"At least it was a fruit pie," Bryant, the homophobic bitch, said.
judybrowni
· 12 months ago
I could be wrong about this, but pie-throwing was a tactic of the Yippies in the '70s: neither hippies nor yuppies, but those staging consciousness-raising stunts.
You also could also hire someone to throw a pie in those days, I considered for a former head of personnel, but thought better of it.
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
True. Everybody was throwing pies there for a while. You could hire a group called "Pie Kill Inc." to do it for any reason at all. It eventually became almost mandatory when throwing a party to also throw a pie. But hosts were considered the polite target. It was considered rude for a host to pie a guest.
judybrowni
· 12 months ago
Oh right, now I remember: Pie Kill, Inc.
I knew someone involved in that, but the last I heard he was writing for either Variety or the Hollywood Reporter.
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
So now he's throwing literary pies? Well, the pen is mightier than the custard.
pdxprobert
· 12 months ago
prior to pie throwing, it was streaking...
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
Lol. Yes it was. Sometimes I wish streaking would catch on again. But as a nation we've gained a lot of pounds since then, so maybe not.
RainbowPhoenix
· 12 months ago
"Pie Kill Inc."? Only in America.
sherifffruitfly
· 12 months ago
hahhah!
I'm not personally so-constituted as to follow Sully and some others' suggestion, that supporters of gay rights play by the gay version of the Jackie Robinson rules (according to which one must never ever do anything that pisses off the oppressing group, because then they'll never listen to you).
I'm a much bigger fan of throwing pies in their fucking bigot faces.
tbhull
· 12 months ago
While she is a bigot, behavior like this will get someone's skull cracked open over time.
judybrowni
· 12 months ago
And let us not fail to add that Braynt's son later publicly came out.
Talk about yer payback.
(Ooops, was the above merely an urban myth? Couldn't find it on Wikipedia, although life after pieing, seems to have been payback enuf for Bryant:
"The fallout from her political activism had a devastating effect on her business and entertainment career. Her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission was allowed to lapse in 1979 because of the controversy and the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns and the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice.[5]
Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time, and in 1980 she divorced him, although he reportedly has said that his fundamentalist religious beliefs do not recognize civil divorce and that she is still his wife in God's eyes. Kathie Lee Gifford, who worked as a live-in secretary/babysitter for the Greens in the early 1970s, said in her autobiography that Green had a ferocious temper and could be very possessive and emotionally abusive, and that Anita was not very happy.
Due to her divorce, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income. With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a 1980 Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."
In the same article in Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she had said and done during her campaigns.[6] She said that she had a more "live and let live" attitude, apparently indicating a significant shift in her worldview.
She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive, however, due to the controversy from the past, and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001)."
Thank you Judy for all that wonderful info. I've read that born-again Christians have the highest divorce rate in the country, and I can certainly see why.
Your Neighbor Barbara
· 12 months ago
Heck, I'm so old I remember that after this incident, she referred to her (then) husband as a "wimp!" This perfect, Christian couple got divorced after this. Anita found that her career was in the toilet. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
AdrianBrowne
· 12 months ago
Pie-back is a bitch
Queer Canuck
· 12 months ago
I remember another episode around that time when Bryant was giving one of her concerts. Unbeknownst to her, a sizable group of queers were in the audience. As she began to sing they all stood up and walked out of the auditorium, reducing her to tears.
But what really did her career in was the boycott of Florida orange juice (which judy brown notes). What goes around comes around.
empirecookie
· 12 months ago
awesome.
Queer Canuck
· 12 months ago
Agree. I'm hoping the silver lining of the Prop 8 defeat is that it will energize the LGBT community to greater activism. It seems to have started, but it needs to be sustained long-term.
catdance
· 12 months ago
It's useful to note that, back when Florida orange juice was boycotted, there was no wringing of hands over who other than Bryant would be affected. There was simply a national boycott and voila -- no more Bryant. The same thing can work against Mormon owned/run businesses if you keep the goal in mind.
Queer Canuck
· 12 months ago
Amen.
