Anita Bryant, renowned singer and controversial anti-LGBTQ+ activist, passes away at 84.

Bryant was a famous singer before her stance against homosexual rights took center stage.

A Grammy-nominated singer, former Miss Oklahoma, and orange juice spokesperson, Anita Bryant, has passed away. Bryant gained notoriety in her later years for her vocal opposition to homosexual rights. Her age was eighty-four.

In a statement shared Thursday with news site The Oklahoman, Bryant's family confirmed that she passed away on December 16 at her residence in Edmond, Oklahoma. No cause of death was reported by the family.

She was a divisive figure at her peak since the religious right used her as a poster girl and the entertainment industry criticized her for speaking out against homosexual rights. 

Bryant, a native of Barnsdell, Oklahoma, started singing when she was very young and presented her own television program when she was twelve years old. In 1958, she was crowned Miss Oklahoma and immediately launched a prosperous music career, with records like "Till There Was You," "Paper Roses," and "My Little Corner of the World" among her many hits. On the album Anita Bryant... Naturally, she garnered one Grammy for best spiritual performance and two for best holy performance; she has been a devout Christian her whole life.

She had already played in the White House, joined Bob Hope on his USO tours for soldiers abroad in the late 1960s, and was a featured performer at the 1968 Democratic and Republican national conventions. She also became a very recognizable commercial spokeswoman, with advertising for Florida orange juice having the tagline, "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine."

Legacy of virulent anti-gay rights crusading

But in the late 1970s, Bryant's life and career started a completely altered direction. Unhappy with the cultural shifts of the time, she spearheaded a successful effort to overturn an ordinance in Florida's Miami-Dade County that would have barred discrimination based on sexual orientation.

A pie is thrown at Bryant at a press conference on Oct. 14, 1977, in Des Moines, Iowa. (The Associated Press)

In a 1978 interview with Playboy, Bryant said that she was compelled to act because she thought individuals who desired the right to not lose their job solely because of their sexuality were therefore "asking for special privileges that violated the state law of Florida, not to mention God's law."

During a televised news conference in 1977 in Iowa discussing her campaign against homosexuality, she had a pie flung in her face by gay rights activist Thom Higgins. 

"At least it was a fruit pie," Bryant laughed, then proceeded to pray for Higgins before falling into tears. 

"Thus always to bigots," added Higgins, who also created the phrase gay pride before he was removed away. 

The pieing was one of the early occurrences of someone being pied in the face as a political protest and would become one of the most unforgettable moments of Bryant's life. 

In this June 26, 1977, file picture, marchers hold placards depicting, from left, Adolf Hitler, Bryant, the Ku Klux Klan, and Idi Amin, yelling, 'Human rights now,' during the annual Gay Freedom Day March in San Francisco. (The Associated Press)

Although the campaign was effective, it also established Bryant in the public's image as a religious crusader set against homosexual rights instead of a former performer. She became a joke on programs such as Saturday Night Live, the TV series Maude, and The Carol Burnett Show, where Burnett dressed as Bryant for a sketch in which she sang and served orange juice to drag queens and performers costumed as LGBTQ+ icons. 

Supported by Rev. Jerry Falwell, among others, Bryant proceeded to fight homosexual rights throughout the nation and became the focus of severe criticism in return. 

Activists staged boycotts against companies she sponsored, produced T-shirts ridiculing her, and named a drink after her—a variant of the screwdriver that swapped orange juice with apple juice. The boycott nearly cost her the contract with the Florida Citrus Commission, which would finally fail to extend her contract in 1980, and she lost other possibilities throughout the scandal, including a deal to host her own TV program. 

Her career in entertainment collapsed, her marriage to her first husband, Bob Green, broke apart, and she eventually filed for bankruptcy.

Anita Bryant at her house in Miami Beach, Fla., June 7, 1978. (Kathy A. Willens/The Associated Press)

In Florida, her legacy was disputed and maintained. The prohibition against sexual discrimination was reintroduced in 1998.

"She won the campaign, but she lost the battle in time," Tom Lander, an LGBTQ+ activist and board member of the advocacy organization Safe Schools South Florida, told The Associated Press on Friday. 

But Lander also admitted the "parental rights" movement, which has inspired a current surge of book bannings and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida sponsored by such hardline groups as Moms For Liberty, has its origins in the toxic ideas Bryant propagated. 

"It's so connected to what's happening today," Lander remarked.

Bryant spent the later portion of her life in Oklahoma, where she directed Anita Bryant Ministries International. Her second husband, NASA test astronaut Charles Hobson Dry, died last year. According to her family's statement, she is survived by four children, two stepdaughters, and seven grandkids.