October 14, 1977, Anita Bryant is pied for her antigay bigotry at a press conference in Des Moines, IA.
It was 40 years ago todayâŠ
Never gets old.
40 years on and it still is gratifying
Anitaâs still alive and kicking and being anti-gay. Thom Higgins, who threw the pie when he was 27 â and was poetically from Beaver Dam â passed away 17 years later at 44. Info on his life is here. The pie throwing was a big deal. In an age before the internet let gays feel connected, and long before ACT UP, the pie showed small pockets of gays that we could fight back.
it showed that gays were human beings, who might be in the room with you, that you had been accepting as being equals and treating as people. you didnt suspect them as bieng gay, why should you treat them different after? do they become less human after finding out? i mean, its almost like you just found out they have an oppinion on your bullshit
Anita Bryant was also the spokeswoman of Florida Orange Juice! Getting pied in the face was iconic and a huge deal but what really made an impact was that the LGBT Community and its allies started a boycott against Florida Orange Juice. People stopped buying Florida Orange Juice and Florida Citrus as direct pushback against Anita Bryant and her âSave Our Childrenâ anti-gay coalition.Â
Harvey Milk was even in on it and told people to stop drinking the stuff at breakfast. Gay and lesbian bars refused to serve orange juice or any drink made with it. They would make screwdrivers and other cocktails that traditionally called for orange juice with other alternatives like grapefruit. The only way you could get something with orange juice in it was if you brought your own fresh oranges and squeezed them yourself (some bars had handheld citrus juicers on the bar top) but if you brought in something with Florida Citrus on the label, it would get poured down the drain.
This was the first organized boycott in support the LGBT community. People called it the Gaycott and it got national coverage. Anita Bryant and her homophobic propaganda (she was the one who famously would tout âGays canât reproduce so they have to recruit.â and spread fear towards parents about gays corrupting children) truly gave gays across the nation something to unite against and it inadvertently gave LGBT people a much larger stage to have their voices heard. Wherever she went, there were protests. There were magazine covers, tv reports, songs about the boycott, and a whole bunch of anti-Anita/anti-orange juice merch.Â
