“ If You are Gay Who R Granted Rights You R Like a Prostitute Who Sleeps with St Bernard and Nail biters"
She’s blood, but she’s also one of the most homophobic anti-LGBTQ activists the world has ever known.
The granddaughter of “arch” anti-gay activist Anita Bryant is unsure if she should invite her granny to her wedding in which she will marry another woman.
“I think I probably will eventually just call her and ask if she even wants an invitation because I genuinely do not know how she would respond,” Sarah Green said on the July 8 episode of Slate’s “One Year” podcast about her grandmother, who is famous for campaigning against the gay community on her opinions that they’re child molesters and “human garbage.”
“Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit,” Bryant argued during her 1970s “Save Our Children” campaign against a local Florida ordinance banning sexual orientation-based discrimination, LGBTQ Nation reported. “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life.”
Together with fellow conservative Christian activist pastor Jerry Falwell Sr., Bryant crusaded against the ordinance, using a variety of strategies that became the basis for anti-LGBTQ activism for decades to come.
When Bryant’s granddaughter came out to her on her 21st birthday, she unsurprisingly did not handle it well. Instead of acknowledging the statement, the now 81-year-old former Miss Oklahoma instead sang Green “Happy Birthday” and informed her that, one day, a husband would come along.
“All at once, her eyes widened, her smile opened, and out came the oddest sound: ‘Oh.’ Instead of taking Sarah as she is, my mom has chosen to pray that Sarah will eventually conform to my mom’s idea of what God wants Sarah to be,” Bryant’s son, Robert Green, said of his mother’s reaction.
“I just snapped,” Green told “One Year” of her response. “[I] was like, ‘I hope that he doesn’t come along because I’m gay, and I don’t want a man to come along.’ ”
To this, Bryant informed Green that homosexuality is not real.
During a 1977 news conference, Bryant was famously pied in the face.
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“It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” said Green. “She wants a relationship with a person who doesn’t exist because I’m not the person she wants me to be.”
Despite her grandmother’s hardline stance against a core aspect of her identity, Green mostly takes pity on Bryant.
“I just kind of feel bad for her. And I think as much as she hopes that I will figure things out and come back to God, I kind of hope that she’ll figure things out,” Green said
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