00:13:26.480Yeah, she was singing this, like, peppy, really explicitly Christian song, and, like, I don't know why or how mid-century entertainment careers worked out this way, but she got paid to sing this one song and only this one song in public over and over and over again.
00:15:18.620she's just like vigilantly against fun,0.71
00:15:21.120which seems like a good place for people to stay.
00:15:24.400At the same time, she's like clearly networked
00:15:26.440kind of in what will become the Christian right,
00:15:28.640even though that isn't really yet a thing, right?
00:15:31.160And the other thing that like is like very, very funny,
00:15:33.740if you look at her like collected works,
00:15:35.640which we did, which like are voluminous,
00:15:38.920it's almost all like another attempt at autobiography.
00:15:42.540Like when I have seen the glory is like her autobiography,
00:15:47.080like at like age of like 29 or 30 and then bless this house is a you know it comes with at the
00:15:55.760bottom it says here with a family photo album and a beautiful prayer to bless your own home
00:16:00.380especially written by Billy Graham right so like like really sort of tied into the the Christian
00:16:07.640right but on the other hand like kind of an inveterate narrator of her own story like every
00:16:12.580two years, like checking in with Anita Bryant, like what's my life been like now, right? Like
00:16:17.640her own family, her own biography is a big part of this. It is like, I feel like we act like we're
00:16:24.120in this brave new world with influencer culture. And yet if you look back at, you know, like
00:16:28.820the George and Gracie Allen show in the 50s when they would suddenly stop everything to talk about
00:16:34.420carnation milk for three minutes or, you know, Reagan working for GE kind of after he was naming
00:16:41.500names and before he was president as examples of this. It's like, for as long as there's been
00:16:47.160corporations, there's been a need for them, or lobbies in this case, there's been a need for
00:16:51.400them to present some kind of a public face. And so it feels, I don't know, I feel like
00:16:56.100the way we live today probably makes more sense if we can place it on a continuum.
00:17:01.500And I wonder, I feel like the question of authorship with Anita Bryant is really interesting
00:17:05.520too, because it feels like to some extent she was kind of confected out of the thoughts of men.
00:17:10.940Yeah, this is something that you are going to, or we, we together, are going to see when we get to her anti-gay campaign, is that there was this kind of collective of, like, really gender conservative, far-right Christian media figures and, like, intellectuals and politicians who very consciously decided that Anita Bryant was going to be the face of a campaign that they were orchestrating, right?
00:17:38.820So she was a spokesperson, not just for orange juice, but really for Christian homophobia.
00:17:44.880And she was made that way in a very conscious process.0.76
00:17:50.720That might be a good moment to segue into what the state of gender politics was in the mid-70s.
00:17:57.840Because it's kind of an interesting moment, right?
00:18:01.500Because we're, you know, Anita Bryant's homophobia comes in at this place in the gay rights movement that's kind of like an in-between place, right?
00:18:11.020So she emerges into this role in 1977, which is, it's like January 1977 is a Miami referendum, which we will explain, I promise.
00:18:20.760but it's like seven, eight years after Stonewall
00:18:26.260and there has been, there had been a lot of progress
00:20:43.880And Phyllis Schlafly had really organized this national opposition to send Christian conservatives to all of these different women's conventions across all these 50 states.
00:20:57.200There's a great Marjorie Sproul book about this called Divided We Stand that everybody should read.
00:21:01.360And they were just kind of being really vulgar and harassing.0.99
00:21:06.240Like, guys would, like, seize the microphone at these women's conferences and, like, scream about their penises.0.95
00:21:11.800We think that our politics have gotten more violent, more vulgar, more hateful, and a study of gender politics in the 1970s will disabuse you of that, right?0.96
00:21:24.360And Phyllis Schlafly had managed to do that because she had done the impossible, which is unite different kinds of Christians who had previously hated each other.
00:21:34.600Like, I think now, from our vantage point,
00:21:37.180we're used to thinking of, like, the Christian right
00:26:18.600You know what, I haven't researched this, so don't trust me at all, but I believe, because I was listening to a David Sedaris essay that talks about learning the song about the kookaburra song when you're in grade school.
