Word: bryants
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...SQUEEZE A FRUIT FOR ANITA BRYANT reads the T shirt worn in many of Manhattan's gay bars. But for homosexuals in Miami, Singer Bryant's crusade against gay rights is no joke. A born-again Baptist and TV promoter for the Florida citrus industry, she has spent most of the past three months organizing a drive to repeal Dade County's new ordinance barring discrimination against homosexuals in housing, employment and public accommodations. As a result of two rulings, that issue is scheduled to be settled June 7 in a public referendum...
...rights by ruling the ordinance constitutional. Last week the Dade County Commission, by a 5-to-4 vote, rejected a move to repeal the measure despite the budget-conscious argument that repeal is the only way to avert a referendum that would cost taxpayers at least $300,000. Bryant's heavily religious appeal ("God drew a circle and more or less asked me to step into it") has attracted fundamentalists and much of the Miami Catholic community, including family-oriented Cubans and Catholic Archbishop Coleman Carroll. Bryant is fond of quoting Leviticus, which calls homosexuality an abomination. Gays respond...
...June 7 vote will probably have less to do with biblical quotes than with Bryant's charge that gays are a danger to Miami's youth. Says she: "They do much of their recruiting among children." Her basic fear, she claims, is that religious and private schools will be forced to hire homosexual teachers. At week's end Bryant and her group were hardly clear favorites of the electorate: a poll published in the Miami Herald showed 42% in favor of the gay rights ordinance, 33% opposed, with the rest undecided...
...statehouse screaming, 'Please don't make me equal!' " So successful was this kind of opposition in Florida that even last-minute telephone calls by Betty Ford, Vice President Walter Mondale, and Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter were of no avail. Florida's former Miss America, Anita Bryant, took time out from her campaign against gays to oppose the ERA; she was more successful than Valerie Harper, television's Rhoda, who campaigned...
...Founder Betty Friedan: "I say to the women of America, we gotta stop being so ladylike." Florida legislators were quick to laugh off the threatened boycott of the state's tourist industry. As one state senator put it: "We got oceans, white sand, orange juice and Anita Bryant, and that's enough...