The Anita Bryant Story

The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality

Cover of the first edition
Author Anita Bryant
Country United States
Language English
Subject Anita Bryant
Published 1977
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 156
ISBN 978-0800708979

The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality is a 1977 book by Anita Bryant, in which the author provides an account of her evangelical Christian campaign against a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. The claims Bryant makes about homosexuality in the book have been described as false and unscholarly in nature.

Summary

Bryant provided an account of her evangelical Christian campaign against a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. She wrote that homosexuality is spread through recruitment, and that gay people can change their sexual orientation.[1] Bryant wrote that "The women's liberation programs...have weakened family ties", that "single men are the chief source of crime and social disruption", that "marriage is essential to male socialization", and that "as the more liberal life-styles come into the open, divorce rates soar, leaving the debris of human tragedy behind to suffer. The debris? Our children." Bryant called the gay rights movement an "escape from sexual responsibilities and its display a threat to millions of young men who have precarious masculine identities."[2]

Reception

Mainstream media

The journalist M. Stanton Evans gave The Anita Bryant Story a positive review in National Review, writing that Bryant's "frequent arguments from Scripture confirm the view that she is deeply religious but refute the libel that she is any sort of bigot." Evans welcomed Bryant's lack of regret for the consequences to her of her opposition to gay rights.[3]

Academic journals

Casper G. Schmidt, writing in the Journal of Psychohistory in 1984, suggested that Bryant outlines the major issues of concern to opponents of gay rights, and that she was correct in believing that repeal of the gay rights ordinance in Dade County would provoke a larger backlash against the gay rights movement.[2]

Evaluations in books

The law professor Richard Posner wrote in Sex and Reason (1992) that while The Anita Bryant Story is not scholarly, it reflects widespread beliefs about homosexuality. Posner criticized Bryant's views, writing while the causes of a same-sex preference are not well understood, the main factors involved appear to be genetic, hormonal, developmental, or some combination thereof, not recruitment, and that Bryant's assertion that gay people can change their sexual orientation is false in most cases.[4]

See also

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books
  • Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80279-9. 
  • Schmidt, Casper G. (1997). Lauritsen, John; Young, Ian, eds. The AIDS Cult: Essays on the Gay Health Crisis. Provincetown: Pagan Press. ISBN 0-943742-10-2. 
Journals
  • Evans, M. Stanton (1978). "Dark Horses". National Review. 30 (5).   – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
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