Editor’s note: Our in-depth interview with singer turned anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant is republished here as it originally appeared in the May 1978 issue of Playboy, warts and all. Considered by some to represent a milestone in the history of homosexuality in America, the interview helped catalyze the fight for gay rights. Journalist Ken Kelley, who was gay but not out at the time, also wrote the companion piece Cruising With Anita.

For her first 36 years, Anita Bryant was the stereotypic embodiment of the American dream; hers was a rags-to-riches saga in the best Horatio Alger tradition. For almost two decades, she’d been reasonably happy with her life: She’d evolved a system that enabled her to pursue both a lucrative career as a popular entertainer and a satisfying private life as a devoted wife and mother. She had a loyal husband, wholesome kids and a cozy home overlooking Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Her life was comfortable and distinctly uncontroversial.

Last year, all that suddenly and dramatically changed; her halcyon routine perished in the flames of political warfare. When the Metropolitan Dade County Commission passed an ordinance that would, in effect, mandate that qualified homosexuals be hired as teachers in private and parochial schools, Bryant stepped forward to spearhead a drive to repeal it. The ensuing campaign was drawn along classic good-versus-evil lines. Bryant recruited a slew of religious leaders and conservative politicos under the banner of her ad hoc organization, Save Our Children. Her pitch was simple: Homosexuality is a sin, and if homosexuals were given carte blanche to glamorize their “deviate lifestyle” in Miami-area classrooms, the American family would be destroyed and the American way of life would disappear. Miami homosexual leaders, armed with a hefty war chest, issued an urgent national SOS to supporters of “human rights”–if Bryant were successful, they said, America would turn into Nazi Germany–and liberals from Midge Costanza to Rod McKuen dutifully trekked to Miami to campaign against her. The national media seized on the issue almost from the start and a local election was turned into a national spectacle. On election day last June, the ordinance was overwhelmingly defeated and Bryant was photographed dancing a jubilant jig. But the battle was far from over; Bryant had become a fixture on the American political scene.

Although she consistently maintains that she was ill prepared to champion a political cause, Bryant admits that she’s always known that she was “gifted by the Lord” with a special determination. She made her singing debut at the age of two in a rural Oklahoma Baptist church. That same year–1942–her parents divorced, and, along with her baby sister, Sandra, Bryant moved in with her maternal grandparents. After a short stint in the Service, her father came home and her parents remarried. Her stage debut came in the first grade, when she landed a role in a local high school play. The audience loved her and she loved the applause. At the age of eight, she was singing on a weekly local radio show. That same year, she convinced a preacher to baptize her. (To this day, she calls that moment the most significant one in her life.) Her parents moved the family to Oklahoma City to boost her career chances. By the age of 12, she’d won a local contest and landed her own weekly television show. Shortly thereafter, her father left and her parents divorced again; her deep-seated feelings of hatred for her father were to haunt her for the next 20 years. Her mother continued to encourage her career, and at 13, Bryant cut her first record. The next year, she hopped a plane to Hollywood in the hope of landing a movie contract; she was rejected because a studio mogul decided her big voice didn’t fit her tiny body.

Her mother married again and moved the family to Tulsa in 1955 and Bryant enrolled in Will Rogers High School. She sang in the church and school choirs, starred in a local presentation of South Pacific and became a regular on a local TV variety show. She caught the eye of one of Arthur Godfrey’s talent scouts, and at 16, she became a favorite on Godfrey’s CBS-TV show. That was her big break–her career zoomed ahead with almost breakneck speed. After signing a contract with Carlton Records, she cut her first 1,000,000-seller record, her version of “Till There Was You.” She did a series of national tours on bills with pop stars such as Rick Nelson. At the urging of her Oklahoma pals, she entered the Miss Tulsa contest, won and found herself elected both Miss Oklahoma and second runner-up in the 1959 Miss America Pageant. Radio m.c. Don McNeill offered her a slot on his ABC Breakfast Club show, so she moved to Chicago and enrolled as a speech major at Northwestern University. College life did not agree with her and she was very lonely. She met Bob Green, then Miami’s top disc jockey, at a record convention and, after his assiduous courtship, she finally agreed to marry him in 1960. The couple moved to Miami Beach and in 1963, after she was told by a gynecologist that she was barren, the Greens adopted a son, Bob, Jr. She disproved her doctor’s diagnosis the next year, when her daughter Gloria was born. Five years later, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.The union of Green and Bryant proved to be financially fertile as well. He became her personal manager and she soon became a much-sought performer at state fairs and conventions. She also became a favorite at advertising agencies–representing Coca-Cola, Holiday Inn, Kraft and, since 1968, the Florida Citrus Commission, as its “sunshine girl.” She traveled for six years on Bob Hope’s U.S.O. tours. Lyndon Johnson let it be known that she was his favorite singer. Baptist preachers invited her to deliver Sunday sermons–a rare enough occurrence in that fundamentalist religion. She wrote nine books (including a cookbook) that emphasized the theme of coping with life through faith in Jesus, and they all became 1,000,000 sellers in religious bookstores.

While things seemed rosy on the surface, Bryant had transferred the negative feelings about her father that she admits in this interview to all men–including her husband–and they were threatening her marriage. And when her grandfather and two friends died within months of one another in 1974, she suffered something of a nervous collapse and sought succor in a Christian-therapy group in California. Her stay was a brief one, and out of the experience came another successful book, forgiveness of her father and a new-found devotion to her husband.

It was her husband, in fact, along with her Baptist pastor, who convinced, her to defend motherhood and Christian ideals by taking the stand against the homosexual community last year. She was shocked when most of her bookings evaporated–most booking agents were scared off by the threats of homosexuals to protest her appearances–and she appeared mostly in religious shows, always accompanied by a phalanx of angry gay pickets. She was universally reviled in the national media and by Hollywood and became cannon fodder for comedians everywhere. By her estimate, she lost half a million dollars in bookings. A national “gaycott” of Florida orange juice almost cost her her $100,000-a-year contract with the Florida Citrus Commission, though after a year’s waffling, the commission renewed it. She did lose a contract with the Singer company to host her own television show, as well as her perennial job as narrator of the Orange Bowl parade. She also lost her own booking agent, Dick Shack, whose wife, Ruth, ironically enough, Bryant had helped elect to the Dade County Commission–almost immediately after which she sponsored the homosexual rights ordinance that sparked the whole showdown. Bryant insists that she took her stand based on her religious convictions, dollars be damned, and that she’d do it all over again in a minute.

Some replay of her 1977 battle looms on the horizon: After protests from the Save the Children Federation, Bryant changed the name of her organization to Protect America’s Children, and that group sends out a newsletter and an organizing kit to a large list of supporters. She has determined that she will lend her efforts to support other struggles to save America from perdition, though she will not do so until she “gets a calling from the Lord” on where to go and what to do. One thing is certain: Bryant will continue to make news for a long time.

Playboy sent free-lancer Ken Kelley (whose previous PLAYBOY credit was the celebrated underground interview with fugitive Abbie Hoffman in May 1976) on an eight-day Bible Belt tour with Bryant and Green. At first, she “prayed to God for guidance” and decided against doing the interview for PLAYBOY, feeling that the nudity that appears in the magazine violated her moral standards. (She regards fornication between unmarried heterosexuals as no less a violation of the Lord’s commandments than homosexual conduct.) Kelley continued the interview under assignment to Rolling Stone, but editorial differences developed and, at the end, he was able to persuade Green and Bryant that her startling views could be aired in PLAYBOY, as originally planned.

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PLAYBOY: Have you always been obsessed with homosexuality?

BRYANT: Not at all. If I had been, would I have waited until 1977 to speak up? We could have gone on the offense long ago. We would have tried to shut down their publications, which anyone can pick up at a local hotel, and which show that they can do what they want with kids of whatever age they want, and even what kind of sex they can have. The homosexuals have their national directory and it lists Miami as the most open city in the nation. I got involved only because they were asking for special privileges that violated the state law of Florida, not to mention God’s law. You know, when I was a child, you didn’t even mention the word homosexual, much less find out what the act was about. You knew it was very bad, but you couldn’t imagine what they tried to do, exactly, in terms of one taking a male role and the other taking a female role. I mean, it was too filthy to think about and you had other things to think about. So when I finally found out all the implications, it was a total revelation for me.

PLAYBOY: Then when you opposed the Dade County ordinance, at first you didn’t even have a clear idea what you were opposing?

BRYANT: Well, I knew some things, because Bob had told me–he is nine years older and he has taught me a lot of things about sex. He was born in the Bronx and I was raised in the Bible Belt–what can I say? I mean, you have visions of, well, now, what can they do as two men in bed or two women in bed? But I didn’t really know the nitty-gritty of the thing.

PLAYBOY: Until when?

BRYANT: I’m not going to tell you.

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t it when you got a letter in January 1977 with an explicit picture enclosed?

