One Year: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights

Summary

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Slow Burn: One Year – "Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights"

Slate Podcasts | July 9, 2021 | Host: Josh Levine

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Overview

This riveting episode of Slow Burn’s "One Year" series dives deep into the events of 1977 in Miami, Florida, where singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant led a crusade to repeal a newly passed gay rights ordinance. The story unpacks an explosive public debate, the birth of modern anti-gay political activism, and the galvanized response of the American LGBTQ+ movement. Through powerful interviews, archival audio, and personal reflections, the episode not only chronicles the local struggle but also reveals its profound influence on national politics and culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Context: Miami’s Gay Rights Ordinance Debate

• Dade County Commission Hearing (Jan 18, 1977):
  • Miami, usually apathetic to local government, saw hundreds flood into the commission hearing, mainly via church groups opposing a proposed amendment to protect gay people from discrimination.
  • Ruth Shack, a commissioner, recalls, "There were hordes of people waiting to get into the building." (02:01)
  • Bob Kunst, gay activist, highlights the immediate personal stakes: "I had a knot in my stomach and a real fear of what was coming." (02:18)
  • Anita Bryant and religious conservatives mobilized around slogans like "Don’t legislate immorality" and "Protect our children."
  • Despite fierce opposition, the ordinance passes 5-3—a moment of local triumph.

2. Rise of Anita Bryant as an Anti-Gay Activist

• Bryant’s Background:
  • A pop singer, national celebrity as the Florida orange juice spokeswoman, and outspoken Christian.
  • At the public hearing, Bryant claimed, "I believe I have that right, that I can and do say no to a very serious moral issue that would violate my rights and the rights of all the decent and morally upstanding citizens." (06:22)
• Personal Fallout:
  • Bryant saw her support for Ruth Shack as a grave mistake and was personally motivated to reverse the ordinance.

3. Organizing the Opposition: Save Our Children

• Petition & Referendum:
  • Bryant convenes religious leaders to launch Save Our Children. They swiftly gather 60,000 signatures, placing the issue on the June 1977 ballot.
  • Bryant at a press conference: "Save our children from homosexuals." (20:10)
• Fear Campaign:
  • The campaign leans heavily on the lie that "homosexuals must recruit children," stoking panic with disturbing media ads.
  • Lillian Faderman, historian: "As Anita Bryant kept saying, homosexuals can't reproduce, so they have to recruit, and they're going to recruit your children into homosexuality." (28:23)
  • Bob Kunst remembers Save Our Children’s tactics: "The very first things that she did was to immediately accuse us of trying to recruit out of the high schools." (24:08)
• Personal Impact:
  • Bryant’s son, Robert Greene Jr., reflects on the homophobia in their home and the pressure he felt: “Oh, and the sickness was one you could catch if you got too close to someone else.” (29:42)

4. The LGBTQ+ Community’s Response

• Strategic Divides:
  • Activists split between confrontation (Bob Kunst) and moderation (Dade County Coalition)—even debating boycotts of orange juice.
  • Kunst quits the Coalition: "We simply said, we're not going to buy her product. This has nothing to do with whether we like orange juice or not. We like orange juice. On the other hand, she's here to take away our jobs." (25:54)
  • Orange juice boycott becomes a national symbol—with bars refusing to stock it, bumper stickers declaring “Anita Sucks Oranges,” and sabotage of juice cartons.
• Broader Mobilization:
  • Nationwide fundraising, creative protests (“Stop Anita” dances, Anita lookalike contests), and a newfound sense of urgency: “Anita Bryant became the devil of the gay rights movement. And I think that really helped...pull together.” (32:35)

5. The Referendum & Backlash

• Violence & Intimidation:
  • Activists—including people of color—face bomb threats, firebombed cars, and even suicides following intense harassment from anti-gay callers.
  • Ruth Shack describes hate-fueled physical confrontations: "A woman...pushed me against the wall and spit in my face." (39:26)
• Disastrous Campaign Tactics:
  • Debate over messaging: Should they fight smear campaigns directly, or focus on abstract civil rights?
  • Ethan Ghetto, gay campaign manager: "You want to try to change the dialogue, change the language, change the focus and the thinking to other things." (42:21)
  • Failure to showcase real-life stories of discrimination is acknowledged as a crucial mistake.

6. The Crushing Defeat & Its Paradoxes

• Referendum Results (June 7, 1977):
  • Voters repeal the ordinance by a 2-to-1 margin.
  • Anita Bryant: "Tonight, the laws of God and the cultural values of man have been vindicated. The people of Dade county, the normal majority have said, enough, enough, enough." (49:54)
  • Bob Kunst: "We were going for an emotional and sexual liberation and we said that night you could mark your calendar and your watch just like Christmas and Hanukkah were coming." (51:01)
• But Also a Rallying Cry:
  • Widespread protests erupt in cities nationwide, marking a historic wake-up call for LGBTQ+ political action.
  • Lillian Faderman: "Dade county woke us up. Dade county made us realize that we all had to be political. We all had to learn to fight homophobia. And I think that really solidified the gay rights movement." (52:51)

7. The National Consequences

• Anti-Gay Movement Grows:
  • "Normal majority" block, powered by Christian conservatives, becomes formidable in national politics, later helping to elect Ronald Reagan.
• Anita Bryant’s Personal Decline:
  • Career collapses after boycotts and controversies; becomes a symbol of hate, and is eventually dropped by sponsors and agents.
  • Even as her influence fades, violent incidents (e.g., the murder of Robert Hillsborough) and lawsuits echo her campaign’s negative legacy.

8. Family & Legacy

• Estrangement and a Changing World:
  • Anita’s granddaughter, Sara Green, tells her coming-out story and the inability to reconcile with her grandmother:
    • "I'm not gonna have a relationship with somebody who can only have one, like, on their terms." (62:13)
  • Robert Greene Jr. reflects on how Anita’s convictions continue to impact the family, voicing both empathy and sadness for her inability to accept her lesbian granddaughter.
  • The episode closes with the reiteration that, despite continued struggles, the Miami fight changed both sides of the culture war—and set the stage for future victory and activism.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "We weren't there asking anybody to endorse our lovemaking. It's none of their business."
  – Bob Kunst (03:52)

• "I felt I had won this battle, but we were going to lose the war. I saw those people out front and they were not going to let this thing happen."
  – Ruth Shack, after the ordinance passed (08:24)

• "I believe more than ever before that there are evil forces, roundabout, even perhaps disguised as something good."
  – Anita Bryant (09:47)

• "The very first things that she did was to immediately accuse us of trying to recruit out of the high schools."
  – Bob Kunst (24:08)

• "As Anita Bryant kept saying, homosexuals can't reproduce, so they have to recruit, and they're going to recruit your children into homosexuality."
  – Lillian Faderman, historian (28:23)

• “Dade county woke us up. Dade county made us realize that we all had to be political. We all had to learn to fight homophobia. And I think that that really solidified the gay rights movement.”
  – Lillian Faderman (52:51)

• "My son's blood is on her hands."
  – Mother of Robert Hillsborough, a murder victim linked to the anti-gay campaign (55:36)

