Her detractors claimed that Anita Bryant “hated” homosexuals, “terrorized” them and sought to take away what they claimed were their “rights”. That was Big Lie #1. The truth is that she made a point of leaving them alone, so long as they minded their own business — until they began militant agitation aimed at the law, which involved other people’s business.

ALAN writes:

Anita Bryant has been mentioned only twice at The Thinking Housewife. I believe that is too little remembrance of a woman who spoke most courageously in the face of militant Leftist agitation, and I would like to supplement that with the following.

In 1977-’78, I paid little attention when Anita Bryant was vilified by agitators for “homosexual rights”. Had I paid more attention, I would have concluded that Americans were living on borrowed time in a fool’s paradise–not because of her, but  because of her enemies and her friends.

I remembered Anita Bryant from years earlier when she was a beacon of sunshine in American entertainment. I remember her appearances on TV variety shows in the early 1960s (i.e., before The Revolution got fully under way later in that decade).  She was part of an era when Americans could enjoy entertainment for families on TV programs like those of Perry Como, Andy Williams, Kate Smith, Ernie Ford, and John Gary, among others. I bought her Christmas LP Do You Hear What I Hear? I knew that she was one of the entertainers who accompanied Bob Hope on his tours to entertain American servicemen in Vietnam in the 1960s, for which they were extremely grateful. ” Anita Bryant is the greatest thing that ever happened to our annual Christmas tours for the USO,” he said in 1966.

(Regarding one such tour in Vietnam, an evangelist objected to Bob Hope including young women like Joey Heatherton and Carroll Baker in his troupe of entertainers because they might “stir up” the soldiers.  That suggestion prompted Miss Baker to say, “He would have a point, except that our Army doesn’t take men who don’t like girls.” (AP, “Evangelist Stirs Debate Over Starlets Stirring Up G.I.s,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 24, 1966, p. 20A)

(Oh, for those glorious days of a Free Press and a masculine military and women who made pithy remarks like that — and thank you, Carroll Baker. Were “the other kind” of men offended and “hurt” by her remark? I can only hope. Imagine the howling and shrieking that would follow such a remark today after Americans have allowed their military to be weakened by all kinds of agitators.  Observe how easily American men allow themselves to be brainwashed and emasculated: Whereas American soldiers cheered Miss Baker’s remark sixty years ago, today they would apologize for it.  And observe the difference in the Press between 1966, when it did not append any note of disapproval to her remark, and 1977, when it took delight in smearing Anita Bryant for her remarks, and today, when it takes even greater delight in repeating the Big Lies that I will cite below.)

It would be hard to say which was worse: What political agitators and some “journalists” did to Anita Bryant, or what American men in general and those around her in particular did not do in her defense. It proved to me that a cultural revolution had taken place in less than two decades. The mere existence of a “debate” about the alleged “rights” of homosexuals showed how morally and philosophically bankrupt Americans had allowed themselves to become by the 1970s.

Her detractors claimed that Anita Bryant “hated” homosexuals, “terrorized” them and sought to take away what they claimed were their “rights”. That was Big Lie #1. The truth is that she made a point of leaving them alone, so long as they minded their own business — until they began militant agitation aimed at the law, which involved other people’s business. The right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. So said Louis Brandeis. Anita Bryant understood that point perfectly. In dealing with homosexuals in the music business early in her career, she followed a policy of live and let live; she did not bother them or lecture them.  In other words, she paid them the supreme expression of respect: She left them alone. And they left her alone. That is a model of civil conduct between or among people who do not agree.  Civil conduct would not be possible if we did not pay that expression of respect to thousands of people we encounter in the course of life and if they did not reciprocate.