BRYANT: Okay, yeah. And, I mean, I was absolutely appalled. I just couldn’t believe it. And then, afterward, a local police sergeant gave a presentation in our church basement with slides and all about child pornography and it shocked our whole congregation. We understood then just how debased the whole thing was. I mean, it’s a sin under the laws of God. And sin is like leprosy–it starts with just a little speck and you don’t even notice or care. You think, That’s not going to hurt me, and all of a sudden it begins to spread and you still don’t worry until the sores spread to the shoulder and the pus starts oozing, but by then it’s too late. God says the wages of sin are death, and one little sin brings on another. The homosexual act is just the beginning of the depravity. It then leads to–what’s the word?–sadomasochism. It just gets worse as it goes on. You go further and further down the drain and it just becomes so perverted and you get into alcohol and drugs and it’s so rotten that many homosexuals end up committing suicide. The worst thing is that these days, so many married men with children who don’t have a happy marriage are going into the homosexual bars for satisfaction–if they’re not careful, they’re going to get caught up in it totally.

PLAYBOY: You believe in a kind of sexual domino theory, then?

BRYANT: Lots of wives and former homosexuals have testified to me about these things.

PLAYBOY: Didn’t your biggest shock about homosexuals come when you realized that male homosexuals eat each other’s sperm? A Miami reporter briefly quoted you as saying the reason God calls homosexuality an abomination is that homosexuals eat spermatozoa, the building block of blood, so, therefore, homosexuals are swallowing, and presumably digesting, the essence of life?

BRYANT: I did not … um … I did not say that to any reporter. I’m not that stupid.

PLAYBOY: Did you say it to anybody?

BRYANT: I was overheard talking to a reformed homosexual on the phone and I had no idea our conversation would ever get printed. It was a very personal thing and I never dreamed it would get printed. The reporter deceived me. I was very naïve about the media then–since then, I’ve been trained. At that time, I was like a babe among the wolves.

PLAYBOY: But you did say it.

BRYANT: It was a personal thing. I don’t want to talk about it.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

BRYANT: Because it’s just too gory, too raw for most people to comprehend.

PLAYBOY: You could take this opportunity to explain yourself, rather than let it stand as an overheard conversation.

BRYANT: Well, I was witnessing to this guy, and I didn’t let on that I knew he had been a homosexual, and I threw the question at him because I wasn’t sure myself and I wanted to find out. I had read about this phenomenon, but I wasn’t sure it was true. See, I was at my desk one night and I was reading and studying; it was about one in the morning and when I read about it—-

PLAYBOY: You mean swallowing sperm?

BRYANT: Yeah, when I read about it, I about fell through my chair. I said, “Oh, God, this can’t be true.” That was the first time I really knew. I mean, I had seen in writing before what they did in bed, and so forth, but I never knew that they ate the male sperm. I just wanted to fall off the chair. So when this guy called, I wanted to really find out if what I’d read was true. So I said very casually, “Oh, by the way, do you know that homosexuals eat the male sperm?”

PLAYBOY: What did he say?

BRYANT: He said yes.

PLAYBOY: And?

BRYANT: And I still couldn’t believe it.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

BRYANT: Well, throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, men are referred to as trees. Even in the Garden of Eden, when God referred to the tree of life, He was talking about the whole spiritual salvation of men, and so forth. And in the New Testament, it says Jesus was called the fruit of the womb–which is very interesting, because even the homosexuals know this. Did you know there is a group in Seattle that calls itself The Fruit Loops?

PLAYBOY: So?

BRYANT: Why do you think the homosexuals are called fruits? It’s because they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. God referred to men as trees, and because the homosexuals eat the forbidden fruit, which is male sperm…. There is even a Jockey short called Forbidden Fruit. Very subtle. Did you know that?

PLAYBOY: No. We’ve heard only of Fruit of the Loom.BRYANT: You see, I agree with the anti-abortion people that the beginning of life is when the male sperm fertilizes the female egg. The Scriptures talk about John the Baptist jumping in the womb when he was in the presence of the Mother Mary when Jesus was still in the womb, and that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. That was the beginning of life and I believe that–I cannot deny what I know to be true. That’s why homosexuality is an abomination of God, because life is so precious to God and it is such a sacred thing when man and woman come together in one flesh and the seed is fertilized–that’s the sealing of life, that’s the beginning of life. To interfere with that in any way–especially the eating of the forbidden fruit, the eating of the sperm–that’s why it’s such an abomination. I can’t deny it. When I discuss this with Christians, it revolts them, especially when they don’t know the Bible and cannot see sin in its most hideous forms. You really turn people off when you speak in these blunt terms, and they can’t believe I’m saying it. But you have to tell them that it’s true. It’s there, it’s logical and it makes the sin of homosexuality all the more hideous because it’s antilife, degenerative.

PLAYBOY: Surely, you must know that the eating of sperm is not confined to homosexuals. In fact, it’s quite popular in heterosexual relationships these days.

BRYANT: It’s true. I agree with you. The abomination is spreading. Ideally, of course, the relationship between a man and a woman should embody oneness with God–the most natural thing is the reproducing of life and having the first fruits from that oneness together.

PLAYBOY: So sex is only for procreation?

BRYANT: Oh, no. But God created the family to be a picture of perfection. Nothing is perfect, of course, but a woman’s giving herself to her husband should try to resemble perfection, just as the husband’s protection of his wife should be a love like he loves his own body. How many men do that with their woman? If you could see that bliss as an expression of God’s perfection, it would make you yearn to know God.

PLAYBOY: You’re saying that sexual intercourse between man and wife is an acknowledgment of God?

BRYANT: Right–it’s a picture of the Church, in a sense. It’s a beautiful thing, ordained of God, meant to be enjoyed and to be pleasurable, not looked on as debased or ungodly or dirty, as so many Christians unfortunately see it. Sex was never meant to be that. God tells us it’s like a mystery–he means a coming together that releases the joy you have in that moment of climax when there is a oneness with you and your husband and with God. It’s physical, but it becomes spiritual. I’ve often thought that at that moment, you experience the release and the purity that God meant to be…. Well, it’s like the way Christ loves the Church. When you come together, it’s like when the Church is brought up to meet Christ in the air, when we will all take on immortality. There is a releasing of all the burdens of the mortal body and such sheer release of joy and oneness–it’s almost like floating in the air and you know someday you will be able to meet Christ. I think the reason there’s so much promiscuity and so much emphasis on sex these days is because people leave out the spiritual part.

PLAYBOY: Is birth control an abomination against the Lord? Is taking the pill a sin?

BRYANT: No, because the way it’s done, you are not wasting the sperm. I’ve never really gone into this before. I’ve never had that question asked of me. I do think it’s important to realize God’s glory when you come together–if there’s not the oneness of the spirit, soul and body, then there’s an imperfection. This whole discussion is so delicate–that’s why it’s so important that the government and the public schools should not take the responsibility to explain sex to our children–it is the province of the parents.

PLAYBOY: Some parents may be less qualified to explain it than educators are.

BRYANT: I don’t care, the child should hear it from the parents.

PLAYBOY: Many parents refuse to accept the responsibility. What then?

BRYANT: I know. It’s not easy. I don’t have all the answers. I know what you’re talking about, because my mother and her mother didn’t know how to talk about sex.

PLAYBOY: Okay, let’s get back to deviant sexual practices, as you characterize homosexuality. Why did you decide to oppose the Dade County ordinance last year? You’d never taken a political stand before.

BRYANT: Right, I never had. The basic reason was because I am first and foremost a mother, and I was standing up for my rights as a mother to protect my children after I realized what the threat the homosexuals were posing meant. That’s why we called our organization Save Our Children, though we’ve since been forced to change it to Protect America’s Children, because the Save the Children Federation took us to court. The ordinance the homosexuals proposed would have made it mandatory that flaunting homosexuals be hired in both the public and the parochial schools. My children attend a religious school. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution, and if you believe that adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness and things like that violate your religious standards, you then have a right to prevent a teacher from standing up in front of your children and promoting sin. We were fighting religious bigotry. What gives the homosexual any more right to stand up in front of children and talk about his sexual preferences than a man who has a great Dane as his lover?

PLAYBOY: Bestiality is just around the corner, then?

BRYANT: Under the proposed ordinance, every sexual deviation would have been legally acceptable among schoolteachers. Right behind the homosexual community in Dade County was a group of prostitutes who were going to initiate similar legislation permitting whores to stand up in front of kids in the classroom and proclaim their sexual deviation and then ply their trade. Ad infinitum. The issue had nothing to do with what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. If two men or two women live together and don’t flaunt their deviant lifestyle, fine. Let them do what they want. But when they try to interfere with my right as a mother to raise my children the way I see fit, then I draw the line. I mean, no one got very excited about the ordinance–no one knew it was an issue, really, it was so secretive. It had passed two readings at the Dade County Commission before we even became aware of it. On the third reading, it would have become law–we only had a week and a half to try to stop it. The ordinance sounded very simple–it said there should be no discrimination in the areas of housing, public accommodations and employment. Who wants to discriminate? It’s a no-no. But the discrimination they were talking about was not based on race or religion. Homosexuals would have us believe they’re born that way, because they’re in total darkness and they’ve never been told any different. But if they’re a legitimate minority group, then so are nail biters, dieters, fat people, short people and murderers. Who will be the next in line to ask for special privileges? When it came down to a courtroom hearing, the homosexuals in Dade County said it’s not a matter of housing, public accommodations and employment–we’re already there, they said. Which they definitely are. They said, “The point is that we want to come out of the closet, we want to tell you where we’re at and we don’t want to lose our jobs because of it.” One of the homosexual leaders made a statement before the Community Relations Board. He said he became a homosexual when he was seven years old but that it bothered him that he never had a role model to look up to.PLAYBOY: Aren’t you just resorting to the same kind of argument that Joe McCarthy used in the Fifties against communism? He insisted that Americans could not be exposed to it lest they immediately turn into raving Marxists. Do you think “flaunting homosexuals,” as you put it, will automatically turn America’s children into homosexuals?