Jay
· 12 months ago
Could someone PLEASE do this to Ann Coulter sometime?
LOL
John Aravosis
· 12 months ago
In fact, it did happen to Ann Coulter about a year or two ago I believe.
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
Oh, THANK YOU for posting that! I well remember the pie in her face, but never knew about her husband in the parking lot. Lolol! A little off message for a Christian. And I'm so glad she got in her, "Well, at least it's a fruit pie" remark before her handler turned it into a prayer session and she began portraying herself as the victim again. Just like the Mormons are learning, it's not so easy to keep portraying yourself as the victim when you have aggressively gone after other people's rights.
vkobaya
· 12 months ago
Sorry, seems to me vengence is wrong. Not the pie-in-the-face, but the destruction of her career and marriage. I'd rather let her rot in hell, whether hell exists or not. I'd rather not know that our side succeeded in destroying this person. Wish our side had a cleaner hand and I could be proud of our side. Are we no different than they are, hateful, vindictive, and willing to destroy over our differences? Shame on us!
John Aravosis
· 12 months ago
Wow, you are joking right? I have no sympathy whatsoever for this hateful creature. I have no sympathy for racists, for Nazis, for white supremacists, for Jew haters, or anyone else who devotes their lives to attacking minorities. Fighting back is not evil. Appeasing evil is.
Bryant made the following statements during the campaign: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters." On June 7, 1977, Bryant's campaign led to a repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance by a margin of 69 to 31 percent....
In the aftermath, legislation was passed outlawing adoption by gays and lesbians in the state of Florida and Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances including St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas, and Eugene, Oregon. Her success led to an effort to pass the Briggs Initiative in California which would have made pro- or neutral statements regarding homosexuals or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal. Grass-roots liberal organizations, chiefly in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, sprang up to defeat the initiative. Days before the election, the California Democratic Party (wary of appearing pro-gay) opposed the proposed legislation. The initiative suffered a massive defeat at the polls.
pdxprobert
· 12 months ago
I remember that era very well.... In the summer of `1977, there was an event in So. California called A Star Spangled Night for Rights... It was a fundraiser to fight the growing anti-gay movement spawned by Anita Bryant... Richard Pryor was one of the entertainers... apparently he was pissed off at the amount of applause a prior Black comedian got and made some very snotty commentary to the crowd before he walked off the stage.. he basically said all we were wanting is the right to " insert sex act here"... and then told us we could all kiss his black ass... Better Midler was next up after Richard Prior... there was obviously a tension in the audience after what Prior had just stated, considering why we were all there...... When Bette Midler came onto the stage, she opened her act by saying "Is there anybody here who would like to kiss my white ass?" Her comments took the chill out of the air, and made the rest of the evening a pleasant event... I wonder if anybody else was there to witness what I just recalled? This was about 2 years before the AIDS epidemic took so many of that generation... Many people think that AIDS didn't really come onto the stage until 1980 or 1981, but I recall in the summer of 1979 while living in Los Angeles, reading about an outbreak of Karposi Sarcoma in 5 homosexuals living in the San Fransico area... It was being evaluated as it was an extremely rare disease and for it to affect 5 people in a particular area, it had caused some concerns amongst the medical profession that monitored such outbreaks... PS - if you havent seen the original documentary about Harvery Milk narrated by Harvey Firestein, from 1982... its well worth seeing... those were different times..
I'm not saying that we don't stand up for our rights, but it is wrong to be vindictive, hateful, and destructive over our differences. It is the mistake that Israel is making in the Holy Land. They are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Yeah, the Palestinians also weren't innocent and pure, but that doesn't mean that the Israel can lower themselves to the same level.
If we return hate for hate, the cycle continues forever and never ends. One side has to stop hating for the cycle to be broken. As liberals, as the gays, as the good guys, it is up to us to break the cycle because the bad guys certainly aren't. Again, going back to Israel, it has reached the point where there is no good guys and no bad guys on either side. 40 years ago, when I was in college, was Palestinian citizen of Israel who was a graduate student. He was proud to be a citizen of Israel and loved Israel. I cringe to think of what he now thinks of Israel and what he thinks of his feeling then. Israel has gone over to the dark side, and both sides are now bad guys.
