Anita Bryant

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, and then I, uh, went down to, uh, I met Anita Bryant of all people, uh, at, when I went out to Israel when I was 17, and she asked me to come and work for her as her assistant, and she would teach me the ropes.

Back then it was all pre-scandal with Anita.

She was America's sweetheart, and-

I was growing up in Florida.

I was born in New York City, but at a young age, we moved to Florida and there was the Anita Bryant rampage, which some of you may or may not know about, but suddenly gay people were on TV and I was watching TV with my parents and just like thinking that's, there it is.

That's, that's my thing.

And this is really bad news, you know? Because I could tell this was going to be...

And you could just see that over and over again, right? We could talk about Helen Andelin, Maribel Morgan, Elizabeth Elliott.

We can see that with Anita Bryant.

And then all the way up to people like Sarah Palin and Kristi Noem and Carolyn Levitt.

Right.

I think it's partially due to the trans advocacy expanding into minors.

I think that one of the things that the gay and lesbian community did really well, because we learned the lesson, which is leave the kids alone, right? And so with Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children, campaign and gay people were pedophiles and you couldn't let a gay person be a school teacher, right? The Briggs Amendment in California, right? This was the killing of Harvey Milk.

People were really freaking out about, and again, gay men, not much about lesbians, except maybe in family law where the husbands or the fathers of the children, if they had them together, wanted to be sole custody parent and find them unworthy, right? That they weren't a good custodial parent.

Of course, there were the GSAs, right? The Gay-Straight Alliances that were in the high schools all around the country.

But yeah, you go back and look and you think, you know, what is the actual theological substance here? And what does this emphasis on celebrity culture end up doing? And in the case of many of the women, what we see is the authors of these books, I mean, one of the first ones, Dale Evans Rogers, interestingly, she's one of the first kind of celebrity authors.

But then you have like Anita Bryant and, you know, and then her friend, Maribel Morgan.

And you just kind of see and you read these books and you think, you know, if you have any theological training, like, oh my gosh, red flags all over, like really problematic.

But these are the books that end up shaping the lives of millions of women.

And that's somehow, okay, this is how the system works.

As long as you're loyal to the system, we're gonna lift you up.

I mean, Anita Bryant is just such a great example of this as well.

Anita Bryant, so powerful.