BRYANT: Of course it’s not just an overnight thing. What happens is that the door then opens onto a lot of other things. It may not have an immediate effect, but certainly down the line it will–on your kids and your grandchildren, for generations to come. We can’t see the evils of sin right off. It looks so innocent at first, but I’ve seen too many lives ruined by that kind of thinking.

PLAYBOY: A moment ago, you lumped homosexuals into the same category as murderers.

BRYANT: But I’m not saying homosexuals are murderers.

PLAYBOY: You’re saying they’re just as bad.

BRYANT: No, I don’t say they’re as bad. God says it. It’s in the Bible. First Corinthians, I think.

PLAYBOY: Since you’ve never been connected with political causes before, how did you feel when you found yourself embroiled in a controversial issue as its leader?

BRYANT: I was petrified. I was devastated by the fears within me that I would make a fool out of myself. I knew what I was up against–the homosexuals in Dade County had amassed support from homosexuals around the country and they had the active backing of a wide range of liberal politicians. I asked myself, what can I possibly do that will matter? But, thanks to the encouragement of my husband and my pastor, I became aware of the difference one person can make. Similar ordinances had been passed in 36 other cities around the country and Congressman Ed Koch [now New York City’s mayor] had even proposed a federal bill along the same lines. The homosexuals in Miami knew that Dade County was one of the most liberal counties in the country. They said if they won, it would be a barometer for all of America. I’d really done my homework before I stood up. I went through a lot of anguish.

PLAYBOY: Your pastor convinced you it was a sin not to stand up?

BRYANT: Yes. I was totally convinced of that. My eyes had been opened and I really had no choice. Still, I vacillated between being weak and being strong. Then I told myself, well, if God is before me, who can be against me?

PLAYBOY: You had God on your side?

BRYANT: Yes. I had given the Lord my total being–I mean, everything. So I had a confidence, a strength that everything I had always tried to attain in my own flesh, and never could, would be now possible. When you give yourself to God, God gives you everything. My pastor, Brother Bill, had a much bigger picture than I did. He told me, “I don’t know anyone else in the nation who could take a stand like this.” He saw that I was the one person who could make a difference. When I finally surrendered to God, I gained a confidence and I’ve not been afraid since.

PLAYBOY: You weren’t afraid when you got the bomb threats?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: The death threats?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: How about your children?

BRYANT: They’re not afraid because we’re not afraid. I’m not afraid for myself, but I am afraid for my children.

PLAYBOY: You must know that the homosexual leaders, as much as they loathe you, nevertheless credit you with helping them publicize their cause. You’re saying it was a quid pro quo–that they had the same effect on your cause.

BRYANT: I don’t owe anything to them. I owe it all to God, because God pushed me into that corner. I will never give the homosexuals the credit. In fact, the more the homosexuals rant and rave, the more the committed Christians are going to come out of the closet. It’s God’s plan. I am only his humble servant. I never wanted to be the leader of anything. In fact, knowing what I know now, if I had the choice, I would definitely have chosen the role way back when of just a simple wife and mother.

PLAYBOY: You’d have given up your career?

BRYANT: Yes, definitely, knowing what I know now. It’s so much easier to do that than to stand up and rant and rave for your human rights against militant homosexuals.

PLAYBOY: All right, back to Miami. What was your first step when you decided to take a stand?

BRYANT: I wrote a letter to the nine county commissioners, stating my convictions. After I wrote the letter, the homosexual leaders united against me. They called the Florida Citrus Commission and threatened a national boycott of Florida orange juice. The commission was very upset–they didn’t understand why I was standing up. Then the homosexuals went further–they said they’d make me the laughingstock of the country. They said they’d sue my A-S-S off.

It was just a scare tactic–we didn’t know if they could follow through with their threats, but it was scary–we had never been up against anything like that before. I remember walking around the house for several days, talking to myself, wondering what to do; I’d get real bold one minute and the next minute I’d burst into tears, crying out loud. I was so scared. Anyway, before all of this happened, I’d agreed to go on a local radio station–the disc jockey was a real Christian gal, so I felt pretty safe in her hands. But I was trembling still–I had hoped my letter to the county commission was enough. But I decided I had to do the show, to help our cause, and I did it. It was great. I’d brought my daughter Barbara with me, and when we started driving back after the show, there was a drizzly rain. Suddenly, in front of us, there was a car crash. It was a real bad accident. I swerved around it, and to this day, I don’t know how we escaped death. We were real shook up. I pulled over to the side of the road and I said to Barbara, “Let’s just pray. Let’s thank Jesus for saving us from this accident.” I took her hand and we prayed–Barbara is like me. I mean, when she was born, she was 42 years old. She looked up at me and said, “If God can help us like this, can’t he help you win against the homosexuals?” I tell you, my tears started coming and I knew then we would win.

PLAYBOY: Did Barbara understand what homosexual meant? She’s nine years old. Had you discussed the issue explicitly with your children?

BRYANT: Yes. We had to talk with them in very practical terms on their age level.

PLAYBOY: How do you explain homosexuality to a nine-year-old?BRYANT: Well, now you’ve got me on the spot. Basically, we explained to our children that marriage is a sacred vow and that in Genesis, God said he knew man was incomplete and man needed a helpmate, so God made woman, and that man and woman were meant to come together and multiply the earth. I explained in simple terms to the little ones that some men try to do with other men what men and women do to produce babies; and that homosexuality is a perversion of a very natural thing that God said was good, and that it is a sin and very unnatural. I explained to the children that even barnyard animals don’t do what homosexuals do.

PLAYBOY: That’s simply untrue. There is a lot of evidence proving not only that barnyard animals do engage in homosexuality but that in many primitive human cultures around the world, homosexuality is and has been institutionalized as part of tribal culture.

BRYANT: Well, I’ve never heard of it. The point is that God says it’s an abomination of nature and it’s wrong.

PLAYBOY: That’s a different point–we’re saying that among various species, human and animal, it is a common occurrence.

BRYANT: That still doesn’t make it right.

PLAYBOY: What if, despite your efforts, one of your kids turned out to be a homosexual? Would you disown him or her?

BRYANT: I would never disown my children, no matter what. I’m a firm believer in taking my children in my arms every day and saying “I love you”–every day. I have a real bugaboo myself–if I fail as a mother to my children, then I have failed completely. My family is my first priority. If one of my kids chose the homosexual lifestyle, I would sit down and explain to him that he’s hurting no one but himself and that God cannot tolerate that kind of sin in his life and that lie will have to suffer the consequences of sin, particularly in knowing that he will never be happy choosing the way of the Devil rather than God’s way.

PLAYBOY: But you would regard yourself as a failure if that happened?

BRYANT: Yes. If my kids don’t become happy, worthwhile, responsible citizens, then I will have failed everything. All else will have been in vain–the career, everything. Nothing else really matters.

PLAYBOY: Were there particular problems with your children after you took your anti-homosexual stance?

BRYANT: There was one point where our daughters, Gloria and Barbara, told me that they didn’t want to hold hands with their little girlfriends anymore. They were afraid people would think they were homosexuals. I had to sit down and talk to them–I told them in very practical terms that that had nothing to do with homosexuality. And then I talked to our other kids, individually, to make sure their views in regard to their friends weren’t warped. You know how kids are–they tease kids who have effeminate qualities. They harass them.

PLAYBOY: You told your children it was wrong to harass boys who were effeminate?

BRYANT: Absolutely. I’ve taken great pains with the children to educate them that that kind of thing is not Christian. But kids are influenced by their peers; all of a sudden, they get very brave when they’re with other kids. My kids aren’t perfect–they might resort to that. Kids have a tendency to call each other queer or weird. We’ve stopped our kids from saying that, I think, through careful explanation of how wrong it is to do that. I think our kids are much more careful about that kind of thing, because they know the harm they can cause, especially in that the accusations can be false accusations. The militant homosexuals in Miami accused us of printing a Kill a Queer for Christ bumper sticker. I mean, never would we endorse that kind of thing. That would be disrespectful to homosexuals as human beings. We would never say “queer” or “faggot”–I mean, “homos” is not that bad, really, but we would never say it. And that’s a much more honest position than the militant homosexuals take.

I have no respect for homosexuals who insist that their deviant lifestyle is normal. We pray for them, we try to lead them out of it–that’s more honest than the stance of saying what they do is normal. I mean, you ask them, “What is your role in the sex act–is it male or female?” They say, “Well, sometimes it’s male, sometimes it’s female.” Isn’t that play acting? Is play acting normal? Let’s clarify the issue of what constitutes a homosexual. I think a lot of parents pass down to their kids a misconception–if a boy doesn’t have masculine muscles and he doesn’t go out for sports, that doesn’t make him a sissy or a queer. I don’t think a homosexual is a homosexual until he commits the act. I mean, just because a child fantasizes about another man–lots of psychiatrists claim that it’s the latent homosexuality expressing itself in the brain of a little one. That’s garbage. It’s not a physical problem, it’s a spiritual one. Just because this kind of kid has certain characteristics that make him different when he’s growing up, and he was laughed at or mocked by other kids, that doesn’t make him a homosexual, any more than it makes me a grandmother.

