Christian Rights Campaigner Anita Bryant Dies at 84
By Movieguide® Staff
Singer, beauty queen and “pioneering Christian rights crusader” Anita Bryant died at the age of 84 on Dec. 16.
According to an email from the Christian Family Coalition, Bryant “was a popular spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission when she took on her defining battle against homosexual extremists by leading the successful 1977 campaign to overturn a Dade County ordinance giving homosexuals special rights in employment and housing.”
The Miami Herald observed that Bryant’s Save Our Children coalition — later changed to Protect America’s Children — “pioneered today’s parental rights movement.”
“Anita Bryant was a pioneer, a hero and the first parental rights champion in our country,” said founder and executive director of the Christian Family Coalition Florida Anthony Verdugo. “She had a huge impact and will be remembered not as anti-anything but as pro family, pro children, pro parent, pro home. She had the vision to see what was coming and foretold the battle we fight today recognizing that there is nothing civil or human or right about imposing ideology under the cover of education.”
CFC noted that though her campaign was successful, she was “demonized by the left and her career suffered as a result.”
“She was blacklisted and got a raw deal, but like her or not, she stuck to her convictions,” Verdugo said. “She always said she hated the sin, not the sinner, because our faith teaches us to love.”
Movieguide® publisher Dr. Ted Baehr called Bryant a “great friend,” adding that he “helped her with PR and legal issues and with a hit piece movie”; and, she “spoke for us at several of our fundraising events.”
Bryant died of cancer in Edmond, Oklahoma, surrounded by friends and family.
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