Glad Anita lived long enough to not get invited to her gay granddaughter's wedding.
I was 12 years old when Bryant waged her campaign against gay teachers and called gay people pedophiles. My mom thought she was wrong, my dad thought she was right. They argued about it in the car with their closeted gay kid listening in the backseat.
Listening to my parents argue I went from feeling like "us" meant "me and mom and dad and my siblings" to feeling utterly alone. My parents and siblings became "them." I had to hide from them and lie to them and beware of them.
I couldn't tell them—my mom and my dad—and I couldn't trust them—my three siblings—not to tell my mom and dad. Multiply the damage Bryant did to me by millions, by all the other gay kids out there, and you can understand why my hatred for her remains white hot to this day.
But Anita Bryant's anti-gay activism—which was successful in Florida—would ultimately backfire. Gay people organized and began to fight back. Harvey Milk fought back. There's an airport named after him. There won't be truck stop named after Bryant.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Our_…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Our_…
Gay people organized, fought back, and defeated Bryant in California when voters rejected the anti-gay Briggs Initiative. Still a teenager, still closeted, and still in Chicago, I was reading about it in the newspapers and it gave me hope. I would have a family again.
A gay family and maybe my family too. Because I was seeing moms and dads who knew their kids were gay fighting for their kids, marching, talking to reporters. Seeing that convinced me that one day I would be able to tell them—mom and dad and my siblings—and we'd be "us" again.
Which is what happened. And I guess in some strange way I have Anita Fucking Bryant to thank for that.
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