Orange Juice vs. Gay Rights

This Pride Month, I am remembering one of the gay community’s most notorious foes.

Anita Bryant, the late cornball singer and orange juice pitchwoman, was a '70s and '80s crusader against gay rights and a horrible person. Her death in late 2024 brought back memories of the bad old days.

Even in high school, long before I came out or told myself who I was, I sensed this woman was dangerous. Jane Curtin parodied her on Saturday Night Live, which somehow told me to pay attention.

I will never understand why certain pious individuals—Jesse Helms and Carl Rove were amateurs compared with the current administration-would devote so much of their lives, time, and energy to the degradation and denial of others' rights.

Bryant was a pioneer in this. Her “Save Our Children” campaign was the first to cast gays as threats to youth, an abhorrent practice that persists in scores of contemporary anti-LGBTQ organizations, not just Moms for Liberty.

As a spokeswoman for Florida orange juice, she was the corniest ass clown imaginable, loitering in orange groves while singing “Come to the Florida sunshine tree” and extolling the virtues of Vitamin C.

This entanglement between Florida and anti-gay rights continues to this day, with Florida being one of the worst states in the nation for gay people.

‘70s gay bars banned screwdrivers and served “Anita Bryant cocktails,” comprised of vodka and apple juice.

Bryant got hers. Her public crusade against gays led to the cancellation of a TV special and, eventually, her contract with the Florida orange growers. She went bankrupt several times. She also had a banana cream pie thrown in her face by a gay rights activist at a 1977 press conference. 

After exclaiming, “At least it was a fruit pie,” a slur, Bryant shed tears and prayed for the pie-thrower's soul.

A master of self-pity, Bryant later claimed all her troubles made her a “sacrificial lamb.”

It would be wonderful to say, “Look how far we’ve come” in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. But today, our more powerful enemies are the orange clown and his Supreme Court. 

A recent New York Times op-ed about the end of the Queer Eye franchise and the ascent of anti-gay bias argued that “we are caught up in an era of backlash-whiplash, when the gains of the past few decades seem to be at increasing risk of slipping away.” 

Just yesterday, the Times reported that "support for gay marriage has declined, to 65 percent from a high of 71 percent four years ago." Moreover, "Republican support for same-sex marriage has fallen by 18 percentage points since 2022."

At my age, I have come to regard the struggle for gay rights as an endless and cyclical quest. Our winning the right to marry in 2015 has only been superseded by much cruelty and demonization.

Anita Bryant paved the way for today’s bigots and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. She has a permanent place in humanity’s hall of shame. If she were alive today, she would probably serve on Trump’s cabinet.

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