• "She wants a relationship with a person who doesn't exist because I'm not the person she wants me to be."
  – Sara Green, Anita Bryant’s granddaughter, on their estrangement (62:13)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:01: Ruth Shack recalls crowds at Dade County Commission hearing
• 06:22: Anita Bryant’s emotional plea at the commission hearing
• 24:08: Bob Kunst on Bryant accusing activists of recruiting children
• 28:23: Lillian Faderman on Save Our Children’s fearmongering
• 32:35: Lillian Faderman on organizing for gay rights using Anita Bryant as the enemy
• 42:21: Ethan Ghetto on the strategic error of campaign messaging
• 49:54: Anita Bryant celebrates victory after the repeal
• 52:51: Lillian Faderman calls the defeat a turning point for LGBTQ+ activism
• 55:36: The tragic consequences and lawsuits post-referendum
• 62:13: Sara Green on why she cannot reconcile with her grandmother
• 63:37-end: Personal reflections on Anita Bryant's legacy and the unresolved family rift

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Tone & Style

The episode mixes reflection, pain, and grim humor, using vivid personal stories, archival audio, and first-hand interviews. Josh Levine’s narration is both empathetic and incisive, giving full weight to the era’s complexity while letting its contradictions and voices speak for themselves.

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Summary prepared for those seeking a comprehensive, narrative-driven understanding of this pivotal year in American LGBTQ+ history, civil rights, and the culture wars.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

Hey, I'm Elise Hu, host of the podcast TED Talks Daily. Did you know Paylocity offers one platform for HR finance and it that means innovative solutions like On Demand Payment which offers employees access to wages prior to payday, flexible time tracking features which enables staff to clock in through their mobile device and numerous other cutting edge integrations are available to all your teams in one single place. Learn more about how Paylocity can help streamline work and bring teams [e-mail] 1Hey Slow Burn listeners.

[Josh Levine]

I'm Josh Levine, Slate's national editor and the host of season four of this show about white supremacist David Duke and his rise to power in Louisiana. I am here to tell you about my new podcast with Slate. It's called One Year and it will introduce you to people and ideas that changed American history One Year at a time. Season one is about 1977 and we're going to tell you stories that you might have forgotten about and some you may have never heard before. One of the things I love about Slow Burn is that it makes you think about how the nation's past shapes our present. On One Year, we'll focus on the moments that transformed politics, culture, sports, religion and more. The episode you're about to hear will take you to Miami, Florida, where where a local fight over gay rights became a huge national standoff, one that had enormous implications in 1977 and that still reverberates today. At the center of it all was a pop singer and orange juice spokeswoman named Anita Bryant. Thanks for checking it out, and if you like what you hear, subscribe to One Year from Slate on any podcast app. Most of the time, nobody in Miami cared to watch the Dade County Commission go about its business. But the public hearing on January 18, 1977, that was different. It was impossible to get a seat.

[Ruth Shack]

There were hordes of people waiting to get into the building.

[Josh Levine]

Ruth's Shack was on the Dade County Commission. Those hordes of people, they traveled from all over South Florida on chartered church buses because they were angry about a bill she'd sponsored.

[Ruth Shack]

I had a knot in my stomach and a real fear of what was coming.

[Josh Levine]

The bill at issue was an amendment to Dade County's non Discrimination ordinance. If it passed, it would shore up gay rights in Miami, though in a limited way. Homosexual acts will remain illegal and barred by law. This ordinance merely says that there shall be no discrimination insofar as housing, accommodation.

[Bob Kunst]

And and jobs are concerned by persons.

[Josh Levine]

Who have homosexual preferences. There were TV cameras in the hearing room but the full meeting got taped more primitively on a Dictaphone voice recorder. The sound quality isn't great, but I want you to hear some of it anyway because you can really feel the tension.

[Bob Kunst]

Please, ladies and gentlemen, now let me ask this question. Would you like us to continue? Elect us to cancel everything and come back at another time. Now, listen.

[Anita Bryant]

Just a moment now, sir.

[Bob Kunst]

I told you what would happen.

[Josh Levine]

The church groups were loud, and they'd brought placards. Don't legislate immorality. Protect our children. God says no. But the bill's supporters did not back down. A bisexual psychologist testified about all the benefits that would come from scaling back societal homophobia.

[Bob Kunst]

I feel that the passage of this.

[Anita Bryant]

Ordinance will prevent a great deal of suffering, anxiety, and depression by many members of this community.

[Josh Levine]

An activist named Bob Kunst also spoke up that day. He says that he, too, was focused on the community's mental health.

[Bob Kunst]

We weren't there asking anybody to endorse our lovemaking. It's none of their business.

[Josh Levine]

At that public hearing, Kunst said that all he wanted was an acknowledgment that gay people were human beings. We are your children, he said.

[Bob Kunst]

We are men, servants.

[Josh Levine]

He got booed.

[Bob Kunst]

Ladies and gentlemen, now you're not gaining.

[Anita Bryant]

A thing by booing or this thing.

[Bob Kunst]

Just wait for your time.

[Josh Levine]

Kunst was 34 then, and he knew firsthand how discrimination could upend lives. In the mid-70s, he'd worked in promotions for a Miami soccer team. He'd liked the job, and it had seemed secure until people in management saw a brochure for a gay conference on.

[Bob Kunst]

His desk and then immediately fired me right on the spot. This was just typical of the hysteria at that particular time.

[Josh Levine]

An ordinance like this one would have shielded him and other gay Miamians from getting punished for being themselves. The bill's opponents didn't believe that gay people needed protections in the workplace, the housing market, and public accommodations. They actually thought the opposite, that Dade county needed protection from gay people.

[Anita Bryant]

I do not want to have these children have a homosexual figure and declare that they, too, will become homosexual.

[Josh Levine]

A Baptist pastor read from chapter one of Romans about men committing indecent acts with other men and getting punished by God. And then, near the end of the hearing, the day's biggest star approached the microphone. Anita Bryant was a beauty queen, a pop star, and the spokeswoman for Florida Orange Juice. She was a kind of celebrity that doesn't really exist anymore, a singer and variety performer who was essentially famous for being a square. She was someone you might see headlining At a county fair. Bryant had always been enthusiastic about sharing her Christian views, but she didn't think of herself as political. She was 36 years old, and when she stood up at the public hearing, she said she was speaking as a wife and and mother. She told the commissioners that gay people weren't the ones suffering, that she and other Christians were the real victims. In this clip, you can hear her voice tremble with emotion. It's a lot clearer than the other soundbites from that day because it ran on the local news.

[Anita Bryant]

I believe I have that right, that I can and do say no to a very serious moral issue that would violate my rights and the rights of all the decent and morally upstanding citizens, regardless of their race or religion.

[Josh Levine]

When the public comments were over, the Dade county commissioners got called on one by one to announce their votes. The first commissioner, a Baptist minister, said he'd made his decision after reading God's Bible.

[Bob Kunst]

Therefore, I'm voting no. Please, ladies and gentlemen, please don't interrupt the phone call.

[Josh Levine]

The next was also a no. Anita Bryant's side was winning. But then suddenly, everything shifted. There was one yes, then another, then two more after that. When Ruth Schack voted yes, it was all over. The Dade County Commission had made its choice. It was going to support gay rights.

[Bob Kunst]

The orders have passed five to three.