PLAYBOY: So a homosexual is not a homosexual until he commits a physical homosexual act?

BRYANT: That’s what I consider a homosexual to be. I don’t think that if you have fantasies or dreams or whatever counts. No matter if your father or your mother rejected you, no matter what happened in your life, still, it’s a matter of choice in a context.

PLAYBOY: As far back as 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey showed that, from his research, two out of every five American males had committed a homosexual act. You’ve heard of his research, we assume.

BRYANT: Not that much, no. But, of course, we know where he was coming from, personally.

PLAYBOY: What does that mean?

BRYANT: Well, I mean, he had no spiritual beliefs, no religious beliefs.

PLAYBOY: Nevertheless, as a social scientist, Kinsey claimed that 37 percent of the American male population–and this was in the late Forties–had committed at least one homosexual act.

BRYANT: But that doesn’t mean they were homosexuals.

PLAYBOY: But wait, just a moment ago, you said that committing the homosexual act defined the homosexual being.

BRYANT: Well, one or two acts don’t make you a practicing, full-fledged homosexual.

PLAYBOY: You said precisely that.

BRYANT: Yeah, I did say the sex act constitutes…. Look, what I’m saying is that people experiment–they may do it a couple of times. It doesn’t mean they are practicing homosexuals for life. Some people will try it out just for the kicks–out of curiosity. They can still be forgiven for that sin.PLAYBOY: In your most recent book, The Anita Bryant Story, you say that you don’t know what causes homosexuality. Don’t you think you should have studied its causes?

BRYANT: You see, that’s the whole thing–the militant homosexuals contend that they are born homosexual and that it’s a natural thing. All I know is that God condemns it as unnatural. That’s why I insist on saying “homosexual” and “so-called gay.” The word gay totally belies the homosexual lifestyle. I don’t even know how the word gay was attached to the homosexual lifestyle. The militant homosexuals took the word and with the power that they have, they programed it into our modern vocabulary. That in itself is a frightening example of what they can do to a society–how they can brainwash you into using their terminology. It’s a matter of habits. It’s like most homosexuals, when they go into the deviant lifestyle, they don’t take on the effeminate affectations until they have become part of the homosexual community–they go almost into camp, that’s what it is, and they take on those roles whether male or female. It’s a learned pattern–so it can be unlearned. That’s why it’s so dangerous–I think it is so difficult to unlearn because it becomes natural after a while, and they don’t have to think about it.

PLAYBOY: What about bisexuality? Is it as great a sin as homosexuality?

BRYANT: Because homosexuality is an abomination, whether you do it once a month or it becomes a lifestyle, when it becomes harder for you to come out of it—-

PLAYBOY: So is there more hope for salvation for bisexuals?

BRYANT: I can’t say there’s more hope for them. It’s a dangerous place to be, because they’re in a promiscuous area. They’re committing fornication and homosexuality as well–sin. It’s almost as if those people are playing with it. They think, “I’m not really a homosexual, I don’t do it that often.” They don’t really want to align themselves with the depravity of the homosexual community, per se. They’re enjoying their cake but not eating it, you see.

PLAYBOY: Let’s return to the Dade County ordinance for a moment. What were the immediate consequences of your standing up against it?

BRYANT: Threats, blackmail, boycotts, intimidation. I won’t say who, but someone threatened our business manager in New York that if we continued with the campaign, he would start the rumor that Bob was a former homosexual.

PLAYBOY: Was he?

BRYANT: Of course not. But during the time of the referendum, we lost 70 percent of our bookings. You’ve got to remember that, predominantly, I’m a variety artist and the bulk of my income comes from performing–Florida Citrus is only a small part. We had no conventions in 1977 and I had been one of the top convention entertainers in the country. I did a grand total of two state fairs in 1977.

The militant homosexuals will go to any extreme to try to get me out of my livelihood. In New Orleans, they went to the manager of the New Orleans Pops orchestra and tried to prove to him that I had been responsible for local homosexual suicides. Every place I go, there are bomb threats. Every place we go, they send half a dozen people from other towns and they come a week before and organize a protest against me. We were really surprised that they had the power to do what they do. It’s not the democratic way at all–if we had lost, we would have said, well, we feel bad, but that’s it. Well, they lose and they punish you for winning. I had no idea of the viciousness or vindictiveness of the homosexual community. I was very naive in that respect.

PLAYBOY: Any regrets? Would you do it all over again?

BRYANT: I would still stand, I would still make the same choice. I might change some of the statements that were made that were not mine, but unfortunately, that’s part of what you have to go through when you’re working with people from all walks of life who are part of your organization. It hasn’t been easy. I don’t think anybody wants to see his livelihood stripped away from him, and you’ve got to come to grips with the threats to your family–that’s something you’d never ask for; you’d have to be crazy to ask for it. But we also got to work with some wonderful people. Seventy percent of the Jewish rabbis supported us, as well as the majority of the black community. That was a wonderful experience.

PLAYBOY: What did you think when the Florida Citrus Commission renewed its contract with you?

BRYANT: I thought it was a courageous thing to do and, of course, I was very glad.

PLAYBOY: Is the tide now turning on your behalf? Your contract was renewed, you were named Most Admired Woman by readers of Good Housekeeping and liberal columnists such as Nat Hentoff have come out defending your right of free speech.

BRYANT: It’s too early to say, and I don’t know what the homosexuals still have up their sleeve. They are very desperate people who will stop at nothing.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel any responsibility for homosexual suicides? Or for the murder of homosexuals? There was a lawsuit filed against you in San Francisco last year, later dismissed, that charged you with creating a homophobic hysteria that resulted in the murder of a young homosexual.

BRYANT: Yes, that’s true. But I had nothing to do with any murders. There is a homosexual murder every day in San Francisco. It made me sad and it shocked me that anyone would think I had anything to do with it, but my conscience is clear. I can’t be responsible for how people react to what happened in Dade County. My stand was not taken out of homophobia but out of love for them. Look, I’m not as stupid as people make me out to be, especially concerning homosexuality. In Richmond, four of them came up to me. One of them gave me the record Hurricane Anita and looked at me like he was waiting for me to faint dead away or turn pale, and I said I was familiar with it, and I wrote down a Scripture and said, “I love you.” And one other guy came on real strong and he said, “You’ve broken my heart and I cry all night and day because you hate us.” I said, “I don’t hate you, I love you.” I took his hand and said, “I love you; can you say you love me?” This guy started shaking. He said, “I can’t say that.”

PLAYBOY: That record is just one of the satiric attacks made upon you. There have been more Anita Bryant jokes than Polish jokes in the past year. Rod McKuen said–

BRYANT: He’s really a … nothing.

PLAYBOY: People like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope and Martha Raye have also made jokes about you.

BRYANT: Right, and I really was hurt by them. I mean, I could tell you stories from being on U.S.O. tours with Bob Hope and Martha Raye that would make your hair stand on end, but I won’t. Yet they attack me. I asked my son Bobby one day about it and he said, “Well, they have a lot of jokes around school about you.”

PLAYBOY: Dirty jokes?

BRYANT: No, funny ones. And he said, “They don’t bug me.”

PLAYBOY: What other kinds of repercussions did you suffer from the so-called gaycott of you?

BRYANT: Well, I couldn’t get booked on virtually any of the talk shows, where I’d always been welcomed before. And I recorded a song called “There’s Nothing Like the Love Between a Woman and a Man,” a real upbeat, down-home country tune. All the record companies agreed it was great, but none of them wanted to risk putting it out.PLAYBOY: In some jurisdictions, homosexual behavior is now prosecuted as a misdemeanor. Are you in favor of returning it to a felony status?

BRYANT: Yes, I think so. Any time you water down the law, it just makes it easier for immorality to become tolerated.

PLAYBOY: Let’s say two adult men are caught in bed, fornicating. Under felony provisions, they could be sent to jail for 20 years. Do you think 20 years in prison would rehabilitate them?

BRYANT: Why make it easy for them? I think it only helps to condone it and to make it easier for kids who wouldn’t be so concerned if it were just a misdemeanor, whereas a felony might make them think twice, especially the younger ones.

PLAYBOY: What if it doesn’t? Boys should spend 20 years in jail for one act?

BRYANT: If they’re on good behavior and everything, and they really–

PLAYBOY: What are you saying–that someone will be rehabilitated and turned away from homosexuality in prison? Surely, you know that prisoners are gang-raped routinely. Someone jailed on a homosexual charge is particularly vulnerable. You must know that.

BRYANT: They’ll have plenty of time to think. Just because prisons are corrupt and not doing the right job in rehabilitation because they don’t have enough spiritual emphasis doesn’t mean that there should not be a strong punishment for that.

PLAYBOY: Does punishment lead to redemption?

BRYANT: It’s in the Bible.

PLAYBOY: Twenty years in jail?

BRYANT: Well, there’s no easy answer and I’m sure we don’t have all the answers.

PLAYBOY: You’re avoiding the question, not just the answer. To stick a kid in jail for committing a homosexual act would seem to most people the greater crime–and sin. If anything were going to reinforce his homosexuality, it would be prison.

