Content area
Full Text
On 1 8 J anua r y 1 9 7 7 , at a pub l i c he a r ing in Miami before the Board of Commissioners of Dade County, Florida, opponents and proponents of an ordinance that would prohibit discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the areas of housing, public accommodations, and employment squared off. The small contingent of gay rights activists supporting the ordinance was vastly outnumbered by hundreds of Baptists who arrived on buses chartered by two local churches. Bearing signs such as "God Says No. Who Are You to Be Different?" and "Protect Our Children, Don't Legislate Immorality for Dade County," these activists packed the Dade County Courthouse Commission chambers and filled the hallway outside, loudly jeering at those with whom they disagreed. Both the conservative evangelical Christians and the gay rights advocates were in agreement about one thing: the consequence of the antidiscrimination ordinance would shape the ability of gay men and lesbians to be integrated into public life-and thus, the very definition of citizenship was at stake.1
"It is a peril to the nation," argued those challenging the gay civil rights ordinance, including celebrity Anita Bryant, renowned at the time as the national spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission and for her bestselling pop albums. At the hearing, Bryant claimed her right to control "the moral atmosphere in which my children grow up" and insisted that the state's support of gay civil rights infringed upon her status as a parent. She declared to the Metro Dade commissioners: "God gave mothers the divine right to reproduce and a divine commission to protect our children, in our homes, business, and especially our schools."2 Children, homes, and schools were endangered, she later asserted, because "homosexuals cannot reproduce-so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America."3 Robert Brake, a Catholic and a conservative Coral Gables city commissioner, concurred with Bryant. Making clear his stance that homosexuals deserved no public visibility or rights, Brake averred that homosexuals ought "to go into their closets, in their bedrooms, in their privacy and take care of themselves there."4 Together their statements appealed to the powerful belief that all children ought to be heterosexual and that society had...