Let's be the good guys. Harking back the TV westerns of my childhood, I don't want to wear the black hat.
vkobaya
· 12 months ago
Okay, I admit, there are unforgivable assos on the other side. I wish what happened to Bryant could happen to Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rove, and the rest of that gang of haters. Seems to me that compared to them, Bryant is small potatoes and not worth the gloating over what happened to her. We earn far more brownie points keeping silent that she got what she deserved than if we roll in the cesspool with her. I wouldn't ask anyone to keep silent about the Bush gang and in fact, think most are too quiet about how revolting, disgusting, evil, corrupt, hateful, thieving, lying, murdering, polluting, damned, accursed, etc. ... they are.
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
I think it's perfectly natural to enjoy some Schadenfreude. And I don't think we destroyed her at all. She destroyed herself.
empirecookie
· 12 months ago
are you completely insane? the world was not exacly gay friendly when she was out doing her thing, even though it was not that long ago. gays had no great powers to destroy anyone. brave people just spoke up to challenge what she said. that's how society evolves, you nincompoop. if everyone is silent, nothing will change. it isn't hateful and vindictive to speak truth to power. if her life was wrecked, she destroyed it herself.
JamesR
· 12 months ago
Anita Bryant's marriage was destroyed because her husband was a closet case. Makes a bit of sense her hatred of 'gayness' was personal, and perhaps forgivable if she had just kept it to herself. Entitlement to a career is not the same as entitlement to civil rights and protections. "Our side" didn't 'destroy this person' - She did. American decency did. Good. And she's not 'destroyed' just properly shamed and living freely in private.
Indigo
· 12 months ago
I'm very comfortable with taking down her career. We need to do more of that, we need to get more aggressive, and we need to reclaim our friends and allies who suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
catdance
· 12 months ago
Oh lord. Kumbayah.
Anita Bryant was destroyed by hate -- her own active spreading of it.
If large numbers of people refuse to buy a product because the spokesman for the product is engaging in a reprehensible hate campaign, that is their choice as consumers.
If that refusal to buy the product has a detrimental effect on the producer's bottom line, the producer of the product has some choices: find new consumers to take up the slack, raise the price of the product to make up for the shortfall, let the company go under in solidarity with hate, or lose the hater.
The hater, of course, had a choice from the outset: not to spread hate. She made the wrong choice. She paid for that choice.
cowboyneok
· 12 months ago
Like so many said below. She destroyed herself. Period. No apologies required.
gordonsowner
· 12 months ago
There's a VH1 series on the history of sex (I can't remember the exact title, but it's something like this), and it has a nice episode on Stonewall and Harvey Milk, and actually features this clip about Anita Bryant, as well as extended information about Anita (about how her anti-gay stand lost her her OJ spokeswoman status)... It's on occasionally, I'd check it out -- pretty inspiring stuff considering today's situation with prop8 fallout.
Heh. And I'm not even gay. However, I did pose as a gay friend's boyfriend for a weekend at a political convention so some other single gay stalker would leave him alone.
Phil
· 12 months ago
I remember when this happened. She made some snide remark about it being a fruit pie.
The real payback came when her career tanked and never recovered. She's somewhat of a laughingstock now. Last I heard, she was playing to senior citizen trailer parks, when she played at all, which wasn't/isn't often.
Lynn Dee
· 12 months ago
Reader Shano, is it? Heeeyyy... is he also Shano of Pittsburgh who does audio clips for Steph and the mooks on the radio?!
And... I think we can now say it is absolutely a small world.
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 12 months ago
hipocrisy abounds... "lets pray for them"... then her husband takes one of the pies and throws it at one of the activists himself.
so much for 'turn the other cheek'.
is she dead yet? is there a grave that I can dance on somewhere?
RitornaVincitor
· 12 months ago
I took a leak on Dan White's grave. Very cathartic.