BRYANT: But, you see, if there are no consequences for any kind of sin, if there’s no law and order, if there’s no price to be paid for–

PLAYBOY: But you’re advocating making homosexuality a felony. The price would certainly exceed the “crime,” if you had your way.

BRYANT: Are you saying do away with the law totally? Look, I’m just thinking of a deterrent to keep young people from going into it. That’s why you’ve got the ministry in the prisons. They’re trying to find an answer there. Maybe the answer is to put the homosexuals in a different place in the prison.

PLAYBOY: That’s already the case; do you think that would deter them from homosexuality? How familiar are you with prisons? Have you ever performed inside one?

BRYANT: Yes, I did the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. It was great–the audience was very captive. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY: Did you get a firsthand look at the prison conditions?

BRYANT: No, I’ve read about them and I have mixed feelings, because I’ve heard a lot of radical people who come out and say the prisons are terrible, but you know where they’re coming from–they want to do away with law and order because they’re rebellious against God. I know what the cause of the prisons is. The cause is sin.

PLAYBOY: So for one sin, the sin of one man making love to another man, you would send them to jail? That’s the Christian approach?

BRYANT: As a Christian, I know the only answer is the Gospel.

PLAYBOY: And you would set it up so that the Gospel you advocate would be preached to imprisoned human beings surrounded by the very crime you accuse them of.

BRYANT: All right, you have a point. Especially when you put it in terms of kids; I would like to be working with them to save them from their sins.

PLAYBOY: Let’s explore some of your theological beliefs. For instance, nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus make any statement about homosexuality.

BRYANT: Well, Jesus did. He spoke about adultery and fornication.

PLAYBOY: But you didn’t conduct a campaign against heterosexual swingers’ teaching your kids. The fact remains that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality and virtually every reference to it is in the Old Testament.

BRYANT: But he talked about fornication and he said, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.” He was very plain on it. Jesus never wavered from sin one iota. To say that Jesus wasn’t against sin is ridiculous. A lot of people who want to interpret the Bible for their own ends, such as the so-called Metropolitan Community Church, ignore parts of it to condone their immoral lifestyle. They make a sham of everything Jesus stood for. If he was not truly the Son of God, then he’s just … nothing. It sounds like it’s contradicting itself, but when you read the whole Bible, all of it together, then you understand why at certain points it seems like it’s contradicting, but yet it’s not. God is simply trying to explain the truth.

PLAYBOY: When did you come to that realization? When did you first sit down and read the Bible from cover to cover?

BRYANT: I never have. I have tried.

PLAYBOY: That’s surprising.

BRYANT: See, I never went to a Catholic or a Baptist school where they made us do that.

PLAYBOY: Why haven’t you read it on your own?

BRYANT: I don’t know. Why did you ask me that? I just learned to love the Bible and read it and I read it all the time. But I’ve never had the time to read it from cover to cover.

PLAYBOY: What is your interpretation of heaven?

BRYANT: The Bible describes heaven as a place where there’ll be no sorrow, no tears nor sin. No day and no night; a continuous joy and peace. I’ve been so high with the Lord that I believe I’ve had a foretaste of glory divine, of what it’s going to be like to not have to put up with pressure and hassles from the physical body. There will be no temptation from the Devil, no evil thoughts will enter your head. I won’t have to worry about a schedule, I won’t have to live by my little black book, I won’t have to write everything down, I won’t have to be interviewed. I won’t have to sing unless I feel like it. God talks about heaven in a very literal way. He says the streets are paved with gold, a pure gold, and he talks about the pearly gates–it’ll be pure pearl. I believe it will literally have those things that are described; that’s why it was described that way. A lot of the Bible I take literally.

PLAYBOY: And hell?

BRYANT: That is a place God did not make for mankind–he made that as a place for the Devil, a place he could put him because he was the maestro of music in heaven, and he betrayed God. God created hell to pass Lucifer down into it. In the meantime, he let him become friends of this world, and that’s why we have to suffer a spiritual warfare until he comes back for His own.

PLAYBOY: Do you believe in purgatory?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: All or nothing, then. How does the Devil tempt Anita Bryant?

BRYANT: Through my kids, my husband, just getting on my nerves; my family is where I’m most vulnerable. If I get really tired, I can put my garbage on Bob very easily. Not like before–we used to really fight.PLAYBOY: But how does the Devil get to you?

BRYANT: Like he gets to anybody. I know the days when I am so beaten down I can see 12 demons around me with billy clubs on my head and I know they’re there and I verbally cast them out. I say, “Satan, get thee behind me.” I mean, you can’t let clown your guard for a moment. You simply have to remember that God is your best friend and know the peace God can give you when you’re in the flow of the stream of his wisdom and love. It’s like they call me Hurricane Anita–the Weather Service sent me a letter telling me the name had been picked out 10 years ago, for the storm that hit last spring. It was so weird, the timing. I just thought it was another of God’s jokes. He has such a sense of humor, he really does, you know. So some Weather Service people sent me a picture of the hurricane and in the middle of all this turmoil is a perfect eye of stillness. That’s me, in the center.

PLAYBOY: You often quote Leviticus and Deuteronomy–the “lawbooks” of the Old Testament–to support your beliefs against homosexuality. But the Bible is so ambiguous that people on fundamentally different sides can quote it against each other to support their positions.

BRYANT: There were certain things in the Old Testament that you had to do in order to be clean and righteous. Yet when Jesus came, he fulfilled the law. In other words, it’s not the Ten Commandments that save you, it’s the fact that Jesus died on the cross that saves you. You are not bound by all the things that it says to do in the Old Testament.

PLAYBOY: So you pick the ones that suit you?

BRYANT: Jesus was the fulfillment. He told us we were not to be concerned by the things the Old Testament said–that kind of thing–again.

PLAYBOY: Yet you consistently quote the Old Testament as a justification for your positions, particularly regarding homosexuality. It reminds us of the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925, when William Jennings Bryan insisted on a literal interpretation of the creation.

BRYANT: Well, when you start nitpicking, when we try in our own feeble minds to understand God … God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” There’s no way you can comprehend what creation is. You’re trying to come to a logical conclusion as to how God did it and there’s no way we can know how God did it. From man’s point of view, miracles never happen. From God’s point of view, they do.

PLAYBOY: Does there have to be a conflict between belief in evolution and belief in God?

BRYANT: Except that Darwin did not believe in God.

PLAYBOY: That doesn’t answer the question.

BRYANT: Look, because of his atheistic influence, Darwin is taught in the public schools as fact. That’s fine, if people want to believe that, but I say we must also put Genesis and the Bible in the school teachings as an alternate belief. And, look, really, there’s no way I can answer your question, because I don’t know how God did it. I just believe he did it. It’s like when Moses parted the Red Sea. To man, that was an impossible feat, yet it was one of the great miracles of the Bible when Moses lifted his rod again and the sea closed. I mean, it boggles your mind to think of the majesty and supernatural power it took to do that. My pastor put it this way: He said, for God, it took only the flick of his pinkie to part the Red Sea.

PLAYBOY: God has a pinkie?

BRYANT: Oh, I don’t know, it’s just an illustration. Actually, the biggest miracle of all was the constraint God showed not to split the earth in half when he parted the Red Sea. What I’m saying is that God didn’t have to do things man’s way. He spoke the universe into existence.

PLAYBOY: But even from your point of view, is it not still a miracle to create the universe over a period of billions of years?

BRYANT: Why would he take that kind of time? He doesn’t have to.

PLAYBOY: Why not? If he is eternal, time is nothing to him.

BRYANT: Well, that’s true … but the Bible says God just spoke the universe into existence.

PLAYBOY: Many Biblical scholars aren’t nearly as fundamentalist as you are in believing such things.

BRYANT: I don’t know! What do I know? We’ll know those answers when we get to heaven, all right? And you can ask God yourself!

PLAYBOY: Do you think that people who either don’t believe in Jesus as God–Jews, for example–or those who have never been exposed to Christian teaching are condemned to hell?

BRYANT: Well, I personally have to believe that, because I believe God’s word. I didn’t write the Bible, and that’s what the Bible says. But there are a lot of Jews today who are accepting Jesus as the Messiah.

PLAYBOY: What about those who are not–the vast majority, in other words?

BRYANT: You’re putting me on the spot again. As much as I would like to say other people can be saved by some other means than Jesus, I cannot deny what I know from the Bible. It doesn’t make me feel good or give me any gratification to think someone’s going to hell. I have great respect for my Jewish brothers. But I am what I am, I believe what I believe and I can’t stick my head in the ground and say, “Well, I believe if people are really good and if they live by other standards, they can get absolved”–God just didn’t say that. This whole question is very hard for me, because I have come to love Rabbi Weberman and the other Jewish people I have worked with in Dade County very much. I have a great respect for them, so I don’t think in terms of hell-fire and damnation.

PLAYBOY: Presumably, you feel the same way about other faiths–the Moslem faith, for instance.

BRYANT: God is using so many people all over the world to get the Gospel to the Moslems, to everybody. Whether a person will accept or reject the Gospel is between him and God. I’m not responsible for that. I mean, God could just have made us all into robots, but he took a chance. He wanted us to choose his way.

PLAYBOY: If you tried to tell a devout Moslem about Jesus as savior, he would be just as immune to hearing your message as you would be if he tried to tell you Mohammed was the Prophet.