[Josh Levine]

For the gay people in the room, this was a hard won victory. They'd stood up to bigotry and come out triumphant. With this amendment in place, they could live more freely and openly and feel safer at work and in their homes. For Anita Bryant, the commission's vote was an outrage. But Bryant wasn't ready to give up. That day, she decided to fight back, to lend her name and her voice to the anti gay cause. That decision would galvanize the American gay rights movement. It would also help create a new brand of conservative activism that would shift the country to the right. Back inside the hearing room, Ruth Schack thought about everything she'd seen and heard and what might be coming next.

[Ruth Shack]

I felt I had won this battle, but we were going to lose the war. I saw those people out front and they were not going to let this thing happen.

[Josh Levine]

This is one year. I'm Josh Levine. In this series, we're going to tell you about the people and the struggles that shaped a single year in American history. 1977. Why 1977? Because it was a year when the nation's rule seemed on the verge of getting rewritten. In politics, culture, sports, religion, and so much else, change in America felt possible, but was far from assured. The new president, Jimmy Carter, had vowed to transform Washington, but it wasn't yet clear if he could deliver on that promise. The feminist movement was gaining strength and picking up fervent opposition. Roots launched an urgent conversation about the legacy of American slavery and ignited an enormous backlash. And in Dade County, Florida, a local fight over gay rights became a huge national standoff, one with life altering stakes for millions of Americans. At the center of it all was Anita Bryant.

[Anita Bryant]

I believe more than ever before that there are evil forces, roundabout, even perhaps disguised as something good. If we take these rights away from.

[Josh Levine]

One segment of our population, whose rights.

[Ruth Shack]

Do we take away next?

[Anita Bryant]

You do what you want in the.

[Bob Kunst]

Privacy of your own home.

[Josh Levine]

Don't tell me I gotta accept it in mine. This episode of one Year is brought to you by the Relentless, a podcast from slate studios and Century 21 Real Estate. The Relentless is a podcast that looks at sales differently and it's officially back for a brand new season. Join award winning host, author and entrepreneur Kristen Meinzer for conversations with diverse business leaders about the surprising ways they deliver extraordinary experiences for their customers. Listen to learn how these leaders are embracing change during this unprecedented time and find out how they're staying. Relentless Season two of the Relentless is out now. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until 1973, the American Psychiatric association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. But Bob Kunst had never felt like he had any kind of disorder. He'd known he was gay since he was a kid in the 1950s, and he was certain that his sexual orientation hadn't been a choice. Kunst believed that sexual repression caused emotional repression. In the 70s, he led workshops where naked strangers, men and women, closed their eyes and touched each other.

[Bob Kunst]

No sex but sweating bullets. And our position was you can't tell the difference between male and female touch. If you're willing to take the and put up with all the crap, why wouldn't you want to have this intimate relationship with any number of people that you wanted?

[Josh Levine]

Miami was considered something of an oasis for gay Americans, a place that, at least compared to the rest of the country, was relatively carefree. But Florida's sodomy laws were still on the books, and even in liberal Miami, gay people knew their freedom had limits.

[Bob Kunst]

People were dancing at 21st Street Beach. On the other hand, the police would come and raid bars every election.

[Josh Levine]

Dade county, now known as Miami Dade, is one of three counties that altogether make up metropolitan Miami. It includes downtown Miami and Miami beach. As of 1976, it was perfectly legal in Dade county to fire someone because they were gay. But that wasn't true everywhere in the United states. Detroit, Washington, D.C. minneapolis, and a bunch more cities had all recently passed legislation that made gay people a protected group. Kunst, who'd been fired simply for having a pamphlet on his desk, thought it was time for Miami to join that list. He just needed to find a politician who felt the same way.

[Ruth Shack]

When other little girls wanted to be Shirley Temple at 4 and 5, I decided I wanted to be Huey Long.

[Josh Levine]

Ruth Schack had to wait a while to live out her political dreams. She got married in her early 20s, then stayed home to take care of her three daughters. As the girls got older, she became more active in progressive causes. And in 1976, the 45 year old Shaq ran for office for the first time.

[Ruth Shack]

I was the woman on the stage with men in blue suits. So I found a yellow, a bright yellow dress and that became my uniform.

[Josh Levine]

Did you have more than one of those dresses or would you just like wash it every day?

[Ruth Shack]

That's a state secret. More than one.

[Josh Levine]

Ruth Schack won that race for the Dade County Commission. Not long after she took office, a group of activists came to speak with her about gay rights. They told Shaq that one small change to the county's non discrimination ordinance could make a huge difference. Dade county already barred discrimination based on race, religion and sex. All those activists wanted was to add four words to that existing affectional or sexual preference. Today that terminology is considered offensive because it implies that homosexuality is a choice. But in the 1970s, it was standard language adopted in non discrimination clauses in nearly 40 cities.

[Ruth Shack]

When they described it to me, I said, I'm your woman. Yes, I sponsored the amendment because on television at night, you would see paddy wagons pull up to bars hauling out men in business suits. That made me nauseous.

[Josh Levine]

Ruth Schack didn't think the amendment would kick up much controversy. A few years earlier, when a similar ordinance had passed in Seattle, the gay magazine the Advocate had celebrated what a non event it was. But Miami would be different. Miami had Anita Bryant.

[Anita Bryant]

Hi, I'm Anita Bryant. This is my husband Bob. As you can see, we're in Florida, the land that's as sweet and fresh as the orange juice that comes from it.

[Josh Levine]

Anita Bryant and Bob Greene lived with their four children in a Spanish stucco mansion on Biscayne Bay. It had a waterfall, a heart shaped double Jacuzzi, and a replica of the Anita Bryant bust from the Oklahoma hall of Fame. Bryant had been a star since the late 1950s when she came in third in the Miss America pageant.

[Bob Kunst]

Anita Bryant, Miss Oklahoma.

[Josh Levine]

In the talent competition, she sang when the Boys Talk about the girls. By 1960, she had two top 10 hits of her own. Paper Roses and In My Little Corner of the World.

[Anita Bryant]

Oh, come along with me to My Little corner of the World.

[Josh Levine]

Bryan carved out a cultural niche by standing foursquare against the revolutions of the 60s and 70s. She threw her support behind the Vietnam War, calling it a fight between atheism and God. When the Doors Jim Morrison got arrested for exposing himself on stage, Bryant headlined a rally for decency. A few weeks later, in 1971, she sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic at halftime of the Super Bowl.

[Bob Kunst]

Ladies and gentlemen, a Voice of America, Ms. Anita Bryant.

[Josh Levine]

One of the main architects of Anita Bryant's career was her booking agent. Coincidentally enough, that agent was Ruth Schach's husband, Richard Schack.

[Ruth Shack]

He had her on every one of his conventions, every one of his special shows. He would use her. She'd come on, sing Battle Hymn of the Republic and go home.

[Anita Bryant]

Glory, glory, Hallelujah.

[Ruth Shack]

And she made a very good living at that.

[Josh Levine]

Bryant's most important deal was her $100,000 a year contract with the Florida Citrus Commission.

[Anita Bryant]

My twins love 100% orange juice from Florida any time of day.

[Josh Levine]

More than anything else, it was Bryant's TV ads for Florida orange juice that made her a national celebrity.

[Anita Bryant]

A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine orange juice. Serve it generously from the Florida Sunshine dream.

