Anita Bryant - Good Christian Hate

Do you remember Anita Bryant?

Well, Dunner has given me an idea for a few posts which I don't know why I didn't think of myself. Before I decided to set aside my passion for writing in 1980 and envelop myself in the comfort of a career and the attendant security of that career as a public servant, my writings were fairly routinely published by Denver's gay rag -- which, incidentally, is still publishing quite successfully -- Out Front. And, after re-reading several of my published articles, I've got to say, as I've said before, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, here goes:

Anita Bryant: Good Christian Hate (Published October, 1979)

Yes, now that I think about it, if it weren't Anita Bryant, it would be someone else. Indeed, it is someone else. Homophobes are a dime a dozen and most of them will tell you about it ... proclaiming their dislike of gays -- in no uncertain terms -- to anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Ms. Bryant, though, has applied a curious twist to this commonplace bigotry by suggesting that America's children are in great danger; that, unless the eradication of homophilia proceed forthwith, the innocent offspring of all God-fearing American parents are in for big trouble. Yes, indeed, what limp-wrested faggot or muscular bulldyke can resist the opportunity to "recruit" some blue-eyed, blond-haired child of eleven or twelve who happens to cross his/her path?

The humor of the situation is certainly grotesque. I'm gay and I love children, but I've yet to seduce one or walk door to door inquiring if the young man of the house would be interested in becoming gay. Of course, the molestation of young boys and girls is left to the psychotics (and Catholic priests, it seems), not happy, loving gay men and lesbians. If Ms. Bryant can't understand this, then her motives are not so much fed by bigotry than by some profound stupidity. But, then, what else is bigotry but stupidity wrapped in patriotism and religion?

One begins to recognize the difficulty Mr. Scopes must have had in trying to enlighten the people of Tennessee about the origins of the human species. No sir, no hot-shot teacher is gonna' convince God-fearin' Christians that science has more to say about life than the Bible.

Ever since I was in the Army and heard a story from a Master Sergeant who had played a clarinet in an Army Band where a certain citrus-selling singer was opening a state fair, I've had a fundamental dislike for that singer. It seems the singer was to perform with the band but, before she even appeared, her husband -- who also happened to be her manager -- instructed the officer in charge of the band that no enlisted men would be allowed to speak to her. She would, naturally, speak to and sign autographs for the officers, but she was off-limits to enlisted personnel.

No, it didn't matter then that most of the enlisted musicians were draftees who had had college and post-graduate training in music and could out-play and out-think the less than articulate career soldiers who happened to be officers. No, what was important, of course, was the matter of image. The singer certainly didn't want to be seen with mere enlisted men lest the orange juice buying public would get the wrong idea.

The point, of course, is that Ms. Bryant is taking a calculated risk in assuming a visible and vocal position atop the citadel of good Christian living. (Anything less than a lieutenant is surely closer to a dog than a pagan. And, what pain it would cause "good Christians" to associate with the base and sordid elements of this world.)

It seems Ms. Bryant must liken orange juice to those other "pure" attributes of middle America such as apple pie, motherhood and the flag. And, God knows, anybody who promotes orange juice must be as wholesome as the purest driven snow. The matter of image is foremost with Ms. Bryant. She is in the business of selling orange juice and what better way to do it than to set one's self up as God's champion on earth ... fighting the uncouth; the un-American; yes, and even the un-Godly. Indeed, I can hear it now. "C'mon, Martha, push that damned cart over to the orange juice section. Those goddamned fairies ain't gonna' push me around." And, somehow, a blow has been struck for democracy.

Some of us pursue more noble goals than selling orange juice and promoting stupidity. Some of us attempt -- in our own little ways -- to make our live and the live of those around us a little more loving; a little more sane. Some of us even try to understand the motivations of stupid people, which brings me to share the following thoughts.

This summer I overheard a young man tell his girlfriend that the novel she was reading, which happend to be 1876 by Gore Vidal, was a good book and Vidal is a good writer, "but," the young man said, "Vidal is a homosexual which tends to color his writing. Rex Reed and Tennessee Williams are fags, too. And Truman Capote ... Jesus, what a screaming queen. See," the young man continued, "I had a drama teacher in high school who filled us in on all this stuff. The arts tend to attract queers like flies to sugar."

This incredible nonsense still persists. Children in American society are conditioned from the very beginning of their lives to fear and even to hate homosexuals who, if they listen to Ms. Bryant and others, are out to recruit them into a life lived exclusively in public toilets and dark X-rated movie houses; a life where sex is prusued to the exclusion of all things in life which have meaning: education, good jobs, mortgages, off-road vehicles, god, wives/husbands, kids, guns. And, even if a person who happens to be gay does make some contribution to humanity, that contribution is somehow "colored" by his/her deviation. Hmmmm.... Michelangelo's Pieta becomes less than exquisitely beautiful; Gertrude Stein becomes less than genius; Walt Whitman's Song of Myself becomes less than, what I believe to be, a profound insight into the meaning, the essence of existentialism by which my life is guided. Oh, yes, this incredible nonsense does persist. This incredible stupidity is espoused so brazenly that it is not so much sickening as it is sad. Yes, to borrow from Elton John, it's a sad, sad situation and it's getting more and more absurd.

Anita Bryant has quited down, but not without making her point. The young man's drama teacher, no doubt, continues to "color" the worth of gay artists with his revelations about their sexuality. And we, as gay people, continue to live our lives in the face of all this nonsense, reaching deep within ourselves and discovering the one consoling factor which negates the hate and fear directed at us to utter meaningless diatribe: we discover our capacity to love and to be loved which is of far reater importance and an infinitely more potent force than anything coming our way from the pitiful homophobes who disseminate good, Christian hate wrapped grandisouly in the stars and stripes.