Her detractors claimed that they wanted “rights”. That was Big Lie #2. That claim alone proved what liars they were. People do not seek what they already possess. Her detractors already had rights — the same rights that all other citizens have.  But that was not enough for them. What they wanted was not “rights” but power vested in laws that would compel people to associate with them and do business with them.  That — not by coincidence–is one of the cardinal features of Communism. That is what they meant by “rights”. No one has any such “rights”. Power over other people is what they wanted. That is why they sought the police power of government to secure what they mendaciously called “rights”: Because Americans had not yet  given them enough fake “rights” to enable them to expand their war against legitimate rights. Rights do not come from government. Any government that claims to create “rights” is a fraud and a tyrant.

Agitation for “homosexual rights” in the 1970s was a variation on agitation for “civil rights” in the 1950s-’60s. All such agitation was engineered by Communists, Fabians, or anarchists, or any alliance of those groups.

There, in 1977, was a golden opportunity for American men to assert their masculine fiber and defense of objective laws and standards, and in opposition to militant agitators and “activists”. And what did American men do in the face of that option? They caved in — or remained silent — or did nothing — or apologized for their existence or for those laws and standards, or both. What chance for a moral victory would a principled woman like Anita Bryant have had when surrounded by such men?

Where was any substantive opposition to those who assaulted and vilified her?  Where was any proper intellectual representation of her views and her rights and those of other Americans who wanted nothing more than to be left alone?

Since agitators for “homosexual rights” wanted power over children in government-run schools, there was a perfect opportunity for “Conservatives” to short-circuit their agitprop by advancing an argument for the disestablishment of government power over schools, children, parents, and teachers — thus depriving those “activists” of any chance to inflict their ideas and vocabulary on captive audiences of schoolchildren. Of course the “Conservatives” ignored that opportunity and remained mute and docile.  How many of her fellow “Conservatives” showed one-tenth the moral courage Anita Bryant showed?

Dr. Revilo Oliver argued in 1979 that Jews were using “homosexual rights” as a means for weakening American law and Americans’ confidence in themselves (i.e., weakening it even more than Americans had already allowed it to be weakened in the 1950s-’60s when they–including “Conservatives”–agreed to have “civil rights” legislation shoved down their throats).  Can there be any doubt that he was right?

There were a few people in America in those years who could have written scathing denunciations of such agitators. But they could not summon the will to do so because they saw how easily Americans had allowed themselves to be deceived and defrauded by similar agitators in the 1960s. The mere fact that bakers in recent years have been forced by “The Law” to accept orders from people they did not want as customers would be more than enough to have energized those writers. It is, moreover, precisely the kind of coercion that militant agitators in the 1970s wanted protected by  law and that Anita Bryant did everything she could to expose and oppose.

Nearly every allegation made about Anita Bryant is a lie, distortion, or misrepresentation. It has been claimed, for instance, that she “waged war” on the “rights” of homosexuals, “hurt” them something terrible, “ruined lives”, and inspired some to commit suicide. Those are Big Lies # 3, 4, 5, and 6. She did no such things. She spoke in defense of rights in an age when they are under militant attack — her own rights and those of the vast majority of Americans; in defense of limited government, and the right of individual citizens to free speech, freedom of association, and the moral right to discriminate — and against the Radical Leftist argument that government owed special privileges or accommodation to any group of loudmouth agitators.

What The Left did to Anita Bryant in the 1970s was a variation on what it did to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. They learned the hard way that to oppose The Left is to invite character smears, lies, and misrepresentations beyond count — for life. Observe, for instance, how difficult it is today to find in any Google search a rational discussion and evaluation of the 1977 conflict between Anita Bryant and her detractors — a discussion not framed in the Leftist vocabulary of Political Correctness; whereas typical Google searches are weighted overwhelmingly against her and in favor of her detractors, agitators, and character assassins. Scroll down the list of hits in any Google search and observe the unanimity of vitriol directed against Anita Bryant, repeated in nearly identical phrases — and then tell me that certain powerful groups on The Left do not guide and co-ordinate those attacks.

Observe that the trick by The Left — at which it is most expert, having practiced it for a century — is to attribute its own lies, misrepresentations, and vitriol to those who tell the truth about The Left.  The “hate” that agitators and “journalists” attributed to Anita Bryant was Big Lie #7, and a token of their own hatred of the good for being the good.