[Josh Levine]

In the 70s, Brian also performed for free at Baptist churches across the country. She said that for her, these evangelical duties would always come first. Bryant's oldest child, Robert Greene Jr. Was 13 years old in 1977.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

When our parents weren't off doing shows, they'd call us kids together before bed for family devotions.

[Josh Levine]

Robert declined a traditional back and forth interview for this podcast, but he did agree to record responses to questions I sent him over email. I started by asking what he saw at home that the public didn't see.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

My mom had made a kneeling cushion on which she had transcribed in needlepoint the exact words Billy Graham had spoken when he came to our house for dinner. Once we'd take turns kneeling on Billy Graham's words to confess our sins and ask forgiveness and give thanks for the cat and the dog and the parakeets and all that.

[Josh Levine]

Robert says that his mother didn't really keep up with current events. She heard about the Gay Rights Ordinance at her Baptist church, where her pastor urged her to speak out against it.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

Our pastor was counseling her, encouraging her, in fact, to see herself as a prophet in the mold of the biblical Judge Deborah, who God had chosen to lead his people through a crisis.

[Josh Levine]

Bryant was alarmed by what her pastor was telling her about the ordinance, especially the idea that gay teachers might educate her own children. She got even more distressed when she learned that Ruth Shack, her agent's wife, had sponsored the Gay Rights Amendment. Bryan had given money to Shaq's political campaign and had even taped an ad for her. Now she felt ashamed of that support and mortified that she had encouraged other Christians to vote for Shaq. Bryant hoped a personal appeal might change Ruth Schach's mind. And so she picked up the phone.

[Ruth Shack]

She told me about how her God would not allow her to support this. She had to oppose it. And I said, my God is very different. That's not the God that I know. And we had very little to say after that.

[Josh Levine]

After that phone call, Bryant decided she had to speak out publicly. And when the Dade County Commission voted to protect gay people from discrimination, she refused to accept defeat. In late January 1977, Brian called a meeting at her mansion on Biscayne Bay. A dozen people came, including leaders from the Baptist, Catholic and Orthodox Jewish faiths. The best way forward, they decided, was to launch a petition Drive. They'd need 10,000 signatures to get a referendum on the ballot. At that point, the people of Dade county could vote to repeal the ordinance to allow employers and landlords to discriminate against gay people once again. Bryan announced this plan at a press conference in February. At that event, she stood in front of a big banner. It said, save our children from homosexuals. We'll be back in a minute. There is no better feeling than learning something new. Which is why you should check out Wondrium video and audio streaming experiences created to blow our minds. Wondrium has thousands of hours of amazing stuff to watch. One thing you'll definitely want to check out is the documentary Denise Ho Becoming the Song. It's about an openly gay Hong Kong singer and her journey from music superstar to human rights activist. Wondrium has so much more, too, from brands like the great courses, including programs created in partnership with National Geographic, Smithsonian History, the Culinary Institute of America, and more. Trust me, your brain is going to love this place. Sign up now with our special URL to get this great offer. A 14 day free trial of online unlimited access. Go now to wondrium.com oneyear that's W O-N-R-I-U M.com oneyear wondrium.com oneyear this episode is brought to you by Mailchimp. As a host, one of the most important things I've had to figure out is how to communicate with our audience. This is a new show with a bunch of new stories, so we're figuring things out as we go along. Feedback from all of you is incredibly important to understand what we're doing right and how we can improve and hopefully get some great ideas about what we should cover next. Mailchimp's Customer Journey Builder helps you stay ahead of what your customers might buy next. It can even set automatic follow up emails based on their journey to help you close the deal. With mailchimp, you get a whole lot more than a URL. You get an all in one marketing platform to help drive sales. That means you can connect your data to make more informed, smarter decisions. And you get powerful automation tools like the Customer Journey Builder to ensure you never miss an opportunity to turn shoppers into loyal customers. So if you're ready to integrate your marketing and boost sales, get started [e-mail] Mailchimp built for growing businesses.

[Bob Kunst]

The fight against the county law on gay rights moved to some 20 Dade county churches today, according to the organizers of the group that want the voters to be able to cast ballots on the controversial issue.

[Josh Levine]

By early March, Anita Bryan and her group, Save Our Children Incorporated, had collected around 60,000 signatures, six times the amount required the Gay Rights Amendment would be on the ballot in June 1977.

[Anita Bryant]

Anyone has a right to be a homosexual. It's a choice. And that's exactly the problem is that we are saying that there are no human rights to corrupt our children.

[Bob Kunst]

The very first things that she did was to immediately accuse us of trying to recruit out of the high schools.

[Josh Levine]

Bob Kunst was part of an activist group called the Dade County Coalition for the Humanistic Rights of Gays. That group had fought hard to get the anti discrimination law. Now they had to battle to save it. Here's kunst back in 1977.

[Bob Kunst]

What we're saying is that some of the most famous people in the world have been gay. Plato, Socrates, Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci. The people who are already in the schools that they're teaching. The less we can toned down about the anxiety of relating to same sex, the more that people will be able to cooperate with each other rather than being in confusion and always in a state of chaos.

[Josh Levine]

Bob Kunst became the public face of Miami's gay rights movement. He was charismatic, eloquent and handsome and he never Backed down from a fight.

[Bob Kunst]

I've been confrontational my whole life. I don't put up with crap from anybody. Doesn't matter who. The people who don't get it is not my problem. It's their problem.

[Josh Levine]

Kunst was considered a radical. He believed that all gay people should live their lives unapologetically, just like he did. But in 1977, that kind of bravado could be dangerous, putting you at greater risk of getting fired or physically attacked. And so some gay leaders preferred a more restrained approach.

[Bob Kunst]

The homosexuals are carefully avoiding overt signs of homosexuality because they feel it is a fight for individual liberty and not just gay rights.

[Josh Levine]

Kunst thought it was both immoral and self defeating to make concessions to bigots. He said that those more cautious activists had one foot in the closet. The conflict between the uncompromising Kunst and his more pragmatic colleagues came to a head over orange juice.

[Bob Kunst]

We simply said, we're not going to buy her product. This has nothing to do with whether we like orange juice or not. We like orange juice. On the other hand, she's here to take away our jobs.

[Josh Levine]

Kunst thought an orange juice boycott would be a show of force, a way to demonstrate the gay community's political and economic power. The moderates in the Dade County Coalition argued that gay people were in no position to make threats, that they had to be sensible and conciliatory. The moderates won that argument. The coalition would not endorse a boycott. That was it for Bob Kunst. He quit to start a new group, which he called the Miami Victory Campaign. The activists he left behind were not impressed. They told the media that Kunst was on a personal ego trip.

[Bob Kunst]

We were opening up the door to the entire debate on human sexuality. And meanwhile, the coalition was in a state of freakout. The closet cases went berserk.

[Josh Levine]

The Dade County Coalition was fracturing in other ways too. Lesbian feminists also abandoned the group alienated by sexism in a male run operation. On the anti gay rights side, Anita Bryant's Save Our Children was totally united, brought together by a shared disgust for homosexuality and for gay men in particular. Polling showed that most women voters in Dade county supported gay rights, at least in theory. Save Our Children did everything it could to change their minds.

[Bob Kunst]

The Orange bowl parade, Miami's gift to the nation, wholesome entertainment. But in San Francisco, when they take to the streets, it's a parade of homosexuals. Men hugging other men cavorting with little boys.