It was back in the late 80's sometime, I think. Maybe later. He's buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery in South San Francisco. I went to the office located near the main gate and asked for the location of Dan White's grave. "Oh, Danny?" the man at the desk said with a bit of a surprised smile. I always thought that was rather odd. Sounded almost like he liked the guy. He gave me directions, and I walked up the hill and located his stone. As I recall it just states his name and mentions his service in Viet Nam. No mention of his murders or suicide. It was an amazing feeling to be standing right there over the body of the guy who had robbed us of so much. I wasn't in a very sympathetic mood, and peed all over the stone.
Interestingly I just learned of an interview Dianne Feinstein supposedly gave recently in which she gave her feelings about Dan for the first time. She said she'd read his diary, and did not consider him to be anti-gay. She thinks he was bi-polar. I guess it makes no difference to Harvey and George. Nor does my peeing on his grave make any difference to Dan.
I remember this. I saw Milk yesterday and Anita and her crusade are part of the narrative. It's a great film, I highly recommend it.
Mark in Florida
· 12 months ago
Down here in FL we are still dealing with that awful 'sunshine' law she championed. She is a bitch...I never get tired of watching that. What a freak of freaks.
Bush_Bites
· 12 months ago
I was a straight kid growing up in the suburbs of the Midwest in the '70s, and I remember her being thought of pretty much as a joke by other straights.
Seems like there must be some way to make current bigots the objects of ridicule as well.
dula
· 12 months ago
Let's pray that she keeps her pie hole shut. BTW, is she still alive?
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 12 months ago
Yes...
Wikipedia: Due to her divorce in 1980, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income. With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a 1980 Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."
In the same article in Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she had said and done during her campaigns.[6] She said that she had a more "live and let live" attitude, apparently indicating a significant shift in her worldview.
She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive, however, due to the controversy from the past, and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001).
Anita Bryant returned to Barnsdall, Oklahoma, in 2005 for the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue. She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International.
Anita Bryant appears to have resumed the anti-gay stance, however, in that Anita Bryant Ministries International presently features just two articles, both championing her long-standing opposition to the "homosexual agenda".[7]
RainbowPhoenix
· 12 months ago
In all fairness, rags like that aren't exactly trustworthy.
michael_carr
· 12 months ago
In all fairness, rags like RainbowPhoenix aren't exactly trustworthy.
RainbowPhoenix
· 12 months ago
Real mature buddy.
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 12 months ago
actually, given that she created such a bitter bitch image of herself... I'd think it would work to our benefit if she took up the anti-gay torch again.
nothing like an old, washed-up, bitter bitch to show the public how times and perceptions have changed.
maybe she could become a mormon and speak for the church?
nothing like having a verified bigot as a spokesperson for bigotry personified.
sukabi1
· 12 months ago
you know, the most stunning thing about that news report?? It's actually a report, not just a couple of sound bites with squawking heads commenting on it.
paulbe
· 12 months ago
"Lets pray for him right now Anita" Passive aggressive christian bastard.
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 12 months ago
if that's her husband, you can add 'whom she later divorced' to the 'passive aggressive bastard'.
SCLiberal
· 12 months ago
I remember when the more liberal minded concluded publicly that "orange juice causes brain damage". Heh.
I saw "Milk" today and the audience groaned when she appeared on the screen. The straight people in the audience think she is history... but she is still out there working effectively against us and praised as a hero by many straights... enough that we are still 2nd class citizens... even in California.
shanobama
· 12 months ago
Living on Social Security, I presume, too. I did not know she was still alive.
I love how the 'homosecksuals' keep tasting the pie! They made a delicious pie for a political statement...real whipped cream or meringue, and fruit! haha.
The tweed never goes out of style, anyway. Wonder who these men are, and how they managed to get close enough? She lost her RW career because of a divorce? The Xtian right must have lowered their standards on that recently. Meh, I forgot, they still have Palin.
jixter
· 12 months ago
First off, AdrianBrowne, down below, is a genius with his/her "Pie-back is a bitch" remark.