00:28:08.580And the court mandated racial desegregation of public schools after Brown v. Board of Education, which met massive resistance in states like Florida, where Anita Bryant.
00:28:23.380Coroquial schools were often code, like they started out, they became Christian academies, but often, I don't know about Anita Bryant's children, I don't want to insult anyone, but they often started out as segregation academies.
00:28:34.100But this was a focus, it was a subject matter where there was already a lot of right-wing organizing, right?
00:28:39.860And this discourse of parents' rights had already been used to stand in for a really different kind of agenda0.63
00:28:47.580before Anita Bryant sort of stepped into this ready-made, like, pie pan that was there for her.
00:28:54.220And that this language was waiting to be used.
00:28:57.360And there's something I think about a lot is this moment from, there's a documentary series called The Reagans
00:29:02.240that I think was on Showtime, and it talks about how when he, I forget if it was for election or
00:29:08.620re-election, it doesn't really matter because he won both in an absolute landslide, but in one of
00:29:13.560them he went to the county fair in Neshoba County, Mississippi, announced his candidacy, lovely event
00:29:20.720for him, and what some of the scholars in that documentary pointed out is that in 1984 and I
00:29:29.200believe today Neshoba County Mississippi was known only for being the site where three volunteers
00:29:34.940were lynched for attempting to register voters and that to therefore get up on a stage like
00:29:40.320Reagan did and talk about states rights in Neshoba County Mississippi is to talk about
00:29:45.660segregation by any other name right and that if you hear the phrase parents rights in Florida in
00:29:51.500the late 70s like it feels like you know exactly what that means yeah and I think the local context
00:29:57.280is important, right, like thinking about what Florida means, what its history is, but this is
00:30:02.360also not an ordinance that is only arising in Miami. Post-Stonewall, there had been a lot of
00:30:09.980gay activism and a degree, and I really don't want to overemphasize this, a small degree of
00:30:16.020greater public sympathy for the gay rights cause, and a couple states...
00:30:22.960Like the vermouth and a martini, like it's in the next room.0.51
00:30:27.280But a couple states had repealed their criminal sodomy statutes, right?
00:30:31.040These were laws that had been on the books often for a very long time
00:30:34.540that made homosexual sex between consenting adults punishable under the criminal law.
00:30:40.940Florida had not gotten rid of its sodomy statute,0.78
00:30:44.300so gay sex remains a crime under Florida law at the time this ordinance is passed.
00:30:50.780But a bunch of cities had gone even further and said,
00:30:54.980you know, we don't just want to take bans on gay sex out of our criminal code, or maybe we can't do
00:31:00.160that. What we actually want to do is integrate gay people a little more into public life and give
00:31:05.340them these civil protections so that they can not be discriminated against in housing, so that they
00:31:10.760cannot be discriminated against in employment, so they cannot be discriminated against in what's
00:31:14.580called like public accommodations, which is like, you know, any kind of public facing business has
00:31:18.900to serve you the way they serve everybody else. Something we still fight about today, right? Like,
00:31:22.440I mean, like, the most recent Supreme Court cases are about this, but we'll talk about it.
00:34:32.000I know, we have to find out, I know it is, right, because it's a terrible question to ask if you haven't, like, spent three hours reading about that particular question, because it's like, well, there could be, but we probably forgot about it, but right, I mean, regardless of the precedent and the spot I put you in, it feels like there is something that, you know, changes things when you're able to have a conversation about
00:35:02.000we oppose this and we are opposing it together out loud
00:35:05.980because, you know, in order to do that,
00:36:07.460But this is also like really Anita Bryant's moment.
00:36:10.480Like maybe never since seeing the battle hymn of the Republic for the 478th time at the Super Bowl
00:36:16.400has she been the subject of so much attention.
00:36:20.780And a couple of things that we should probably mention is like, right.
00:36:23.620But it's important to note, as Maura was saying, like the homosexuality was still illegal in Florida, and Florida didn't actually have that many gay teachers because Florida had had 20 years of sort of anti-gay kind of witch hunts in public schools, right?
