Kids jeopardized'

Continued from page 1 known to everyone with a TV set as the Florida orange juice lady.

Miss Bryant, who never before raised her voice in anything but song, is angrily defending the rights of the majority and is fast escalating a local Ordinance dispute into a full-blown **national issue. It's an issue heavy in ironic content.

One of the ironies is that Miss Bryant, whose worst enemies will Hedge as " ****acknowledge as "Miss Wholesome," is in the middle of one of the most sordid political campaigns in local memory.

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She is a passionately devoted Baptist, "born-again" when she was 8. years-old, whose day begins and ends with family prayers.

She's every bit as beautiful and as vivacious as she appears on the television screen, but she has an emotional intensity the camera doesn't capture.

Biblical allusions pepper Miss Bryant's conversation. "This is my Gethsemane," she said, entering her garden with the walk that made her a "Miss America" runner-up.

She and her husband, Bob Green, both wear jewelry with a fishook design. This is to signify that they are "fishers of men" savers of souls.

Miss Bryant came by her religion naturally. She was born 37 years ago in a preacher's bed. Her mother was carrying her while on a visit to

grandma's house in Barnsdall, Okla.,

* when she went into labor, and the baby was born in the bed of her uncle, the Rev. Luther Berry.

She appeared dead, and the doctor revived her with alternate draughts of coffee and whiskey. Today, Miss Bryant is so strongly opposed to drink that she refuses nightclub engagements.

Grandpa was a refinery worker until his eyes were seared by an exploding jet of hot tar. He turned to religion while lying in the hospital. Thereafter, he'd wander blindly. about town, approaching strangers and demanding “Are you saved?”

Dad was an oilfield roustabout, and sometimes the Bryants lived in a "trailer with nothing but the woods for a privý. But they had religion.

Miss Bryant made her first public appearance at age 2 when she stood up in the Baptist church at Barnsdall

: and sang, "Jesus loves me, this I know..."

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She is known to the public as a singer of popular ballads; as a regu-

*lar with the Bob Hope Christmas

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show, bringing a voice from home to

our troops overseas; and for leading

the Orange Bowl parade as the voice

of Florida orange juice.

But she has also written seven books on inspiration themes, and regularly teaches Sunday school at a Miami Beach Baptist church.

Miss Bryant relies heavily on the

Bible for arguments in her fight against homosexual rights a fact

i that is often lost on the public, because when she begins expounding Scripture, the TV interviewers cut her short and the reporters stop tak ing notes.

Another irony in the Miami issue is that the woman who sponsored the homosexual rights ordinance is Ruth Shack, the wife of Miss Bryant's agent. Anita endorsed her candidacy, and contributed $1,000 to her campaign.

She and Miss Bryant are as far apart religiously as they are politi-

cally. While Miss Bryant was growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist home, Mrs. Shack was being raised in a liberal Jewish home in New York. Her father was a founder of the Reform Temple on Long Island.

She remembers vividly being 11 or 12 years old during World War II and becoming aware for the first time that millions of Jews were being murdered in Germany.

"They were killed because they were unpopular," says Mrs. Shack, "and I remember fearing for my own life."

Mrs Shack had worked for several liberal causes in Miami, but never held political office before her elec-

Anita Bryant

rolled down my cheeks, and I knew God was.in command.”

At the hearing, Miss Bryant waited half the day while those in favor of the amendment had their say.

* לי.

When it came her turn to speak, she said:

"I come here today with no prejudice in my heart, no hate, no anger, or judgment of my fellow man. But I do come with...a burden on my heart for my country and for our children.

"I'm speaking to you today not as an entertainer who has worked with homosexuals all my lifeand I have never discriminated against them, I

would be dependent on their parents for their lives, and I for one will do everything in my power as a citizen, as a Christian, and especially as a mother, to insure that they have the right to a healthy and morally good! life.",

Immediately after that, she formed an organization called "Save Our Children" to campaign against the amendment. When it passed nonetheless, Save Our Children began circulating petitions calling upon the commission to either repeal the amendment or put it to a public vote.

More than 64,000 people signed the petitions, and the commission authorized a special referendum election for this June 7 at an estimated cost of $400,000.

Both sides are waging a strongly-

'I have the God-given right to be jealous worded election campaign. One Save for a moral environment for my children'

tion in September to the Metropolitan Dade County Commission. Miami is run by this metropolitan form of government.

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Before the election, candidates for the commission were invited by the Dade County Coalition for the Humanistic Rights of Gays to meet at a YMCA to hear about discrimination.

Mrs. Shack was one of those who attended, was endorsed by the homosexuals and won their election.

One of her first acts as commissioner was to introduce a homosexual rights amendment to the county's civil rights ordinance. It gives them protection from discrimination in areas of employment, housing and public accommodation.

She sees Dade County's homosexual community as another group of people being denied protection of the law solely because they are unpopular.

"It is not illegal to be a homosexual in the State of Florida," she says, "and we cannot deny them civil rights if they are indeed law-abiding, taxpaying members of the community."

Miss Bryant got on the telephone to Mrs. Shack and tried to change her position, quoting from Leviticus and other sections of the Bible.

"I pointed out that I am a legislator, not a theologian," says Mrs. Shack, and that since it is not illegal to be a homosexual, there is no basis for her arguments."

· But Miss Bryant found the proposed amendment intolerable. "It hits at the very heart of Christianity," she says. "It's like forcing pork down the throat of a Jew,"

A hearing on the amendment was held Jan. 18. Miss Bryant decided to attend, but was anxious about an entertainer making a political statement.

"I had always avoided controversial things," she says. “I was afraid. I'd walk through the house, crying. Then I'd think: If God is for me, how can anybody be against me? There was a divine disturbance within me.

Just before the hearing, she and her daughter, Barbara, narrowly avoided a three-car collision. Shaken, Miss Bryant pulled off the road and with Barbara offered a prayer of thanks.

According to Miss Bryant, "Barbara said, 'Mother, if God can take care of you here, won't He take care of you in the courtroom?' Tears

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have the policy of live-and-let-live as long as they do not discriminate against me.

"I'm a wife and a mother, and I' ́ especially address you today as a mother I have the God-given right to be jealous for a moral environment for my children.

"I remind you that God who made us could have made us like the sea turtle who comes in the dark of night and buries her eggs in the sand and never cares about her children again.

"But He made us so our children

Our Children" advertisement starts out: "Homosexuality is nothing new. Cultures throughout history, more over, have dealt with homosexuals almost universally with disdain, abhorence, disgust even death.

"While times certainly have changed, and American society largely has developed an attitude of tolerance, that tolerance.. is based on the understanding that homosexuals will keep their deviate activity to themselves, will not flaunt their life-styles, will not be allowed to preach their sexual standards to, or otherwise, influence, impressionable young people."

Tomorrow in the Today's Living Section: "There's no human right to corrupt our children.”

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noncontroversial in 1964 when she toured

Anita Bryant the straw-hat circuit.