Pop singer turned anti-gay rights crusader was 84

Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen and 1960s pop singer whose career led her to become a spokeswoman for Florida oranges in the early ’70s and an evangelical crusader against gay rights later that decade, died Dec. 16 at the age of 84 years. family announced Thursday.

The family’s obituary for Anita Bryant Day, as she was known outside the public sphere, was published in her hometown newspaper, The Oklahoman, saying the singer-activist died at home last month in Edmond, Oklahoma, surrounded by family and friends.

During her heyday as a public figure, Bryant was one of the most polarizing celebrities in America, vilified by much of the show business community for campaigning against what she saw as a gay takeover of American culture while being embraced as a hero of many religious conservatives.

Before taking these positions, she was best known for her appearances in commercials for Florida oranges that introduced the catchphrase “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine” (and many parodies of this statement) into the popular lexicon. These commercials eclipsed her long-dormant career as a pop singer, even as she began recording gospel music after easy-listening sounds fell out of fashion in the rock era.

Bryant’s notable public appearances in her less controversial years included singing at both the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions, and being a fixture on Bob Hope’s holiday tours for overseas troops for seven consecutive years, singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the 1971 Super Bowl and provided a musical tribute to President Lyndon Johnson at his 1973 funeral.

In 1977, Bryant began spearheading a “Save Our Children” campaign aimed at repealing an ordinance in Miami-Dade County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. The crusade succeeded in having the regulation repealed that year in a referendum. It was not restored until 1998. Also in 1977, the Florida legislature banned it. For the next three years, her activism against such regulations made her a poster girl for the religious right and the biggest public arch-enemy of the gay community and social liberals. Her statement that she “loves gays but hates their sin” became a mantra of sorts for evangelicals—and a much-derided meme among what would later be known as the LGBTQ community—for decades to come.

In 1978, her views were further reinforced by the national media when she was the subject of the monthly “Playboy Interview”. The magazine began by summarizing the sudden turnaround in her image: “For her first 36 years, Anita Bryant was the stereotypical embodiment of the American Dream; hers was a rags-to-riches saga in the best Horatio Alger tradition. … Her life was comfortable and distinctly uncontroversial. Last year, all that changed suddenly and dramatically; her halcyon routine perished in the flames of political warfare. When the Metropolitan Dade County Commission passed an ordinance that would effectively mandate that qualified homosexuals be hired as teachers in private and public schools, Bryant stepped forward to spearhead an effort to repeal it. The subsequent campaign was drawn along classic good-versus-evil lines. Bryant recruited a number of religious leaders and conservative politicians under the banner of his ad hoc organization, Save Our Children. Her pitch was simple: Homosexuality is a sin, and if homosexuals were given carte blanche to glamorize their ‘deviant lifestyle’ in Miami-area classrooms, the American family would be destroyed and the American way of life would disappear. … Bryant had become a fixture on the American political scene.”

In it Playboy interviewBryant said she hadn’t thought much about homosexuality before the Florida law that made her angry. “I only got involved because they were asking for special privileges that violated Florida state law, not to mention God’s law. … God says the wages of sin is death, and one little sin brings another. The homosexual act is only the beginning of the depravity. It then leads to – what’s the word? – it just gets worse as it goes down the drain and it just gets into alcohol and drugs. and it’s so rotten that many gays end up killing themselves. The worst part is that these days so many married men with children who are not happily married go to the gay bars to satisfy them – if they if not careful, they will be completely trapped by it.”

Her activism extended well beyond Florida as her fame in that arena grew, championing California’s infamous Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban public school employees from making pro-gay statements at the expense of their employment. Even former governor Ronald Reagan ultimately opposed the initiative, and once it fell to a massive voter defeat, Bryant’s influence waned.

Her activism led to the end of any significant career Bryant had outside the conservative Christian community. Counter-activists began taking up slogans like “A day without human rights is like a day without sunshine,” and the Florida Citrus Commission finally tapped her as its brand ambassador in 1980, after an initially highly successful nine-year run that had included co-hosting broadcast of the Orange Bowl Parade. Other endorsement deals also dried up, though she had a last hurray of sorts with a two-hour “Anita Bryant Spectacular” patriotic special in 1980, starring Bob Hope and Pat Boone.

Bryant divorced her husband, Bob Green, also in 1980, although he contested the split on religious grounds. She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990.

One of Bryant’s most curious public appearances came in 1989, when she was interviewed by Roger Moore for his “Roger & Me” documentary.

Bryant represented Oklahoma in the 1958 Miss America pageant and placed second. Many people thought she won the competition because she already had some celebrity in television and music at the time. “I already had a record deal when I did Miss America, so people knew me,” she said in a 2008 interview. “It’s really funny because people still tell me they remember when I won Miss America.”

Bryant’s biggest break came when one of Arthur Godfrey’s talent scouts discovered her and put her on his variety show when she was 16, with a series of appearances there leading to her record deal. She soon appeared on other shows, from Ed Sullivan’s to “American Bandstand.” Commercials for Kraft, Coca-Cola and Holiday Inn followed.

Her biggest charting song was “Paper Roses”, which reached no. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960. It was followed by another top 10 song, “My Little Corner of the World”. She recorded 14 singles on the charts between 1959 and 1964, recording for the Carlton and Columbia labels. As rock sounds took over, she was seen more often on television variety shows than on pop radio.

Bryant had no breakout albums, although a holiday album that became something of an easy-listening perennial, “Do You Hear What I Hear?: Christmas With Anita Bryant,” peaked at No. 25 in 1967.

In 1970, Bryan released his first album with Word, the prominent Christian label of the day, and then released primarily religious material. She also wrote a number of books with and without her then-husband Bob for Fleming H. Revell, a Christian publisher that was popular in religious bookstores throughout the 1970s. Her last album was released in 1985.

She was nominated for three Grammys in the late ’60s and early ’70s, all for religious material, two in the since-renamed “best sacred performance” category and one for best inspirational performance.

Bryant moved back to Oklahoma in 2002 to care for her ailing mother, and decided to remain in the state thereafter because of its friendliness to her traditional religious values. Well out of the limelight, she worked on writing inspirational books and getting involved in the Salvation Army.

Bryant was preceded in death by her husband, Charlie, and is survived by four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren and their spouses.