To be sure, Anita Bryant (who died last month) was no friend to the LGBTQ+ community. When her granddaughter came out to her, Bryant reportedly told her, “Being gay is a delusion created by the devil.” Did someone mention delusions?
Bryant was a beauty queen, spokesperson, and singer and could have enjoyed life as a beautiful and seemingly friendly celebrity. But when a Florida county passed an anti-discrimination policy protecting gay people, she launched a public relations war. After fighting anti-discrimination efforts in Florida and California, she founded her own ministry which included conversion therapy. She said she didn’t hate gays but on the contrary wanted to help them. It is unknown if she ever explained how demoralizing and dehumanizing people helps anyone or how it could be seen as anything but hateful.
Eventually, Bryant’s star lost some of its shine with her conservative, fundamentalist cohorts when she divorced, filed for bankruptcy, developed substance dependencies, remarried, and reportedly even considered taking her own life. But until the end, she never retracted her statements about gays (including equating them with child predators). She even said in an interview year ago that she had no regrets about her anti-gay campaigns. She also never accepted her granddaughter’s orientation and same-sex marriage.
Should we hate her? You feel how you feel. But as much damage as she did, we did rise above it, became a community with a significant voice, even won protections and rights that probably annoyed her to the core. And she will forever be known as the person who could have been great but instead chose a life of bitterness and hatred against people who never did anything to her other (until someone smashed a pie in her face in response to her antics). So, hate if you must. But she left this world with no remorse for the lives she tormented with her fundamentalist cult of fear doctrines. Some of us might pity her for that. She threatened people she didn’t understand with hell, but she seemed to have trapped herself in her own hell in the process. For me, karma did what she does, and today i have bigger fish to fry. But let’s ask the others on the Queer god sQuad.