Secondly, I wanted to add that I had an interesting experience on a plane during the Anita days. I was living in San Diego and flying home to Rhode Island/ Massachusetts to see my family. While in flight, the beverage-tray stewardess came by and when she mentioned having orange juice and I asked if it was from California or Florida, she lit up like a Xmas tree - all friendly-like - and replied "No, these are California oranges!" I took her at her word, took the o.j. and felt like The King Of The Cheap Seats all the way home!
I also remember John Briggs and his Initiative, which, I think, was called 'Prop 6' and also "The Star Spangled Night For Rights" at the Hollywood Bowl.
Jimmy Carter arrived for a visit to Calfornia, gave some sort of speech - and seconds before leaving the podium to return to Washington, shouted "NO on 6" into his microphone. I watched that on TV. His quick remark may well have been the final nail in 6's coffin, but, at the time, I remember thinking "Gee, can you spare the breath it took you to, you know ... SAY IT?" It was like he couldn't get away from that podium fast enough. Cooties and all ...
As for the "Star Spangled Night For Rights", I wasn't there but I knew several people who were and they told me that the evening soured early on when a small, but rather noisy, contingent in the audience supposedly BOOED or tried to hurry a local dance troupe of Black kids off the stage. Richard Pryor came on after them and scolded the audience for their (supposed) rudeness. That's the story I heard. Otherwise, according to these same sources, the evening was a great uplifting and encouraging success.
foxy
· 12 months ago
I think some Mormon leaders need a few of those fruit pies.
paulo
· 12 months ago
Though this is ancient video - love the turtle neck - pie-ing still happens of course. And I am curious. Is this a purely American form of dissent? Or do people get pied in other countries?
curlytoes79
· 12 months ago
"Let's pray for him right now (then go out and smash a pie in HIS face)." lol There's also video of Ann Coulter almost getting pied during a speech, but her vampiric reflexes allowed her to flap up to the rafters and dodge the bullet.
cowboyneok
· 12 months ago
She did seem vampiric, didn't she? Things that make ya go, hmmm....
cowboyneok
· 12 months ago
This is a case study of how a Talibangelical reacts when called on their bigotry. They immediately make some snarky hateful remark "At least its a fruit pie..." and then try to pretend they aren't a bigot by praying for the victim of their bigotry. They usually follow it with, "And, of course, we love the gays... we just hate the sin..." crap.
Kcunac
· 12 months ago
If someone said this already I apologize but it bears repeating: and her music sucks!
Kcunac
· 12 months ago
I love two lines from that report:
"When four self proclaimed homosexuals from Minneapolis (take that Michele Bachmann!) interrupted today's proceedings..." Those damn self proclaimed homosexuals are always chatting at the back of the room!
"Bryant burst into tears as the pie ran down her face..."
LeftCoastOracle
· 12 months ago
ROTFL. Thanks, John. I needed that. It's been awhile since I've seen this. Can anybody remember the circumstances of her marriage ending? I'm thinking her husband came out but am not sure - it's been so long.
bluestockton
· 12 months ago
No, she said she couldn't stand that her husband and her minister had teamed up to control her. She never said exactly what that meant, although the fact that she belonged to one of those churches which demanded that wives "submit" to their husbands may be significant. Even if she ran from the feminist label, she may have resented that her husband was telling her to submit to him while she was earning all the money.
ianasdfg
· 12 months ago
If only he'd given her a cream pie now and again - she wouldn't have been so bitter and twisted.
Chino_Blanco
· 12 months ago
So, when does Robin Wirthlin get a pie in the face?
All Comments
You also could also hire someone to throw a pie in those days, I considered for a former head of personnel, but thought better of it.
I knew someone involved in that, but the last I heard he was writing for either Variety or the Hollywood Reporter.
I'm not personally so-constituted as to follow Sully and some others' suggestion, that supporters of gay rights play by the gay version of the Jackie Robinson rules (according to which one must never ever do anything that pisses off the oppressing group, because then they'll never listen to you).
I'm a much bigger fan of throwing pies in their fucking bigot faces.
Talk about yer payback.
