Anita Bryant, a notorious anti-LGBTQ+ rights campaigner in the United States, has passed away aged 84. Also a Grammy-nominated singer, her family confirmed that she died from cancer at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma on December 16, 2024.

Born on March 25, 1940, Bryant was crowned Miss Oklahoma at age 18 and later became famous for her musical career with songs like ‘Paper Roses’, ‘Till There Was You’ and ‘In My Little Corner of the World’. In the 1970s, she emerged as an anti-LGBTQ+ political campaigner, founding and leading the ‘Save Our Children’ movement which sought to repeal a law in Dade County, Florida, that prohibited sexuality-based discrimination.

“The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children’s rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community,” she said at the time.

Bryant described gay people as “an abomination of God”, also arguing that they should not be allowed to be teachers. She weaponised harmful tropes that painted LGBTQ+ folk as predatory, once infamously saying: “The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality… Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, they must freshen their ranks.”

While Anita Bryant was successful in repealing the aforementioned ordinance in Florida, the LGBTQ+ community was quick to move and protest against her. On October 14, 1977, while she was making a TV appearance in which she claimed she “loved homosexuals, but hated their sin,” gay rights activist Thom L Higgins threw a pie in her face.

By the end of the decade, Bryant had reportedly lost around $500,000 in concert bookings and thousands in sponsorship bookings as a result of the backlash she received.

Speaking about her anti-LGBTQ+ campaigning in 1978, she claimed: “I got involved only because they were asking for special privileges that violated the state law of Florida, not to mention God’s law.”

Anita Bryant is survived by her four children, two stepdaughters, and seven grandchildren, one of which is Sarah Green, a lesbian who came out publicly on an episode of the One Year podcast series by announcing her engagement to another woman.