00:36:41.520There's a great book by Karen Graves, and they were wonderful teachers, which outlines basically, yeah, like since the mid-40s, basically, there had been this incredible, you know, sort of starting with McCarthy.
00:36:52.980You get these moments where basically teachers are routinely drummed out of schools and universities.
00:39:11.200I mean, you weren't there, but I was at the time, and it was great.
00:39:16.640But I feel like it's easier to forget that Nancy Reagan was also an actress.
00:39:20.400She was never in a movie with a chimpanzee, so she doesn't have that going for her.
00:39:25.940But, you know, that she was a stage actress, I think she came to Hollywood in the 40s,
00:39:30.400and that her careers kind of never took off.
00:39:32.600She was always in, like, small roles in big movies and larger roles in bad movies.
00:39:37.700Like, her biggest role might have been playing the pregnant wife of a man who God starts talking to for some reason.
00:39:44.440And she has to just be very supportive and be like, well, honey, it's, I guess, yeah, this is what we're doing now.
00:39:51.220And that, like, in the presidency, well, first, you know, by becoming First Lady of the state of California and then by becoming First Lady of the country, because it does seem to escalate that way sometimes, that that was her great role, right?
00:40:06.880and that she was often noted for the gaze,
00:40:13.420the G-A-Z-E, to quote Kitty Kelly in that same documentary,
00:42:09.840Because there is in some way a performance of traditionalism here.0.70
00:42:13.580And I think that's where the trad wife comparison works perfectly.
00:42:18.440But at the same time, at a moment when this stuff cannot be assumed anymore,0.87
00:42:23.900and the same is true for anti-gay politics, right?
00:42:25.680She is sort of the first anti-gay celebrity,
00:42:28.900not in the sense that people before had been cool with gays,
00:42:32.940but more in the sense that it was assumed that everyone was anti-gay.
00:42:37.200Like, she's sort of part of a generational shift where she has to say that, right?
00:42:40.880Where homophobia becomes an opinion that you have to, like, you know,
00:42:46.780Kevin Sorbo style, have to be like, yeah, by the way, right?
00:42:49.420Like, here's who I hate, and people can call you out for it, right?
00:42:53.140Whereas before, it was just, like, common sense, right?
00:42:56.060And, like, there is this thing where, like, you know, this kind of aggrieved, like, I can't believe I have to say this, right?
00:43:01.060Like, and on the one hand, like, it can feel very apolitical, but, like, it usually couches, you know, a pretty serious political intervention, which she was exactly making.
00:45:49.140In some way, the genius of the Christian martyr culture is that we secularized it, right?1.00
00:45:54.240Like, now that's just a cancel victim.0.98
00:45:56.100A person who says, like, oh, everyone believes what I say anyway, but I'm a bold truth-teller for saying it.
00:46:03.460More conservatives need to watch The Wicker Man, a movie about how if you're not being burned in a giant pyre, you really shouldn't be complaining.
00:47:28.920But this time, we should mention, right, the gays are ready for her.0.96
00:47:34.040Like, this is sort of when I think Anita really becomes kind of like the pop culture figure that she has remained.0.96
00:47:40.000Because not for the thing in Miami, frankly, but because, you know, she takes on, you know, the gaze of California and it does not altogether go well, I would say.
00:52:39.320We should say it's not the first gay boycott, right?
00:52:41.460There's the Coors boycott a couple of years before.
00:52:43.680It's interesting, I read an article in preparation for this
00:52:47.460that made the point that these probably
00:52:49.920were more pr disasters than they were really economic disasters like compared to like just
00:52:54.540like now yeah uh but the interesting thing is that like it it did this kind of very interesting
00:53:01.240positioning of like gay people as consumers right like which tends to in u.s society if you like
00:53:07.580move you up right you're like you know we we drink beer we we drink orange juice right like um it it
00:53:14.180kind of puts you back into the mainstream because like you do the thing that everyone else does
00:53:18.600which is, you know, choose between three opposing but identical looking objects depending on which one you want to give your loyalty to, right?
00:53:27.160Like, it's pretty clear that, like, it's also just like a way of, like, being like, we're just like you because we also enjoy orange juice with our, well, in this case, breakfast at a gay bar, but, like, that's not well on that part, yeah.