(Ooops, was the above merely an urban myth? Couldn't find it on Wikipedia, although life after pieing, seems to have been payback enuf for Bryant:
"The fallout from her political activism had a devastating effect on her business and entertainment career. Her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission was allowed to lapse in 1979 because of the controversy and the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns and the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice.[5]
Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time, and in 1980 she divorced him, although he reportedly has said that his fundamentalist religious beliefs do not recognize civil divorce and that she is still his wife in God's eyes. Kathie Lee Gifford, who worked as a live-in secretary/babysitter for the Greens in the early 1970s, said in her autobiography that Green had a ferocious temper and could be very possessive and emotionally abusive, and that Anita was not very happy.
Due to her divorce, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income. With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a 1980 Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."
In the same article in Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she had said and done during her campaigns.[6] She said that she had a more "live and let live" attitude, apparently indicating a significant shift in her worldview.
She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive, however, due to the controversy from the past, and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant
"One of Bryant's sons is reportedly gay."
http://www.nndb.com/people/177/000024105/
Or perhaps we're simply confusing the schandenfreude with other public homophobes bit by nature's payback:
"Phyllis Schlafly, conservative columnist: Has a gay son: John Schlafly.
Randall Terry, Operation Rescue founder and anti-gay activist, has a gay son: Jamiel Terry."
http://www.unknownnews.net/RepublicanFamilyValu...
But what really did her career in was the boycott of Florida orange juice (which judy brown notes). What goes around comes around.
The same thing can work against Mormon owned/run businesses if you keep the goal in mind.
LOL
Here's more from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant
Bryant made the following statements during the campaign: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters." On June 7, 1977, Bryant's campaign led to a repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance by a margin of 69 to 31 percent....
In the aftermath, legislation was passed outlawing adoption by gays and lesbians in the state of Florida and Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances including St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas, and Eugene, Oregon. Her success led to an effort to pass the Briggs Initiative in California which would have made pro- or neutral statements regarding homosexuals or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal. Grass-roots liberal organizations, chiefly in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, sprang up to defeat the initiative. Days before the election, the California Democratic Party (wary of appearing pro-gay) opposed the proposed legislation. The initiative suffered a massive defeat at the polls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkN8OZQ0EK8&feat...
Where Diane Feinstein got her start...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEcsms2L4uQ
We're human beings damn it!
If we return hate for hate, the cycle continues forever and never ends. One side has to stop hating for the cycle to be broken. As liberals, as the gays, as the good guys, it is up to us to break the cycle because the bad guys certainly aren't. Again, going back to Israel, it has reached the point where there is no good guys and no bad guys on either side. 40 years ago, when I was in college, was Palestinian citizen of Israel who was a graduate student. He was proud to be a citizen of Israel and loved Israel. I cringe to think of what he now thinks of Israel and what he thinks of his feeling then. Israel has gone over to the dark side, and both sides are now bad guys.
Let's be the good guys. Harking back the TV westerns of my childhood, I don't want to wear the black hat.
Anita Bryant was destroyed by hate -- her own active spreading of it.
If large numbers of people refuse to buy a product because the spokesman for the product is engaging in a reprehensible hate campaign, that is their choice as consumers.
If that refusal to buy the product has a detrimental effect on the producer's bottom line, the producer of the product has some choices: find new consumers to take up the slack, raise the price of the product to make up for the shortfall, let the company go under in solidarity with hate, or lose the hater.
The hater, of course, had a choice from the outset: not to spread hate. She made the wrong choice. She paid for that choice.
Heh. And I'm not even gay. However, I did pose as a gay friend's boyfriend for a weekend at a political convention so some other single gay stalker would leave him alone.
The real payback came when her career tanked and never recovered. She's somewhat of a laughingstock now. Last I heard, she was playing to senior citizen trailer parks, when she played at all, which wasn't/isn't often.
http://www.myspace.com/shane_o_in_pittsford
And... I think we can now say it is absolutely a small world.
so much for 'turn the other cheek'.
is she dead yet? is there a grave that I can dance on somewhere?
