[Clipping: Anita Bryant on the march: The lessons of Dade County] Part: 6 of 8
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BRYANT ON THE MARCH
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 78
Lesbians were hardly mentioned
by Save Our Children, and when
they were, it was invariably in a
feminist movement context. Two
of Bryant's more memorable reve-
lations were "the fact that many of
the proclaimed leaders of the ERA
are lesbians" and the "frightening"
news that the entire gay rights
movement is financed by the hid-
den millions of "a lesbian task force
of the National Organization of
[sic] Women."
The limited human rights focus
of the pro-gay coalition, together
with the fact that virtually all its
leaders were men, gave Bryant a
clear field to zero in on the raun-
chier aspects of gay male culture.
One lesbian declared bitterly,
"We're going to lose our rights be-
cause of these guys and their god-
damned drag queen/fist-fucking/
chicken-hawk/leather-bar image."
Voters for repeal overwhelmingly
mentioned homosexuals by male
gender. Another tactical error-
despite the fact that at least three of
the coalition's inner circle are di-
vorced parents-was the failure of
the gays to inject the major feminist
issue of lesbian-mother custody
cases. Bryant waxed eternal on the
theme that "all mothers are in-
stilled with a sense of sacrifice when
they bear children. . . . You just
break your neck for your kids. So
it's only natural when something
as important as their spiritual up-
bringing is threatened, as a mo-
ther you have to stand." But there
are homosexuals and bisexuals who
"reproduce," despite Bryant's
claims, whose attitude toward
children is not lascivious "recruit-
ment," but love-and whose
families are shattered by bigotry.
And there are heterosexual parents
who feel pain when they see their
gay children's lives and livelihoods
threatened. These sympathetic
and very real people were invisible
in Miami, and we'll never know if
their presence might have shat-
tered one of Bryant's stereotypes
and taken a piece out of her publicapple-pie monopoly. For lesbians
and for all feminists who see gay
rights as a priority issue, these and
other oversights raise serious ques-
tions about the validity of work-
ing with gay men who are not
feminists.
At the Candlelight, a stylish gay
club nestled among the banyan
trees, restaurant manager and coa-
lition treasurer Bob Stickney sud-
denly appeared at the table I was
sharing with Gloria Steinem, who
was speaking at a gay benefit,
Michele de Milly of the coali-
tion staff, and several men, and
plopped down a plate containing
two upended orange-half "breasts,"
each with a cherry "nipple."
"Those boys in my kitchen are re-
nita Bryant
has uncorked
a misogynist genie.
ally crazy," Stickney noted with a
chortle. It was the first of a number
of seemingly minor but all-too-
familiar incidents. Two nights la-
ter, a local lesbian quit the cam-
paign altogether-and was
roundly ridiculed for having "no
sense of humor"-when an actress
from A Chorus Line delighted a
fund-raising audience with a rend-
ition of "I Enjoy Being a Girl."
All but one of the top nine coalition
spokespeople were male; and
women who came to Miami to do-
nate their talent were under-
utilized, notably Arlie Scott and
National Gay Task Force Co-Ex-
ecutive Director Jean O'Leary, a
former Democratic Convention
delegate and one of the members
of the gay rights delegation to the
White House last spring. O'Leary
is a former nun and Scott is director
of the Unitarian Universalist Asso-
ciation, but neither was used for
outreach into the religious com-
munity. Lesbian activist and writer
Rita Mae Brown, who grew up in
the Miami area, didn't come at all.
"They wanted me to lecture to a
small group of Jewish English teach-ers," said Brown. "I kept telling
them to give me a big crowd, that
what I'm good at is raising money."
Scott suggested that the problem
went beyond sexism: "They thought
from the polls that they were going
to win, and they didn't want to
share the credit."
The highest-ranking lesbian in
the campaign was de Milly, Ethan
Geto's assistant, a 23-year-old vet-
eran of several political campaigns
in New York and in her native
France. De Milly readily admitted
that sexism was "absolutely ram-
pant" within the coalition, but she
was furious at "being personally
put on the defensive about it. I've
had a lot of calls from around the
country from women who were
upset about the lack of female visi-
bility, and I said to them, 'Why
weren't you here?' I had a specific,
professional job to do in this cam-
paign, in media and advertising,
and I had twenty million things to
do besides drawing out feminists
in my spare time." An additional
problem was the fact that Miami
lesbians "are almost completely in
the closet. And a lot of the les-
bian volunteers were even afraid
to tell us their last names." The
Florida feminist community, she
said, was "left totally depressed
and unenthusiastic" by the unex-
pected defeat of the ERA in the
state senate. The end of the ERA
drive overlapped the start of the
gay campaign, and some hetero-
sexual feminists may have been
influenced by the divide-and-
conquer tactics of some senators.
One changed his vote claiming that
he feared the ERA would legalize
gay marriages, and two others
were said to have switched their
vote at the last minute in exchange
for political favors.
While I did meet a handful of
pro-feminist men in Miami, it's an
ugly truth that many gays-like
many straight men-hate women,
and Anita Bryant has uncorked a
misogynist genie. She may be in-
furiating and eminently lampoon-
able, but there was a disturbing
sexual edge to much of the anti-
Bryant sentiment, from Jack100/Ms./September 1977
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van Gelder, Lindsy. [Clipping: Anita Bryant on the march: The lessons of Dade County], clipping, September 1977; Arlington County, VA. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1787571/m1/6/?q=%22~1%22~1&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.