[Josh Levine]

The message of that television ad was very clear, that gay men preyed on children. Save Our Children's print campaigns were even more explicit. On Mother's Day 1977, the group ran an ad that sprawled over most of a page in the Miami Herald. It described a hair raising pattern of sexual perverts molesting kids. Below that warning was a collage of newspaper headlines. Homosexuals Used Scout Troop Senate Shown Movie of Child Porn Teacher Accused of Sex Acts with Boy Students.

[Ruth Shack]

Anything to panic parents to make them think that homosexual teachers were would seduce their kids.

[Josh Levine]

Lillian Federman is the author of the book the Gay Revolution.

[Ruth Shack]

As Anita Bryant kept saying, homosexuals can't reproduce, so they have to recruit, and they're going to recruit your children into homosexuality.

[Josh Levine]

By the 1970s, there was authoritative scientific research showing that gay men were in no way predisposed to having sexual interest in children. Nevertheless, media reports about gay predators were everywhere in 1977, spreading the lie that homosexuality and pedophilia were inherently connected. For Anita Bryant and Save Our Children, those inflammatory headlines were the fodder they needed to claim that gay teachers were a threat. Bryant wasn't just making that argument in public. Here again is her son, Robert Greene.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

Jr. At the time, I was a shy, anxious, awkward kid, and I was all too aware that I'd never fit the masculine mold of my dad. But I secretly craved understanding and acceptance for whatever I was or whatever I would turn out to be.

[Josh Levine]

Robert had an English teacher that he really loved. When his mom picked him up at school one day, she had a pleasant chat with that teacher, who Robert refers to as Mr. Alderman, a pseudonym. And then, after they drove away, Anita Bryant called Mr. Alder effeminate.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

I didn't yet know what my mom meant by effeminate, but the way she said it made me want to defend Mr. Alder, though the only thing I could think to say was, he is not. Anyway, by the time we got home, I'd found out what she meant, that effeminacy in men and boys was a common sign of homosexuality. Oh, and the sickness was one you could catch if you got too close to someone else. Well, having heard her out, I went on liking and respecting Mr. Alder quietly, and he went on seeing me through a rocky time. It wasn't long before my parents pulled me and my siblings out of that school and plunked us down in the presumably gay free school run by our fundamentalist church. I never did see Mr. Alder again. Maybe it was just as well, after all the public condemnation my parents had begun heaping on the lives of people who may have included Mr. Alder. I don't think I could have faced him.

[Josh Levine]

When she talked to the press, Anita Bryant insisted that she wasn't any kind of bigot. She said that her anti gay crusade was motivated by Christian compassion.

[Anita Bryant]

I love homosexuals, if you can believe that. I love them enough to tell them the truth because I know that there is hope for the homosexuals that if they're willing to turn from sin the same as any individual, that they can be ex homosexual was the same as there can be an ex murderer, an ex thief or ex anybody.

[Josh Levine]

The truth was Bryant's talking points were hateful and extreme. She said that the Dade county ordinance would protect the right to have intercourse with beasts. She said that if her children were exposed to homosexuality, I might as well feed them garbage. The Save Our Children press kit was even more horrifying. One document had the title why Certain Sexual Deviations Are Punishable by Death. In the eight years since the uprising at New York City's Stonewall Inn, the United States hosted its first pride marches, and states from California to Connecticut repealed their sodomy laws. But by the mid-70s, there was a sense in activist circles that the movement was slowing down and that gay Americans had become politically apathetic. Anita Bryant's outrageous rhetoric made everyone take notice. The vote in Miami became something like a national referendum on homosexuality. The Advocate told its 60,000 subscribers that if Bryant won in Florida, her hate crusade would soon be at every gay American's front door. The historian Lillian Federman.

[Ruth Shack]

I loved what Eric Hoffer said about how movements can exist very well without a God, but they can't exist at all without a devil. Anita Bryant became the devil of the gay rights movement. And I think that really helped the movement organize and pull together.

[Josh Levine]

There were Dade county fundraisers in gay communities nationwide. A Stop Anita Disco Dance in New York, an orange Ball in Chicago, a Beat Anita Thon in Cleveland. A bar in San Francisco held an Anita Bryant lookalike contest open to men, women and anyone in between. One of the judges was Harvey Milk, who later that year would become California's first openly gay elected official. The orange juice boycott that Bob Kunst had pushed for ended up taking off and getting immortalized in song by Rod McKeown. Don't drink the orange juice. Don't drink the orange juice. Might lead to all kinds of bigotry. Gay bars replaced screwdrivers with Anita Bryant's vodka and apple juice. A group called the Gay Gorillas took to puncturing orange juice cartons in New York supermarkets. There were shirts, buttons and bumper stickers that said Anita sucks oranges. In February 1977, a planned Anita Bryant TV show got called off because of her controversial political activities. Just as she had at that public hearing, Bryant portrayed herself as a victim. She said that the cancellation had destroyed a dream that she'd had since she was a child. But Bryant vowed to press on no matter what. As the Save Our Children campaign intensified, Bryant hosted a meeting in the courtyard of her home with folding chairs facing a movie screen. Her 13 year old son Robert wasn't supposed to watch, but he snuck out of his bedroom to see what was going on.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

Cast onto the screen from a slide projector was one grainy black and white photo after another showing a man with a man, a boy with a boy, a man with a boy, naked or mostly doing things with or to each other that I couldn't understand. A guy I took to be a police detective was talking into the microphone describing cases in evidence. I think while advancing the slides. I guess mom and dad figured that by inviting these people over and showing them what I saw and connecting those images with the prospect of gay teachers recruiting boys to take part in such acts, they could sicken or scare the audience into doing anything to repeal that amendment.

[Josh Levine]

Let's take a quick break. Stories about missing persons occasionally show up on the nightly news, but a lot of the time they go unreported and un unsolved. The Vanished podcast from Wondery has changed the way we look at these cases by telling stories of missing persons that go overlooked by the media. So what sets the Vanished apart? Host Marissa Jones doesn't sensationalize or exploit. She gets the story from the friends and family of the missing person and puts you in their shoes. What Marissa wants is to help families find their vanished loved ones or get a sense of peace. In a recent three part series, she investigated the case of Ian Echols. He disappeared in the Cascade Mountains on a hunting trip. But what got uncovered was much stranger and more dangerous than anyone could have anticipated. Listen to new episodes of the Vanished on Apple podcasts Amazon Music. Or you can listen ad free by joining Wondery and the Wondery app Wondery Feel the story. As the referendum drew closer, Dade County's gay activists got some help from New York City.

[Ethan Ghetto]

You know the Bronx Alphabet. Fucking A, fucking B, fucking C.

[Josh Levine]

That's Ethan ghetto. He was 33 years old in 1977 and one of the few openly gay campaign managers in the United States.

[Ethan Ghetto]

There were a lot of talented gay people already in politics at that point, but they were in the closet. They wouldn't ever take on this kind of a campaign. So I felt an obligation.

[Josh Levine]

Ghetto got to Miami just a few months before election day. He learned very quickly how meaningful the Dade county fight was for gay people all over America.

