Stories of Pride 2025 - The Orange Juice Boycott of 1977
By Beth Anz
Like our Florida Sunshine, sometimes it’s the stormy days
that bring us the rainbows. And for our inaugural Story of Pride,
we are going to share a tale of Sunshine, Orange Juice,
Milk and Rainbows. We are of course talking about the
Orange Juice Boycott of 1977, and how the LGBTQ
movement found their political power over oppression.
Now as fabulous as it would be, we can not cover every
aspect of the LGBTQ movement in the 60’s and 70’s here.
We have all heard the story of the Stonewall Inn,
which is widely seen as the birth of the Modern Gay
Liberation Movement. Notice we said modern, because
gay, transgender, non binary and the larger
spectrum of self expressions of love and identity
have always been here and have been fighting
for their rightful and equal place in society.
But Stonewall was a catalyst for a modern
movement of resistance.
June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn was not the
first time or place there was resistance, and it
was not the first time the bar was raided.
Those who did not conform to the gender
or sexual stereotypes of the time were regularly
arrested at the establishment and that night,
some of the young and marginalized people
in particular had enough. Riots started that night,
lasted for 6 days, and caught the attention of the nation.
And the LGBTQ community, in an era of pro civil
rights movements and anti war demonstrations
tapped into the unrest of the 1960s and inspired
the creation of organizations like GLAAD, PFLAG
and the Human Rights Campaign. One year later,
June 28th, 1970 thousands of people marched in the
streets of Manhattan from the Stonewall Inn to
Central Park in what was then called
“Christopher Street Liberation Day.”
What has come to be known as the
first pride parade.
Now fast forward to 1977, and how Christian
crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida's
LGBTQ culture war. Bryant was a former
Miss Oklahoma beauty queen and pop singer.
She found fame in music and television at an early age,
and travelled with the USO on Bob Hope’s Holiday tours.
But it wasn’t until she moved to South Florida that
the trouble began. In 1969, Bryant became a
spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission,
and nationally televised commercials featured her
singing "Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree"
and stating the commercials' tagline: "
Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine."
She was a household name at this point,
voted most admired woman in America three
years in a row by Good Housekeeping Magazine
and was named one of the most
influential women in America.
In the wake of the Stonewall Riots, several states
started enacting legislation protecting the rights of
LGBTQ people. And in 1977, Dade County FL
followed suit, and passed an ordinance prohibiting
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Bryant led a movement to repeal the ordinance,
forming the first national Anti-Gay group called
“Save Our Children” (later named Protect America’s Children).
She claimed that allowing gay people to be around
children would lead to recruitment and child abuse.
She was joined by mega church Pastor Jerry Falwell
and others in spreading this hateful rhetoric,
amplifying a moral majority movement forming in the south.
She expanded her crusade beyond Florida,
and tried to repeal ordinances all over the country with her celebrity.
But the LGBTQ community answered back by forming
the Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory
Campaign, who organized a boycott of orange juice,
hitting Anita Bryant in her corporate livelihood.
Apple Juice was substituted for Orange Juice at bars.
Merchandise like buttons, stickers and t-shirts were
made to support the campaign, with slogans like
"A day without human rights is like a day without sunshine".
Sales and proceeds went to gay rights activists
to help fund their fight against Bryant and her campaign.
In October of 1977, Anita Bryant famously was one of
the first celebrities to get “pied” by one of the LGBTQ activists
on TV. She joked “at least it’s a fruit pie”. That moment
helped to gain National Attention for the Orange Juice
Boycott and several celebrities like Vincent Price,
Jane Fonda and Johnny Carson joined the cause.
Gay bars across the country were boycotting
Orange Juice from the sunshine state.
This was not the first time this tactic was used.
In 1966 labor organizers boycotted California grapes
and Coors beer in 1977 to protest unfair labor practices.
But this was the first boycott (or as they called it “gaycott”)
spearheaded by gay and lesbian activists.
And “gaycott” they did. Bars put out signs saying
“TO PROMOTE HUMAN RIGHTS this establishment
DOES NOT SERVE FLORIDA ORANGE JUICE”.
And if you brought your own, they were known
to pour it down the drain.
In his April 14 column for the Bay Area Reporter,
a weekly gay newspaper, Harvey Milk urged readers
to switch to pineapple juice for breakfast. “Some say
that ONE can of OJ won’t make any difference,”
he wrote. “Before Bryant becomes more powerful,
remember that your ONE can adds up to millions
of ONE cans throughout the nation.
The only way to stop this bigot is to have
a fully effective economic boycott.”
The movement faced a strong smear campaign
that produced a devastating ad, contrasting the
wholesomeness of Miami’s annual Orange Bowl
Parade with the debauchery of the San Francisco
Pride march. And with that smear campaign
the ordinance for LGBTQ rights was repealed
later that year, a setback that was not corrected
until decades later, but this is not a story about
a single battle, it is about a movement.
This was one of the first cases of LGBTQ organizations
using their political power collectively towards a cause.
And they inspired others, including Harvey Milk who
after the boycott ran for office and defiantly introduced
San Francisco’s first gay rights ordinance in 1978
as a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
He successfully defended against the “Briggs Initiative”
protecting the rights of gay teachers and opposing
the movement spearheaded by Anita Bryant.
The LGBTQ movement was learning their collective power,
and Anita Bryant was learning it too. Bob Kunst,
Bryant’s opponent on the ground in Miami,
said the ordinance fight had galvanized world opinion.
“She gave us every access to world media.”
Bryant faced protest at every public appearance.
At the end of 1978, in the same month Milk
was assassinated, Bryant was fired as the Florida Citrus
spokesperson. After that she experienced bankruptcy
and divorce, but never regretted her actions.
Anita Bryant may be gone, but the fight continues.
Much of the rhetoric used by her “Save Our Children”
campaign has been reused and repackaged in the years since.
Here in Florida, we see it in our state's
Parental Rights in Education, better known as the
“Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits teaching about
sexual orientation or gender identity, and this
is just one example of many throughout the country.
Whether they are like Anita Bryant, removing LGBTQ
teachers from classrooms or now removing the
conversation about LGBTQ people,
the tactic is the same with the hateful lies about the
community harming children and the fight continues.
We affirm as Unitarian Universalists that LGBTQ people
are sacred and beloved. In the words of our President
Rev Sofía Betancourt for LGBTQ people,
“Transgender and Nonbinary beloveds – my family and yours –
are not only real, but sacred…each and all of us is
in fact a vital part of the fabric of this nation,
deeply beloved and deserving of protection, safety, and belonging.”
May we always remember in our Florida Sunshine
that on those rainy days of hate, it is up to us,
the allies and members of the LGBTQ community,
to bring the rainbows. To speak out and use our
collective power against the powerful, because
"A day without human rights is like a day without sunshine".
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