00:53:38.360It's, you know, brunch. You got your orange juice in one hand and your beer in the other.
00:53:41.960but it all it's it's funny now also that at this point conservatives love boycotting stuff more
00:53:49.000than anyone else i'm sure there are people in this country who still will not drink budweiser
00:53:52.960not because it's gross but because a trans person might get a right yeah and got one can sent to0.96
00:53:59.940them i believe like that's like yeah that's what the entire boycott is about it's really remarkable
00:54:04.320but i love kind of yeah the idea of breaking a conservative brain by being like you know these
00:54:08.740people that you're rallying everyone against they also buy things so i don't know i know you didn't
00:54:14.040think of that but they do well that's that's woke capitalism so if people if they cave it's just
00:54:20.020woke capitalism but this is like there's a quality to the anti-anita brian hatred yeah that's kind
00:54:25.820of goofy adrian you were telling us about this yeah so we have a couple of signs here some of
00:54:30.560them are pretty pretty uh sort of two of them are i think i would say are not particularly wild0.58
00:54:37.520On the left-hand side, we have straights for gay rights.0.75
01:03:36.920And a special in 1980, the Anita Bryant Spectacular, which, speaking of, like, the importance of people remaining organized in a big-she way, has a 3.6 rating on IMDb.
01:06:36.760We were talking earlier about Andrea Dworkin's book, Right Wing Women, which I think came out in 1980, and which you were just telling me is being reissued.
01:10:17.620in a tiny town in Tennessee and had to declare bankruptcy on that business,
01:10:22.980has also had to declare personal bankruptcy,
01:10:26.200seems to have a really fraught relationship with her children.
01:10:29.780And her lesbian granddaughter was very public about possibly not inviting her to her wedding.
01:10:41.680This is, you know, somebody who has lived a life of poverty, obscurity, and, like, real, like, sort of punishing marginalization,
01:10:54.740which I think for somebody like Anita Bryant, who so craved and thrived in the spotlight, has got to be, like, karmic retribution, kind of par excellence.
01:11:02.140Yeah, and it does make me think of, you know, my beloved tabloid women, where it's like, and in this case, you know, they didn't willingly walk into the spotlight.
01:11:09.960somebody like uh tanya harding or paula jones but you know in that case too there was this illusion
01:11:15.640at the time that like well if everyone is paying attention to her and making her life hell for four
01:11:20.460to six weeks then like she must be making money and it's like not really not back then like it
01:11:25.520was mostly just financially ruinous for people and then i think as people who love screens so much
01:11:31.080or you know looking at someone who's a political figurehead we have this there's a stream of like
01:11:35.980well, if your face is used for so many purposes
01:11:49.180what Dworkin's pointing out there, right?
01:11:51.200That these people are extremely disposable, right?
01:11:55.760The movement using them gets to thrive on basically,
01:12:00.760and it's even true for men, right?0.97
01:12:02.420That these right-wing anti-gay blowhards
01:12:04.620of are around for a couple of years and then are kind of forgotten again because it's not
01:12:09.020actually that that important who's occupying that position right and um i do want to point
01:12:15.660out one thing that i found as i was looking through how do i do this i wanted yes i did
01:12:22.860find this this is from her book uh a new day and boy is it ever i mean i just think like
01:12:30.380I do like to think that this is a bit of a this glow this is a book from the mid-90s but it's
01:12:35.820the most 1988 glow I've ever seen but like I'm kind of happy for her that at least that worked
01:12:40.780out fine. That's almost exactly what Katarina Witt wore during exhibitions at the Calgary Olympics.0.99
01:12:45.980Yeah right this is really uh it's but I think I believe this is from the mid-90s but like
01:12:51.580it's always a little later in I feel like in Christian America but it's a while.
01:12:56.140But I like the fact that, like, I like to think that she was able to salvage something out of all this.
01:13:03.340But at the same time, I do think it's important to note that we're just, like, kind of live in, still live in Anita Bryant's America in some really horrible ways.
01:13:12.860Like, I mean, you mentioned the 303 creative decision at the Supreme Court.