[Ethan Ghetto]

I would get one envelope like this after another, just a Dade county gay committee or whatever it is, and written in some rudimentary stationery with $23 and change in it. And it said, dear Dade county gay people, we're very isolated here in our community in Oklahoma. We go to this one bar, this is the only gay gathering place. And it's only one night a week. And we try to keep it hidden. And we don't have much money.

[Bob Kunst]

But.

[Ethan Ghetto]

We took up a collection and we sending you everything we could spare. And I got hundreds of envelopes and letters like that. And you could see the people were suffering and they were so hopeful that we would do something and it would somehow would change things, you know.

[Josh Levine]

On the ground in Miami, the life or death stakes of the referendum were terrifyingly clear. One of Ghetto's colleagues had a shotgun aimed at his head by an attacker who threatened to blow his brains out. And in the spring of 1977, the coalition's headquarters got attacked.

[Ethan Ghetto]

No, Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through the window and blew up at a desk where I was. And I got, you know, I couldn't hear for two days. It was scary. It was a big flash, big noise. If it had been something a little more professional, I would have been dead.

[Josh Levine]

Ruth Shack, who'd sponsored the Gay Rights Amendment, was besieged with menacing phone calls and worse.

[Ruth Shack]

I will never forget going to Saks Fifth Avenue, going into a dressing room to try something on, have a woman follow me into the dressing room, put her hand on my chest, push me against the wall and spit in my face. Obviously, I haven't gotten over it yet.

[Josh Levine]

The harassment and abuse were particularly intense in Miami's Cuban American community. Jesse Monte Aguta was a leader in the gay activist group Latinos Prodorechos Humanos, Latinos for Human Rights.

[Ethan Ghetto]

We went on a Spanish language talk radio talk show and then people called.

[Josh Levine]

And they were mostly nasty anti gay messages.

[Ruth Shack]

It was pretty awful.

[Josh Levine]

One caller said that all gay people should be deported. Another said they should be put to death. Montegudo's friend Herb Ramos heard all those messages. Two days after that broadcast, Ramos died by suicide. Monteagudo says that Ramos suffered from depression and that he can't be certain that those radio collars are what pushed his friend over the edge. Another activist, Manolo Gomez, was much Less circumspect, Gomez called Herb Ramos the first victim of the Anita Bryant crusade. Shortly after Gomez started to speak out, someone set his car on fire.

[Bob Kunst]

34 year old admitted homosexual and Cuban gay rights activist Manuel Gomez, whose late model car was firebombed last month.

[Josh Levine]

Amid all this violence, Ethan Ghetto was trying to pull together a winning strategy. First, he commissioned a survey which showed that the majority of Dade county voters did support human rights for gays. At the same time, those voters didn't exactly approve of homosexuality.

[Ruth Shack]

Lillian Federman, Again, I think even liberals assume that homosexuality should be always the love that dared not speak its name.

[Josh Levine]

In Miami and all over America, the majority view in 1977 was that gay people and gay sex acts were extremely distasteful. Given that, Ghetto decided to focus the campaign on abstract big picture concepts like justice and equality. One of his ads showed a hammer chipping away at the Bill of Rights.

[Ruth Shack]

They really decided that they would downplay the whole gay issue, which was a terrible mistake. They didn't answer the huge attacks on how gay people would corrupt children. They sort of wanted to bury all of that and pretend that this was not an attack on gay people.

[Josh Levine]

That Bill of Rightspot did look pretty tepid alongside Save Our Children's child molester ads. But Ghetto says he didn't want to dignify that smear with a response.

[Ethan Ghetto]

Those things are traps. You don't want to give these stories legs. You want to try to change the dialogue, change the language, change the focus and the thinking to other things.

[Josh Levine]

Ghetto does acknowledge making one big mistake. His coalition was arguing that gay people deserve to be protected from discrimination. The problem was they didn't highlight actual cases where gay people had been discriminated against.

[Ethan Ghetto]

I never put an ad in Dade county that said, you know, I lived with this man or this woman for 42 years. We took care of each other, we loved each other, we sacrificed for each other. And when he died, the family wouldn't let me come to the funeral. They wouldn't let me have one photograph. This is what we gotta do. You gotta put a human face on this.

[Josh Levine]

Right around the time Ethan Ghetto got to Miami, Bob Kunst was breaking away to start his own activist group. Kunz didn't think much of Ghetto or his campaign.

[Bob Kunst]

Terrible, terrible, clueless. It was so stupid and such a terrible waste of money. And they kept on repeating it. That was the worst part of it all. Their ads were just the same dribble, going after the same scene, completely ignoring reality. What are you going to do?

[Josh Levine]

The Ghetto And Kunst approaches differed in style as well as substance. When the governor of Florida came out in support of Anita Bryant, Ghetto put together a carefully worded reply about human rights. Kunst called the governor a sexually insecure lame duck.

[Ethan Ghetto]

He was very sardonic, sarcastic, hostile, mocking. I'm proud about my sexuality. I've come out, I've taken a lot of guff for it. I talk to people about it. But, you know, we're trying to win a majority vote on election day in a ballot, and this is not the way at this point in the time that you reach people, that's the way you alienate them.

[Josh Levine]

Save Our Children's goal in the spring of 1977 was to expand its coalition. Anita Bryant waved an Israeli flag at a rally for Soviet Jews and spoke at a gathering in Miami's Little Havana. The Cuban people left one enemy to come to a free country, she said. It would break my heart if Miami became another Sodom and Gomorrah, and you would have to leave.

[Ethan Ghetto]

The prejudice against gay people is pretty diverse across racial and ethnic groups in our society. What was happening in Miami reflected what.

[Josh Levine]

Was happening at that moment in America. Marvin Dunn is the author of Black Miami in the 20th century. In the 1970s, he believed that people like him, a straight black man, had an obligation to speak up for gay people, just as black Americans needed as many groups as possible to advocate for them. But in 1977, Dunn didn't see that argument catching on.

[Ethan Ghetto]

The general view, particularly among black people, was that gay people choose to be gay. It was as if this is an out group that chooses to be treated the way that they're being treated.

[Josh Levine]

Ethan Ghetto had very little time to mount a campaign. Not nearly enough, he thought, to change people's minds. And so the coalition basically wrote off the Cuban and black votes, choosing to invest its resources elsewhere. And Bob Kunst, he wasn't willing to concede anything. In May 1977, he went to speak to a group of black leaders. By the end of that meeting, those leaders were shouting at Kunst's group to leave.

[Ethan Ghetto]

Bob Kunst loved Bob Kunst. And if you saw him perform, you could know that he liked himself. He knew how to use his voice. He knew how to use his intelligence to make the case. And it was very difficult to dismiss them because Bob didn't just walk away. He stayed in your face.

[Bob Kunst]

I stated my case. This is who I am. This is what's going on. Take it or leave it. You don't want to give us our constitutional rights. Up yours.

[Josh Levine]

I can confirm that. Bob Kunst has a strong personality. I started our interview by asking him to say his name. He then talked for 25 minutes without stopping, pausing only to ask if I was still on the line. So yes, he can be a lot to take, but in 1977, he wasn't saying anything unreasonable. The point he was making, that to fight for gay lives, those lives need to be lived out in the open, is hard to argue with. Bob Kunst offered the loudest, clearest contrast to Anita Bryant. News magazine covers, reported, pieces in the national papers, features on the network news. They all frame the gay rights referendum. And as Anita versus Bob singing orange.