It was back in the late 80's sometime, I think. Maybe later. He's buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery in South San Francisco. I went to the office located near the main gate and asked for the location of Dan White's grave. "Oh, Danny?" the man at the desk said with a bit of a surprised smile. I always thought that was rather odd. Sounded almost like he liked the guy. He gave me directions, and I walked up the hill and located his stone. As I recall it just states his name and mentions his service in Viet Nam. No mention of his murders or suicide. It was an amazing feeling to be standing right there over the body of the guy who had robbed us of so much. I wasn't in a very sympathetic mood, and peed all over the stone.
Interestingly I just learned of an interview Dianne Feinstein supposedly gave recently in which she gave her feelings about Dan for the first time. She said she'd read his diary, and did not consider him to be anti-gay. She thinks he was bi-polar. I guess it makes no difference to Harvey and George. Nor does my peeing on his grave make any difference to Dan.
www.tmz/2008/11/28/milk.does.the.body.good/
Seems like there must be some way to make current bigots the objects of ridicule as well.
Wikipedia:
Due to her divorce in 1980, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income. With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a 1980 Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."
In the same article in Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she had said and done during her campaigns.[6] She said that she had a more "live and let live" attitude, apparently indicating a significant shift in her worldview.
She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive, however, due to the controversy from the past, and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992). They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001).
Anita Bryant returned to Barnsdall, Oklahoma, in 2005 for the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue. She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International.
Anita Bryant appears to have resumed the anti-gay stance, however, in that Anita Bryant Ministries International presently features just two articles, both championing her long-standing opposition to the "homosexual agenda".[7]
nothing like an old, washed-up, bitter bitch to show the public how times and perceptions have changed.
maybe she could become a mormon and speak for the church?
nothing like having a verified bigot as a spokesperson for bigotry personified.
I saw "Milk" today and the audience groaned when she appeared on the screen. The straight people in the audience think she is history... but she is still out there working effectively against us and praised as a hero by many straights... enough that we are still 2nd class citizens... even in California.
I love how the 'homosecksuals' keep tasting the pie! They made a delicious pie for a political statement...real whipped cream or meringue, and fruit! haha.
The tweed never goes out of style, anyway. Wonder who these men are, and how they managed to get close enough?
She lost her RW career because of a divorce? The Xtian right must have lowered their standards on that recently.
Meh, I forgot, they still have Palin.
Secondly, I wanted to add that I had an interesting experience on a plane during the Anita days. I was living in San Diego and flying home to Rhode Island/ Massachusetts to see my family. While in flight, the beverage-tray stewardess came by and when she mentioned having orange juice and I asked if it was from California or Florida, she lit up like a Xmas tree - all friendly-like - and replied "No, these are California oranges!" I took her at her word, took the o.j. and felt like The King Of The Cheap Seats all the way home!
I also remember John Briggs and his Initiative, which, I think, was called 'Prop 6' and also "The Star Spangled Night For Rights" at the Hollywood Bowl.
Jimmy Carter arrived for a visit to Calfornia, gave some sort of speech - and seconds before leaving the podium to return to Washington, shouted "NO on 6" into his microphone. I watched that on TV. His quick remark may well have been the final nail in 6's coffin, but, at the time, I remember thinking "Gee, can you spare the breath it took you to, you know ... SAY IT?" It was like he couldn't get away from that podium fast enough. Cooties and all ...
As for the "Star Spangled Night For Rights", I wasn't there but I knew several people who were and they told me that the evening soured early on when a small, but rather noisy, contingent in the audience supposedly BOOED or tried to hurry a local dance troupe of Black kids off the stage. Richard Pryor came on after them and scolded the audience for their (supposed) rudeness. That's the story I heard. Otherwise, according to these same sources, the evening was a great uplifting and encouraging success.
"When four self proclaimed homosexuals from Minneapolis (take that Michele Bachmann!) interrupted today's proceedings..." Those damn self proclaimed homosexuals are always chatting at the back of the room!
"Bryant burst into tears as the pie ran down her face..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EatMK7yZoqE