantly under the gaze of Miss Anita.

It was a big thing, the memory of which makes me proud to have known, been with, befriended, and worked with the people who sat at the table and danced for the Community.

This was that moment in time.

Those at the table who took that step on to the dance floor that night, at least the ones I can remember after the intervening years, were Edward Kromer and his spouse, Paul Bashline, Anthea Maton, a wonderful artist, Margaret Cox, a power house in the fight for women’s rights in general and Lesbians’ in particular, Tom Mac Donald who, perhaps just doing instead of considering possibilities, came up from the Blue Room to the Gold Room with his date because, well, there was live dance music, and me.

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