[Anita Bryant]

Juice advocate Anita Bryant says God has put a burden on her heart to crusade against the ordinance. The gay leader who has rocketed into national publicity by responding to Bryant is Bob Kunst, who became active in national issues while still in high school.

[Josh Levine]

From the media's perspective, Kunst and Bryant were perfect foils. A subversive, unabashedly gay, Jewish and a self declared paragon of Christian womanhood. Kunst at least appreciated the pairing in the long run. He thought Bryant's extremism was a good thing, that it would help build support for the gay rights cause.

[Bob Kunst]

I think that she is doing more for the gay community and more for the humanist movement than anybody else on this planet. I support everything that she's doing. I would like to see her have as much exposure as possible. I think that she is rallying the community together like I have never seen before. There's no way I could have done it on my own.

[Josh Levine]

In the last days before the referendum vote, Bryant and Kunst debated each other at a Miami Kiwanis club.

[Anita Bryant]

In our campaign, we talk about the danger of the homosexual becoming a role model to our children.

[Bob Kunst]

You are asking Anita for the right to discriminate.

[Josh Levine]

They were each given 12 minutes to speak. Bryant spent half of hers belting out the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Kunst, for once, didn't know what to say.

[Bob Kunst]

If I had thought properly, I would have gone right next to her and started singing with her. That would have opened up a whole other different chapter in my life.

[Josh Levine]

We'll be back in a minute.

[Anita Bryant]

Tomorrow day, voters will make the decision that will either keep the Gay Rights Ordinance or repeal it. The controversial law has been on the books for over four months. Voting at this precinct has been busy all day. People are not spending very long inside the voting room.

[Josh Levine]

Bob Kunz said he was certain that the June 7 referendum would break his way.

[Bob Kunst]

They're going to vote against bigotry and hatred, against hypocrisy. And intolerance against second class citizenship for anyone. We are going to win.

[Josh Levine]

He was wrong. 69% of voters cast ballots to repeal the anti discrimination ordinance. Gay rights had gotten trounced.

[Bob Kunst]

In Dade county, the strongest vote against the homosexuals was in the Cuban community. The blacks, middle class, whites, blue collar precincts and upper middle class areas helped repeal the ordinance by more than 2 to 1.

[Josh Levine]

For Anita Bryant, a lot had changed in five months. At that public hearing in January 1977, she felt outraged and defeated. In June, she was exultant and she was a winner.

[Anita Bryant]

Tonight, the laws of God and the cultural values of man have been vindicated. The people of Dade county, the normal majority have said, enough, enough, enough.

[Josh Levine]

When it was all over, Bob Green leaned in to kiss his wife.

[Bob Kunst]

This is what heterosexuals do, fellas.

[Ethan Ghetto]

It was extraordinarily painful.

[Josh Levine]

Ethan Ghetto.

[Ethan Ghetto]

I thought we were going to do a little better and it just showed me what a steep mountain we had to climb.

[Josh Levine]

When Ruth Schack got up to speak that night, she tried to sound hopeful.

[Anita Bryant]

There is love and there is understanding.

[Ruth Shack]

In this room that just won't quit. And I'm very, very proud to be a part of what we're doing here tonight. It hurt and I was so angry.

[Josh Levine]

And Bob Kunst, he says that he never saw that 1977 loss as a real defeat.

[Bob Kunst]

We were going for an emotional and sexual liberation and we said that night you could mark your calendar and your watch just like Christmas and Hanukkah were coming.

[Josh Levine]

Hey, hey.

[Anita Bryant]

Ho, ho. Christian faith Africa.

[Josh Levine]

On the night of the Dade county referendum, gay people in San Francisco took to the streets for a spontaneous demonstration. There must be hundreds and hundreds of people here. The people have taken over.

[Anita Bryant]

Blocks and.

[Josh Levine]

Blocks of the Castro area.

[Anita Bryant]

Why did you come here tonight?

[Josh Levine]

I think we have to get off our ass and start showing strength right now because it's getting to be too late.

[Anita Bryant]

It makes you scared.

[Josh Levine]

It's just an emotional thing really, you.

[Anita Bryant]

Know, it's a lot of fear in.

[Bob Kunst]

It for me anyway.

[Josh Levine]

Why are you here tonight?

[Anita Bryant]

Because I'm a lesbian woman. Because I feel that the Bill of Rights has been wadded up in a.

[Josh Levine]

Cheap piece of paper and thrown to the trash can.

[Anita Bryant]

Whoever Anita Bryant is and whatever she's doing in the name of God, she's squelching human beings.

[Bob Kunst]

Freedom.

[Josh Levine]

There would be more demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Denver, Houston, New Orleans. There had been a good amount of resistance to Anita Bryant before the repeal vote, but this was something altogether different. Lillian Federman sees those June 1977 protests as a turning point in American history.

[Ruth Shack]

I think before Dade county, most gays and lesbians did not want to be political. Dade county woke us up. Dade county made us realize that we all had to be political. We all had to learn to fight homophobia. And I think that that really solidified the gay rights movement.

[Josh Levine]

The fight in Dade county solidified the anti gay rights movement too. What Anita Bryant called a normal majority would become a powerful voting bloc. Christian conservatives would help elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 and remained a force in American politics long after he left the White House. After her big win in Miami, Bryant hit the road to spread the Save Our Children gospel.

[Bob Kunst]

Anita Bryant wasted no time. Today she left Florida on her way to what was called the new Christian Crusade in Norfolk, Virginia. She has said no matter what it costs her personally, she's going nationwide with her anti gay rights campaign.

[Josh Levine]

Save Our Children's winning streak would carry into 1978. In St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas and Eugene, Oregon, voters repealed ordinances just like the one in Dade County. Wherever Anita Bryan went, she got hailed as a hero. But in those same places, she also got jeered and shouted down. At a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa, she talked about all the opposition.

[Anita Bryant]

She'D been facing and went into a place called Norfolk, Virginia and were met with protest and, and all kinds of problems.

[Josh Levine]

And then out of nowhere, a man rushed the stage with a pie tin in his hand.

[Ethan Ghetto]

No.

[Anita Bryant]

Well, at least it's a fruit pie.

[Bob Kunst]

Let's pray for him right now, Anita.

[Josh Levine]

Let's pray. Bryant cried as the pie ran down her face.

[Ruth Shack]

We're praying for him to be delivered.

[Josh Levine]

From his deviant lifestyle.

[Ruth Shack]

Father and I just.

[Josh Levine]

Bryant's career as a secular entertainer was basically over. Ruth Schacht's husband, Bryant's booking agent, dropped her as a client, saying that she was exploiting her vicious, hate filled campaign for professional gain. The Florida Citrus Commission would stop running her orange juice commercials. A poll of 800 high school students named Bryant and Adolf Hitler as the famous woman and famous man who'd done the most damage to the world. Bryant had said she was willing to sacrifice her livelihood to advocate for what she believed in. But when she did lose her career, she didn't see it as a natural consequence of her actions. Instead, she complained that she was being blacklisted.

[Anita Bryant]

We're being threatened and there's all kinds of harassment, but I still know that God's going to take care of us. I'm not afraid. We're not afraid.