BRYANT: I don’t have the answer for that. I can’t approach it from an intellectual point of view. There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about God.

PLAYBOY: Where is your sense of justice? If someone truly lives a good life, if he’s sincere and moral, just because he doesn’t believe in Jesus–

BRYANT: Even though he is sincere, he is sincerely wrong. Sincerity doesn’t make you right. The homosexual community believes it’s sincerely right too.

PLAYBOY: What about some Pygmy or some South American Indian who has literally never heard of Jesus and never will, who has his own set of gods that he’s worshiped for thousands of years? He’s going to hell too?

BRYANT: That’s all the more reason we have the responsibility to pay for missionaries to get the truth to them. I mean, I’ve heard weird stories all over the world about where missionaries have gone to odd places and where people have been saved just by seeing a torn page of the Bible on the floor. There are some weird salvation experiences all over the world. I believe that it’s God’s plan that all should be saved.

PLAYBOY: But, according to your way of thinking, Jews, Moslems, Pygmies, Eskimos and atheists are going to hell.

BRYANT: According to God’s word, they do. I mean, if there’s no heaven and no hell, what are we talking about? You know, your problem is that you have to have all the answers. It’s impossible to have all the answers!PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the inferior status conferred on women in the Bible? Would you agree, as some women do, that it’s because the Bible was written by men in the context of the times?

BRYANT: Well, no, men didn’t write it, the Holy Spirit did. Most of the preachers are men, though, and I think that’s brought about an unhealthy balance. It’s a thing where you hear so much about “women, submit yourselves to your husbands,” and that is Biblical, where women must submit first but it also says, “submit yourselves one to another.” It has to be a submission of both women to men and men to women.

PLAYBOY: But you’ve also said that women are weaker vessels than men.

BRYANT: Well, they are. I don’t think that has a bad connotation.

PLAYBOY: Weak isn’t exactly a complimentary term.

BRYANT: Well, it’s a Biblical term, you see…. All I know is God did have a plan. I don’t always want to agree with it and I don’t always understand it, but it’s like the clay trying to understand the potter. All I know is that he did set the man over the woman. When he said we were to become as one flesh, he meant it in all ways. So if I don’t submit to Bob–

PLAYBOY: Why shouldn’t he have to submit to you first?

BRYANT: I believe that it’s easier for the woman to submit. That’s Biblical.

PLAYBOY: Why?

BRYANT: I don’t know, but I just think that a woman has the capability of submitting. I really thought in my younger days that I could do anything that Bob could do and probably better, and for a time, maybe I showed that I could. But I had a limit. I could take only so much, whereas God has equipped men to take much more responsibility–he made them to be the head and he gave them a certain ability. Women come at things with a much more emotional point of view.

PLAYBOY: What do you mean, emotional?

BRYANT: I can’t explain it. I just think women have a softer approach. We’re more vulnerable, just like in the Garden of Eden. Bob has an ability to see things from a totally different perspective than I. I am much more trusting. Women are vulnerable as far as people are concerned, whereas men can see through things. Of course, I’m talking about the perfect specimen–everybody’s different. But I believe there is an innate ability that men have that’s different from women’s. I think women have much more of a capacity for pain, for instance–no question there. I’ve seen it time and time again. I know I have much more endurance than Bob in many areas, and yet for decisions and responsibilities, I got into an awful lot of trouble by taking on more than I was able to handle, and when Bob finally saw that, he took the responsibility for that and it was a tremendous burden lifted off my shoulders.

PLAYBOY: If Bob told you to do something right now that was against the grain of your thought, would you simply submit to him?

BRYANT: I might rebel against it–and I have many times–but, Biblically, I would submit, yes.

PLAYBOY: You’ve gone against your own better judgment?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. For me to learn to submit was one of the most difficult things in the world, because from the time I was a little child, I was a very hardheaded, independent human being. Yet God showed me my weaknesses, showed me where I was the weaker vessel in many respects, and I still didn’t want to recognize that. It was in real submission, when I was able to let Bob take over, that I really realized I was usurping his authority by not allowing him to be the person God meant him to be. Submission really means to throw oneself under, so the decision an equal person has to make is to become the one underneath, and that’s a matter of choice. Jesus Christ is a terrific example of one who submitted. And either he was who he said he was or he was the greatest liar ever on the face of this earth.

I am not intimidated by being called the weaker vessel, because I know that in many areas I am the stronger vessel. I mean, for a long time, I really would have been in agreement with the feminist movement, particularly for the anger I had toward my father that I transferred to Bob. I usurped Bob’s authority in many ways for many years and our marriage was rocky, really rocky, until I recognized I was in rebellion against God, and I got right and submitted. I’m not saying it was easy. I’ve read some of the feminist materials these days, and some of them get so uptight when the Bible refers to “man” when God talks about the individual, but there was much discrimination in the Jewish heritage against the woman, so when Jesus Christ came, he freed them and made them equal spiritually. Now, we all know there’s a tremendous difference between men and women, but we have different roles. It really bothers me that these feminists get so uptight–they have this attitude. It’s so rebellious, not only against God but against man. You can tell they hate men and they hate even the word of God–they want to change the word of God.

PLAYBOY: You mentioned your anger toward your father. Let’s talk about your upbringing. For instance, most people would be surprised to learn that the first liquid to enter Anita Bryant’s throat was a slug of corn-mash moonshine.

BRYANT: Yeah, it’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? You see, I was born dead. My mother was visiting her parents, my Grandma and Grandpa Berry, and I was a month late in coming. When I came, somehow my mother’s system had filled up with poison and I was all black and blue and not breathing. My grandfather was not yet a Christian and he picked up the doctor and said, “You blankety-blank son of a you-know-what, either you save my daughter and my granddaughter or I’ll kill you.” Well, the doctor sort of had to go along. He told Grandma Berry, “All right, get me a pan of ice water and some whiskey and make a strong pot of real thick coffee as black as you can make it.” Then he stuck my head in the water and that shocked me into gasping for breath, and Grandma got the whiskey and they got that down me. I vomited and filled a big pan full of black-green poison. I shrank from nine pounds down to a tiny thing–and that’s how I came into the world. I was born in my Uncle Luther Berry’s bed–that’s prophetic, you see, because he’s a Baptist minister.

PLAYBOY: You recovered from birth trauma sufficiently that you were able to make your singing debut at the age of two, though?

BRYANT: Yeah, Grandpa Berry felt I was his special grandchild. When I was six months old, he’d rock me in his arms and say, “Sing, Anita, sing!” and I’d yell back to him. So when I was two, he bribed a preacher in the church to let me sing “Jesus Loves Me”–or at least he nagged him to death. And people who would come over to the house, I’d set them down and say, “Do you want me to sing for you?” I was a brash kid, real ornery. Grandpa used to call me the brave one, because one time during a tornado, I went rushing out of the house after a washtub that was rolling down the street and he had to rescue me. Later on, when I was learning to ride horses bareback, I’d get thrown 50 feet and get back up and try again, and so the neighbors would call me brave, too. I didn’t think I was so brave.

PLAYBOY: Were you a happy child?

BRYANT: You have to remember that my parents were first divorced when I was two years old and a lot of my insecurities started then. Mother had to go to work and I had to live with my relatives, and that affects a child greatly. They had married very young and they really had no idea of the responsibilities of marriage. I had lots of nightmares after the divorce and I walked in my sleep. I was a very hyperactive kid and a very sickly child. I caught everything that came around. I had the measles, the chicken pox–and every disease I had was like the worst in medical history. I was anemic and had worms. I had pneumonia about eight times. We didn’t have the money to go to the doctor every time I was sick, so it wasn’t until much later that I found out that I was a highly allergic person. Even today, I can’t take certain foods–I eat beans and I itch all night long. I’m allergic to dust–lots of things. And nobody in rural Oklahoma knew anything about nutrition, so my meals were imbalanced. I was raised on fried quail, frogs’ legs, wild rabbit, squirrel, venison–stuff my dad or grandpa would hunt. I do remember parts of my childhood as being happy and other parts I’ve blocked out because it hurts too much. I guess I was happiest when I was eight years old and my parents were remarried, and I was baptized and came to know Christ as my personal savior.

Most of my life, I’ve been a real go-getter, the original Unsinkable Molly Brown. I’ve been down but never out. Even when I was very young I was determined to be a star. I told the Lord, “Lord, let me be a star.” I was a strong-minded, independent kid. Remember–we were really living in the sticks. There was only one television in the neighborhood, and on Saturday nights we’d go over and watch it. I remember the first show I ever saw was Ed Sullivan. My dad was a real roustabout–he went from job to job, working in oil fields and what have you, doing what he could. I mean, it was the sticks and basic things were hard to come by. We lived in a trailer for a year and a half and went to the bathroom in the woods. Even the local school had outhouses–and that was when I was in the sixth grade. Your life was centered around God, your church, your family. But primarily the church.PLAYBOY: Were your parents as fervent as you in their religious convictions?

BRYANT: No. They got away from the church; they really never had a church home. I felt responsible and I blamed myself.

PLAYBOY: What happened after your parents remarried?