A publication called The Advocate offers a blurb called “Understanding Anita Bryant”. That is Big Lie #8. What they mean is: Vilifying Anita Bryant. That is the entirety of Leftist agitators’ argument against Anita Bryant: A prolonged ad hominem attack. They have no alternative and they know it. “We should not rest until Anita Bryant is utterly destroyed,” some rag called The Gay Community News in Boston said in 1978.  (George Vecsey, “Anita Bryant’s Costly Victory”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 2, 1978, p. 3F)  Such charming words from the peace lovers on The Left.

Some activist in St. Louis faulted Anita Bryant and fellow conservatives for attempting “to prevent many minority groups from achieving our rights to a good education, housing, food,” and employment. (“Homosexuals Parade in Columbia, Mo.”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 22, 1977, p. 3A). That is Big Lie #9. They have no such “rights” because there are no such “rights”. There is no such thing as a “right” to be educated, have a home, eat, or be hired.What they mean is they want Government to force other people to provide the education, housing, food, and jobs that they claim are their “rights”. Can you say “Communism”?  How about: Agitators-for-Communism acting in the name of “Homosexual Rights”. May we wonder why that thinly-veiled masquerade was not identified and reported extensively by the “Mass Media” in those years?

There is no justification — moral, philosophical, or cultural — for any government to coerce or compel citizens to associate with people, or do business with people, or enter contracts with people they want nothing to do with, or to surrender their children to be indoctrinated in ideas and vocabulary promoted by people their parents want nothing to do with.

The overwhelming majority of Americans found no credibility in the Leftist campaign to demonize Anita Bryant. In 1978 and 1980, when many Americans could still recognize moral courage, she was named by Good Housekeeping magazine as one of the ten most admired women in America. You wouldn’t know these things if you depend on Google searches.

The years-long campaign to demonize Anita Bryant had “Communist” written all over it, yet no one in the “Mass Media” — who claim to be in business to “report the facts” — ever paused to report that fact. Isn’t that a curious omission?

Let’s go from words to symbols: See the film clip of one of Anita Bryant’s TV advertisements for Florida orange juice and note especially the Communist clenched fist in the upper Left corner of the frame. Do you suppose that that clenched fist got there by accident?

That Anita Bryant agreed to be interviewed by Playboy magazine was, of course, a tactical mistake on her part. In doing so, she gave The Left just another opportunity to ridicule her, demonize her, and misrepresent anything she might say. Her best choice at that time would have been to steer clear of The Left and its innumerable agitators. She probably learned in the long run that it is not possible to have a rational conversation with people who want to tyrannize us.

While she underestimated the power and vitriol of The Left, she overestimated the masculine fiber of American “Conservatives”. And she assumed she was still living in a free country. Like me and other older Americans, she was born in a free country but has lived to see it made over into Stalinist Russia. The refusal or failure of those “Conservatives” to defend her when she needed their defense and moral support more than ever, and to expose the lies and misrepresentations asserted by her detractors, was and is a disgrace beyond description.

While women like Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly were trying to defend and preserve some portion of Americans’ rich inheritance, other Americans continued to concede power to The Left in the very premises and vocabulary in which they framed their view of current events.  What they fail to understand is that we must oppose The Left on the basis of our premises and vocabulary, not theirs. To do the latter is, in effect, to lose the battle at the outset.

The Leftward drift of public libraries since then is a predictable consequence of conceding such power. Imagine what Anita Bryant must think (if she ever thinks about it at all, and I hope she doesn’t) about the decadence that is now showcased and encouraged in American public libraries. (By the way, I favor the disestablishment not only of public schools, colleges, and universities, but also of public libraries. Depriving The Left of the power it wields through such institutions would be a preliminary step toward setting things right, although it would require a substantial change in frame of mind by a population who have shown themselves receptive to rank ideology, premises, and vocabulary.  Most Americans today could not even imagine such a conservative counter-revolution.  It would be possible — but only if most Americans were not so inert and wedded to bread and circuses.)