[Josh Levine]

The New York Times took up for Bryant, writing in an editorial that she had the right to express her views. But for most gay Americans, Bryant's decline and fall didn't present any kind of moral quandary. Two weeks after the vote in Miami, a gay man named Robert Hillsborough was stabbed to death in San Francisco. Witnesses said that one of the men who killed him was shouting anti gay slurs. Hillsborough's mother filed a $5 million civil rights suit naming Anita Bryant as the defendant. That suit alleged that her son's attackers had yelled out something else, too. Here's one for Anita Bryant would get dropped from the lawsuit. The California judge said that his court had no jurisdiction over a Florida defendant. But the words of Robert Hillsborough's mother wouldn't be so easy to forget. My son's blood, Mrs. Hillsborough said, is on her hands. The tide would turn against Save Our Children in California. In 1978, voters statewide rejected an initiative to ban gay people from working in public schools. That victory was made possible in large part because of lessons learned in Dade County. The human faces that hadn't been showcased in the Miami campaign, those were front and center in California. And while there were still disagreements, all of those different voices of radicals and moderates and lesbians and gay men added up to something bigger. In what's become known as his hope speech, Harvey Milk said that Anita Bryan in Dade county had started a conversation that America needed to have. Once you have dialogue starting, Milk said, you know you can break down prejudice. A year after the Dade county referendum, Bob Kunz launched its own petition drive to get gay rights back on the ballot in Miami.

[Bob Kunst]

This time, we also will be on an offensive level instead of on a defensive basis, which the former campaign was. We're to going, going to be talking about lifestyle, not apologizing for it and encompassing it in terms of human rights.

[Josh Levine]

The amendment lost again, though this time the vote was closer. Two decades after that, in 1998, the county commission voted once again to ban discrimination against gay people. And this time, the law stayed in place. Bob Kunst doesn't think he gets enough credit for all the work he did in the 70s. He spent a good chunk of our interview talking about how much he hates the modern LGBTQ movement.

[Bob Kunst]

We gave them one victory after another. If they can't be winners, it's not my problem. So what am I supposed to do? Go crazy because they're losers?

[Josh Levine]

In recent years, Kunst has rallied behind Donald Trump. He took to carrying a Gaze for Trump sign and another that said Hillary for prison. Anita Bryant divorced her husband, Bob Greene. In 1980, she told a reporter that she'd been used and abused and that she'd contemplated suicide. The answers don't seem quite so simple now, Bryant said. I guess I can better understand the gays and the feminist's anger and frustration. If she did have a true change of heart, it didn't last. In 1992, she said, people hated me because I spoke the truth. We reached out to Anita Bryant, but she declined our interview request. She's 81 years old now and back, living where she grew up in Oklahoma. Her son Robert is in his late 50s, and he has a family of his own, a wife and two children.

[Elise Hu]

I'm Sarah, Sarah Green, and Anita Bryant's my grandma, my dad's mom.

[Josh Levine]

Sarah says her grandmother doted on her when she was small in a very Anita Bryant way.

[Elise Hu]

I always knew she was like a singer because when I was really little, she used to bring me on stage to, like, sing Jesus Loves Me and stuff.

[Josh Levine]

By middle school, Sarah had started to hear about Bryant as a historical figure, the woman who'd fought against gay rights in the 1970s.

[Elise Hu]

I didn't really think very hard about it because the explanation my parents always gave was, you know, that she doesn't personally hate gay people as people, and she was my grandma, and she was always very loving toward me. And so that was a very easy explanation until I kind of realized later in high school and then in college that I myself was gay.

[Josh Levine]

Sarah had no intention of coming out to her grandmother, but then they spoke on her 21st birthday.

[Elise Hu]

She's a big happy birthday phone call type because she likes to very dramatically sing it. We were talking, and she was talking about how, like, if I had faith, the right man would come along, and she just would not stop talking about the right man coming along. And I just snapped and was like, I. I hope that he doesn't come along because I'm gay and I don't want a man to come along. And what she said was, oh, like, I know that you think that this is who you are, but it isn't, because homosexuality isn't real. It doesn't exist. And it's a delusion invented by the evil one. Is what she said, the devil to lead people astray from God, and that if I were to truly, like, focus my life on God and faith, that I would kind of come back to myself and come to the realization that I'm actually straight. It's very hard to argue with someone who thinks that, like, an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion. She wants a relationship with a person who doesn't exist because I'm not the person she wants me to be. And I'm not gonna have a relationship with somebody who can only have one, like, on their terms.

[Josh Levine]

Robert Greene Jr. Says the last time he saw his mother was half a year ago at a family wedding.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

After the ceremony, my wife and I were talking with her at the back of the church, catching up on family news. When we mentioned her that Sarah had just gotten engaged to another woman, my mom's face froze all at once. Her eyes widened, her smile opened, and out came the oddest sound.

[Elise Hu]

Oh.

[Robert Greene Jr.]

Instead of taking Sarah as she is, my mom has chosen to pray that Sarah will eventually conform to my mom's idea of what God wants Sarah to be.

[Elise Hu]

My partner and I have talked a lot about whether we want to invite her to our wedding. I think I probably will eventually just call her and ask if she even wants an invitation because I genuinely do not know how she would respond. I don't know if she would be offended if I didn't invite her. I really genuinely don't know if she will come or not. I guess I'll just say that I don't hate my grandma. I just kind of feel bad for her. And I think as much as she hopes that I will figure things out and come back to God, I kind of hope that she'll figure things out.

[Josh Levine]

If you're interested in hearing more about the legacy of Anita Bryant and the gay activists who fought to stop her, you'll want to check out an episode we're releasing tomorrow. It features a conversation between One Year's assistant producer, Madeline Ducharme and our Slate colleague, June Thomas. You'll also get to hear about the making of our series on 1977 and get a preview of what else we're covering this season. That episode is exclusively for Slate plus members. To listen to that show and other members Only episodes, Sign up for Slate [e-mail] One Year Plus. You'll get to listen to all Slate podcasts ad free. And you'll be supporting the work we do here at One Year. That's slate.com One Year Plus. Next time on one year 1977, Jimmy Carter had the most liberal marijuana policies of any president in history. But a Christmas party changed everything. That whole evening was trouble.

[Bob Kunst]

It was percolating with trouble from the moment we all arrived in D.C. you could smell it.

[Josh Levine]

One Year is produced by me and Evan Chung, with editorial direction by Lo and Liu and Gabriel Roth. Madeline Ducharme is One Year's assistant producer. You can send us feedback and ideas and memories from [e-mail] we'd love to hear from you. Our Mix Engine, the engineer is Merritt Jacob. The artwork for One Year is by Jim Cook. Thank you to Hunter Ohanian and the Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Miami Dade College's Wolfson Archives, the Miami Dade County Clerk of Courts, and the University of Miami Special Collections. And special thanks to fred Fejus, Brian McNaught, Melody Moorhead, Benjamin Fresh, Jordan Hirsch, Jared Holt, Derek John, Lauren Levine, Alicia Montgomery, June Thomas, Jack Hamilton, Chris Melanphy, Derek Johnson, Natalie Matthews, Sung Park, Katie Rayford, Asha Soluja, Amber Smith, Seth Brown, Rachel Strom, and Chow Choo. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more from 1977 next week.

[Bob Kunst]

Sam.