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
Language	English
Subject	Autobiography
Published	1977
Publication place	United States
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.

Reception

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.^[1] Casper G. Schmidt suggested in the Journal of Psychohistory that Bryant outlined 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]

The law professor Richard Posner wrote 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.^[3]

The philosopher Mark D. Jordan criticized Bryant's style of writing. He suggested that Bryant's use of "ritual repetition" made her language resemble psalmody. He viewed The Anita Bryant Story as an effort by Bryant to show her "benign intentions and reasonableness". According to Jordan, it was originally to have been titled Save Our Children: One Woman's Fight against the Sin of Homosexuality, but after the international relief organization Save the Children secured a preliminary injunction requiring the Bryant's campaign change its name from Save Our Children, the title of Bryant's book had to be changed as well.^[4]

See also

• Biology and sexual orientation
• Conversion therapy
• Environment and sexual orientation
• Sexual orientation change efforts

References

1. Evans 1978, p. 169.
2. Schmidt 1997, pp. 55–56.
3. Posner 1992, p. 224.
4. Jordan 2011, p. 237.

Bibliography

Books

• Jordan, Mark D. (2011). Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226410449.
• Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80279-9.
• Schmidt, Casper G. (1997). "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS". In 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)