Abstract
On June 7, 1977, when Anita Bryant proclaimed the overwhelming rejection of Dade County’s gay rights law as a “victory for God and decency in America,” one man in the crowd at her campaign headquarters cheered particularly loud. A few days earlier he had arrived from California to be a part of the final days of the campaign. As a Republican member of the California Senate from legendary conservative Orange County, John V. Briggs was there to watch and learn lessons he could take back to California. He was frustrated about the dominance that liberals, advocates of “gays, grass and godlessness” had over politics in California, where Democratic governor Jerry Brown and the Democrat-dominated state legislature defined the state’s political agenda. Over the last few years they had repealed the state sodomy statue, decreased the penalty for possession of marijuana, and were now seriously considering passing a state gay rights law. He saw in Miami a model for a new kind of politics that could mobilize conservative voters and elect officials who would restore America to its traditional values. As he later told a reporter, “The sexual counter revolution began in Dade County, Florida where people drew the line about how far they’re going to let the permissive society take over their lives.”1
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Notes
“The Anti-Gay Vote’s Impact in California,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 1977; Gerard Sullivan, “Study of Political Campaigns of Discrimination Against Gay People in the United States, 1950–1978” (PhD diss., University of Hawaii, 1987), 293.
“The Anti-Gay Vote’s Impact in California”; Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 365–66.
“Bryant Has No Regrets,” Edmonton Journal, April 29, 1978; “Subject of Homosexuality Ignored by Anita Bryant, “Regina Leader-Post, July 3, 1978; Tom Warner, Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism on Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 136–37.
Sullivan, “Study of Political Campaigns of Discrimination,” 337–39; “Editorial,” Advocate, November 2, 1977, 4; Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 222;
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 222–23; “California Goes on Orange Alert,” Lesbian Tide, November/December 1977.
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© 2008 Fred Fejes
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Fejes, F. (2008). California, Seattle, Miami (2). In: Gay Rights and Moral Panic. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230614680_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230614680_7
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