One more point: The assault on Anita Bryant by a thug who shoved a pie into her face provided the “Mass Communications Industry” with a golden opportunity to indulge in “first-strike framing”.  That term, coined by Dr. Bruce Charlton, means to prime people to associate a given event with certain names or pictures which what I call the Mass Brainwashing Industry will repeat over and over.  (See discussion of that term in his book Addicted to Distraction.)

As we all know, TV creatures loathe ideas and words and much prefer pictures — especially sensational pictures. What could be more sensational than a prominent American woman — who exemplified feminine beauty, charm, and talent — being assaulted with a pie by a young man who wanted only to defend the “rights” of deviants to celebrate their deviancy (by enlisting the coercive power of the law to impose it on everyone in the nation)?

So naturally the TV creatures capitalized on that moment and thereby made it the one thing that people would remember for years afterward — indeed, perhaps from here to eternity: A perfect example of first-strike framing. It is the one thing promoted and celebrated to this day in the overwhelming majority of hits listed in any Google search involving the name Anita Bryant.

Now imagine how different those Google search results might be today if the men who surrounded Anita Bryant at the moment she was assaulted during that press conference had responded to that act by decking her assailant, tying him up, gagging him, and “coaxing” him to apologize to her for his contemptible act and for being such a loathsome creature. Imagine that that would be the moment and the scene cited today in the results of any Google search–instead of the scene of her being assaulted. That the Mass Media and Google choose the latter to repeat endlessly is just one more proof that Dr. Bruce Charlton was right when he argued that the “Mass Media” is not filled with “Leftist bias” but is itself The Left.

Unfortunately the victory that she achieved in the 1970s against militant agitators was transitory, just as Phyllis Schlafly’s victory against the ERA earlier that decade had no lasting effect on the promotion of feminism by militant agitators.

The demonization of Anita Bryant was not part of any quest for “rights” but one chapter in a multi-pronged attack on Americans’ rights and liberty.  Like all agitation from The Left, it was intended to weaken those things along with Americans’ self-confidence, and to increase and expand the power of government in order to soften up Americans for the morning they would wake up to find that their nation has been absorbed into the long-planned Communist World Government.

Phil Hall at Cinema Crazed wrote that Anita Bryant “was on the wrong side of history.”  Translation: She was on the wrong side of The Left and on the right side of Morality.

— Comments —

Kathy G. writes:

Bravo, Alan!

Anita Bryant was very courageous, and lost her career for it. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, considering the communist cesspool of showbiz. When communists own the “media”, they will vilify anyone deviating from their narratives. And since America had no social classes, like Britain, they had to create divisions between identity groups. The homosexual promotion to preferred status had the advantage of destroying morality and attacking Catholic doctrine. All this was accomplished by media ridiculing people/stereotyping conservatives as ignorant louts, like Archie Bunker.

People stripped of their religion, their family, their country and their history will look to the media, TV and movies for prompts to assimilate into some kind of identity group. We have seen what that has done to white Christians in America. And it explains why whites are way more influenced by media than blacks, and other races/ethnic groups. They have been allowed to celebrate and keep their identities, heritages, religions.

The communist fist at the left of the video is apparently some kind of avatar accompanying the handle “Gladtobegay.net”, the person who posted the video.

Thank you for remembering Anita, Alan.

Laura writes:

Anita Bryant, by the way, is 84 years old and reportedly lives in Oklahoma. She was Miss Oklahoma in 1958.

I haven’t seen any recent interviews of her. I agree, it’s way better that she got out of entertainment. I can’t even imagine her fitting in today with all these kabbalistic, megastar idols who are so repulsive. They are disgusting creatures that move like demons across our field of vision. You have to sell your soul to be a celebrity — and the souls of your fans.

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