BRYANT: We moved to Oklahoma City and I thought it was the end of the world. It was the biggest city I’d ever seen and the adjustment was real hard. Then my mom and dad started fighting again. They divorced again when I was 12. I didn’t see my father for a long time afterward–he moved to another city, found another job, and we’d hear from him once in a while, but it was a long time between phone calls. A lot of that period I don’t remember. I guess I really don’t want to. It was real painful and it just about killed my mother. She was a very submissive wife–she was too submissive and it angered me. She let my dad step all over her and she would have done anything to get him back. Mother had a terrible inferiority complex. My father was a very proud man, a hard worker, but he didn’t communicate well with his family. When Daddy left, I had to sort of become the head of the household–iron the clothes, make the dinner and generally be supportive. I learned to relate to adults and I seemingly had great sophistication, though I really don’t. Life was hard for my mother, because she had to learn everything the hard way. I mean, she married when she was 18 and she didn’t even know anything about sex until after her honeymoon night.

PLAYBOY: Did she talk to you about sex?

BRYANT: When the time came, she tried, but it would have been better if she had described more. Even so, she did better than her mother. Grandma married when she was 15 and never told a soul about anything. Grandma Berry was love personified and a real pioneer woman, but she did have her hang-ups. Anyway, after the second divorce, Mother had to rely on us kids–and trust us in our dating. We were proud that she could trust us. It was almost like growing up with my big sister rather than my mother–she was only 18 years older than me. I knew she blamed God for her problems–and she was very bitter about God. Eventually, she remarried, we moved to Tulsa and my mother rejoined the church. She was really beautiful when we were growing up; she had a great figure. She’s chunky now since she stopped smoking, but that’s okay, because you want your mother to smell sweet.

PLAYBOY: So you resented your father?

BRYANT: I tried very hard to forgive him for what lie had done to my mother–and to me. Because of him, I think I went through life for a long time hating all men, including my husband, Bob. It took me a long time to get over my resentment of Daddy. For many years, I thought I’d forgiven him, when I really hadn’t. It wasn’t until 1974 that I truly forgave him, when I realized that I couldn’t blame him for his actions. But it took a long time, let me tell you.

PLAYBOY: How did your musical ability progress?

BRYANT: People kept saying, “How can such a big voice come from such an itty-bitty child?” It’s just a natural gift that God gave me. I have natural rhythm, a quality you either have or you don’t. It was in my blood and I was determined to make the best of it. I’d spend most every weekend traveling around the state and singing before the Lions Club, the Elks, that sort of thing. I was billed as Little Miss Terrific. By the time I was 12, I had my own television show. I’d won a contest on the Gizmo Goodkin Talent Show and I got my own 15-minute show every Friday night. I had to become an adult real young. In some ways I was ready, but in other ways I was robbed of having a nice normal childhood.

PLAYBOY: Did you have normal childhood fears?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. I remember one time when we were living in a bad part of Oklahoma City, after Daddy left for good, there was a Peeping Tom around. One night I was sleeping with my mother and she heard a noise and ran to the back door to make sure it was locked, and somebody grabbed the doorknob and tried to open it. Then she ran to the front door and just as she got there, somebody tried to get in the front door, too. It was a very frightening experience. So afterward, Mother went to bed with a butcher knife. As far as a physical experience is concerned, I’ve never been afraid–I always thought I could do anything. But spooky movies used to freak me out.

PLAYBOY: Do they still?

BRYANT: Yes; I would not see Jaws or The Exorcist. In fact, most movies made these days I find morally objectionable. But one movie I saw as a kid that really impressed me was So Dear to My Heart. It was an old Disney movie in which a little kid who didn’t have much money raised this little black lamb and entered him in the contest at the state fair. The black lamb didn’t win, but he got a special ribbon–he was a loser, and I identified with him and the movie has stuck in my head forever.

I really do think I grew up too quick. Bob tells me I never had a real childhood because I’m so serious about so many things. I think the thing I’ve had to learn as an adult is a sense of humor. I don’t mean learn it, really, but just to be able to laugh at myself in different situations. You know, knowing how to relax and just be silly, do silly things. It’s taken a lot of pain for me to get to a place where I can have a sense of humor. Oh, I always had a kind of cynical, straightforward one. In a way, I guess I’ve always been funny–not to everybody but to people who know me. My friends tell me I’m a big tease all the time.

PLAYBOY: Did your sense of humor help you when the jokes started during the Dade County campaign?

BRYANT: Yeah. A lot of the jokes that are told about me are not really filthy or vicious–well, I’ve learned to laugh at them. I got a big kick out of one cartoon in The Miami Herald that showed me leaning over some guy’s shoulder and saying, “Oh, I think I saw one over there underneath the Sunshine Tree.” And I was bending over and my bottom was real huge and there was a flag on it. I thought, Well, they could have made my bottom a little smaller. They really thought they were hurting me, when really it’s so far from the truth it’s funny. But I liked the flag. At least they caught the fact that I am patriotic. But I didn’t like the big bottom. So I’ve learned more how to relax and be silly about some things. Not everything, of course–I never read silly novels, for instance.

PLAYBOY: What do you read?

BRYANT: I read constantly, but I don’t read nonreligious stuff. I don’t have the time.

PLAYBOY: Have you read the classics? Shakespeare, Melville, Henry James …?

BRYANT: I read Hemingway and stuff like that in school. I loved The Old Man and the Sea. The theme is nonviolence and I hate violence. There’s so much of it on television these days, it makes me nervous. I loved reading romantic stories–I loved Wuthering Heights when I read it a long time ago–but I don’t read those kinds of things anymore. I used to read books that would make me fantasize–romance stories and what have you. I’ve since learned…. It’s like the movies. I loved romantic movies like Gone with the Wind, but I realized the effect of that kind of thing–when your home life isn’t ideal, you seek it somewhere else, so that your natural relationship with your husband becomes distorted. For a long time, that was a real problem with me and Bob, because I was preserving my own ideal–Hollywood’s ideal–and ignoring the real problems that come up between a husband and a wife. It’s the same thing with the modern-day housewife and the afternoon soap operas. Let’s face it–the housewives identify with the soap operas because the shows uplift them from their humdrum daily life. They compare their own lives with the TV show, rather than remembering God’s word–it’s bound to affect them badly. The women are told it’s OK to have an affair if their home life is frustrating. Just plain garbage. They watch television because it’s a vicarious thrill to live that life–to those poor bored women, the grass is always greener on the other side, and they are tempted by Satan to believe his side is the way, so that by the time the husband comes home after a hard day at the office, the housewife hates the box he’s put her in. What she’s missing is the challenge she can create–what greater responsibility is there than to be a loving wife and mother, to compensate for the things her husband is missing?PLAYBOY: Let’s back up a moment. What gave your career its biggest push?

BRYANT: Arthur Godfrey. One of his talent scouts came to Tulsa and held a competition. I won hands down, week after week. I was determined I would win. When I won, the decision to go to New York was automatic–I didn’t even have to pray about it, until my pastor talked to me. I really didn’t have peace in my heart about leaving for the big time. What if God says no? I thought. I was miserable until I prayed to God and he gave a yes right back to me. I can’t explain it, but I just knew it would be okay.

PLAYBOY: But you were already a star, in terms of Oklahoma. How did that affect your teenage life? In terms of boy-girl social intercourse?

BRYANT: Well, it didn’t help my self-image. I was kind of scrawny–I’d never get the captain of the football team, I knew, so it was surprising to me that I got to date a lot of neat guys. As a matter of fact, I dated my pastor’s son for three years. We made plans to get married. Oh, we were so perfect–he had a beautiful voice and we sang together in the church choir. I just adored him. But one night we went out in his car and he pulled out a cigarette. “Look, you don’t really know me,” he said. I said, “Of course, I’m surprised that you smoke, but what does that have to do with us?” He told me he wanted to live it up and get his kicks. So we broke up and, immediately, he started going with a gal who had a bad reputation. It just broke my heart. I wanted to die. I felt the world was coming to an end and I didn’t even go to school for a week. I was just sick. I decided then that I wouldn’t marry until I was 25.

PLAYBOY: But you were glamorous by small-town standards. Surely, Satan tempted you in numerous ways–such as sex. How did you resist? Or did you?

BRYANT: See, the kids today have a much harder time dealing with sex, because it’s no longer “in” to be a virgin. In my time, when I went to Will Rogers High School, it was not the hip thing to do to go to bed with somebody, or even to let a boy fondle you–you just didn’t do that. Some girls did it, sure, but their reputation was ruined all over town. And because I was such a hardworking girl, I didn’t date that much. I concentrated on my career, my church activities and my grade-point average, and I was just too busy to be tempted by the Devil. If I dated some guy who tried to pet with me, I just told him, “Look, you can take me home right now, if you want–I’m not gonna go any further. If you don’t enjoy being with me as a person, just take me home.” I mean, I loved the kissing part and, I must say, I had some pretty passionate feelings, too, because I’m no prude, but I knew where to stop. My faith was so much a part of me that I knew my body was a temple of God and that God held it sacred. And I knew that my husband would know if I had been promiscuous and that if I didn’t save myself for my marriage, if I wasn’t pure, I would miss out. The consequences just weren’t worth it to me. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was saved when I was eight years old and my beliefs were reinforced in the public schools then through prayer–this was before that atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair made the worship of God illegal, you see. Kids today don’t even know God, unless their parents are religious.

PLAYBOY: You never let sexual temptation get out of hand, then?

