Anita Bryant and the Liars
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. (more…)