BRYANT: Well, there were times when I was tempted, but because I was faithful to God, I wasn’t willing to step over that line. I knew the boy would go as far as the girl would let him and, mainly, I tried not to get into situations that I couldn’t get out of.

PLAYBOY: What about other teenage temptations? Is rock ‘n’ roll today something you disapprove of?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. In my days, the lyrics were understandable and you didn’t have to slow it down to hear the dirty cuss words and the jargon that parents today can’t understand.

PLAYBOY: Come on. You admit in one of your books that when you added a hard, driving beat to “Till There Was You,” you achieved your first 1,000,000 seller. And even when you were coming of age in the Fifties, there were plenty of sexual double-entendres in the rock lyrics.

BRYANT: Yeah, but it’s not like today, where there are a lot of rock dances and rock music that are brainwashing the kids, because it’s all very promiscuous and it glorifies promiscuity and acid rock and a lot of those things. The kids get into the dirty lyrics and the beat is just very, very seductive.

PLAYBOY: What do you suppose the thrill was that Pat Boone found on Blueberry Hill?

BRYANT: All I know is that there are a lot of filthy words I’ve heard in listening to the radio these days that are just shameful and outright sinful. I think a lot of evil things are much more prevalent these days. I think kids growing up today have pressures that we never had in the Fifties. It’s so discouraging.

PLAYBOY: Let’s get back to the emergence of your career. It was Godfrey who got you out of Oklahoma?

BRYANT: Yeah. I went to New York and, I mean, he was really the king then–he ruled the roost. I went on his morning show, so I had to live in New York and scrounge like a dog to keep up my school grades. Speech was my strongest subject. English I had no problem with. Math–forget it. I just couldn’t comprehend. But I did all right, all in all. I had to work hard, and I knew how to work hard. Mother, of course, was very concerned with my fate in New York. We went up there together the first time and found that the Salvation Army ran a hotel for women right on the edge of Greenwich Village–the area was a pretty good neighborhood then. And in that hotel, no men could get past the lobby–mother liked that. I met some interesting people during that period.

PLAYBOY: Like who?

BRYANT: Well, Chubby Checker–he was very hot and heavy. And Leslie Uggams–talk about a straight little girl who was really naïve…. Anyway, there were things I didn’t tell Mother about.

PLAYBOY: Such as?

BRYANT: I don’t want to tell you.

PLAYBOY: Oh, go ahead.

BRYANT: Well, there was this one television producer who made it clear to me that I could be a very, very big TV star if I slept with him.

PLAYBOY: You were still a virgin?

BRYANT: Absolutely. Anyway, the whole thing scared me to death. I really prayed and prayed–I wanted to make it in show business so bad. So I went to a guy who was like an uncle to me who was in the business. He asked me if I drank and I said no. So he said, “In that case, you’ll have no problem.” I prayed some more, and then I went to this producer’s apartment for dinner. He made the overtures, but I was able to talk him out of it.

PLAYBOY: How?

BRYANT: I made sure that the cook stayed around–I didn’t want to be alone with him. Anyway, it worked. The word got around and he was so embarrassed that he didn’t dare try to hurt my career. Thank God.

PLAYBOY: As you did.

BRYANT: As I did.

PLAYBOY: What was your next noteworthy achievement? Entering the Miss America Pageant?

BRYANT: Not yet. When I was 16, I did a tour with Ricky Nelson. I really had a crush on him.

PLAYBOY: Was it returned in kind?

BRYANT: No. He was very big then. He liked to swing with the airline stewardesses. I was just a kid to him. I also did some tours with Fabian and Bobby Rydell, and later on, I did American Bandstand with people like Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon–that was after I got a recording contract.PLAYBOY: Then you entered the Miss Oklahoma pageant, first as Miss Tulsa, then on to the Miss America competition. Why did you do it?

BRYANT: I did it on a dare. Some of my friends made me do it. One of my basic motivations was to get the Miss America scholarship so I could go to college. I was very awkward–I had skin and weight problems. I was fairly well proportioned, but I knew I was no beauty. And most of the other girls were much older than I was–I was only 18. I had to fake my way through the pageant. And I just couldn’t believe that I made Miss Oklahoma and the national finals.

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t the act of parading around in a tight swimsuit a violation of your Christian ethics?

BRYANT: It did bother me. But I figured, well, you go to the beach in your swimsuit…. I didn’t feel ashamed or anything, but I didn’t enjoy it. It was kind of a necessary evil. My over-all attitude was that it was a one-time experience, so enjoy it. My basic weakness was in answering the judges’ questions–I was not aware of world affairs and I felt very inadequate.

PLAYBOY: What did they ask you?

BRYANT: I don’t even recall. I rattled on and on–I didn’t know what in the Sam Hill I was talking about, even though I’d boned up all week by reading Newsweek. Part of the reward for winning the pageant was a recording contract, and I already had a recording contract. So I was quite pleased that I got as far as second runner-up, although I was really disappointed that I didn’t get the Miss Congeniality trophy–I’d ended up in a tie with another gal for it, and because I made second runner-up, the judges broke the tie and gave her the trophy. I really wanted it…. It’s funny, though. To this day, people come up to me and ask me what it was like to be Miss America.

PLAYBOY: What was your next step?

BRYANT: I moved to Chicago and enrolled in Northwestern University–I’d gotten an offer from The Breakfast Club to sing on the show and Northwestern had a good music school. I had no choice, really–in this business, when your career gets going, you take advantage of what you get. The pace was just running me down, I was working so hard. I was trying to do everything, I was overworked and I was very lonely in Chicago.

PLAYBOY: No boyfriends?

BRYANT: Well, kind of unofficially, I was engaged to Pat Boone’s brother, Nick Todd. We didn’t have a ring or anything, but we dated when we could and went to church together. That wasn’t his real name–he changed it because he didn’t want to feel he was making it because of his famous brother. I’d first met Nick in New York when I was doing the Godfrey show. We were very close and I think we were in love with love more than anything else–there weren’t that many straight guys around and he was available and I was available and we hit it off. I went to Nashville and met his parents and everything….

PLAYBOY: And then Bob Green entered your life. That was in 1959?

BRYANT: Yeah, right after I went to crown the new Miss Tulsa. Bobby Darin was the m.c. for the ceremony and he asked me for a date. I told him I had to leave for a disc jockeys’ convention in Miami that night to promote my records–and that’s where I met Bob Green. He was a real big glamorous disc jockey then. Bob met me at the Miami airport and I took one look at him and went “Wow!”–you know, he was a real dreamboat. He drove this neat white T-bird with his name on the side. He wore these silk suits, he came on real strong. He looked totally different than he looks now. He was so good-looking, and lie was in shape, and it was incredible. I didn’t think I’d have a chance with him–I expected to get rejected. Plus, I thought he was too good-looking to be a nice boy. And he was always surrounded by these pretty gals who were just falling all over him. Everywhere we went, the girls would scream and ask for his autograph–they didn’t know me from Adam. I was surprised when that first day he asked me out for a date, but I turned him down. I was too concerned about singing at the show that night, and Pat and Shirley Boone were there and I didn’t want them to think I was stepping out on Nick. And I still was hurting from the rejection of the preacher’s son…. I didn’t want to get hurt again. I mean, Bob had every girl in town and dated the airline stewardesses and all the pretty gals. He had it made.

PLAYBOY: Yet he was interested in you?

BRYANT: He just couldn’t figure me out. I was an oddity–I’ve always been an oddity. Anyway, after the show that night, I was sitting around in the club, getting bored, and there was smoke and drinking and all, and Bob came over and invited me for a drive, so I said okay. The moon was over Miami and we were driving down Collins Avenue and the music was on and I fell asleep! I knew I was getting to his ego, and when he drove me to the airport the next day, I never thought I’d see him again. Anyway, to make a long story short, he just kept after me–hours of long-distance phone calls, letters every day. I kept telling him not to get his hopes up, that I was engaged and that I didn’t want to get married until I was 25. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. But after Bob, I knew I just didn’t feel the same way about Nick. I told Nick about Bob and we stayed good friends after we broke up. When I broke up with Nick was when I realized how much I loved Bob. We were both ready to settle down, I guess, and we had the same values–plus, Bob didn’t smoke or drink, which surprised me.

PLAYBOY: And you shared the same religious beliefs?

BRYANT: Bob wasn’t born again until the night before we got married.

PLAYBOY: Was that a deal you made?

BRYANT: We had no conflict about it. But I was very scared of marriage and I almost backed out at the last minute.

PLAYBOY: Was marriage everything you’d dreamed it would be?

BRYANT: It depends on what you mean.

PLAYBOY: Well, sexually, for starters.

BRYANT: I have a fantastic sex life!

PLAYBOY: Emotionally, then.

BRYANT: Marriage is very hard. Lots of problems are involved with two people working out a loving relationship and adhering to God’s laws. And it upset me when I was told I could not bear children. We adopted our first child, Bobby, Jr. Later, when it turned out I could bear children, I had twins who were born months prematurely–and they almost died. Plus Bob was making a lot more money than I was then. Finally, Bob became my manager and that solved a lot of problems. He’s been a great manager, and until I started getting boycotted and black-listed by the militant homosexuals last year, I had all the work I could handle.

PLAYBOY: We’ll get back to that. First tell us about what you have described as the most important turning point in your life, when you had a nervous breakdown in 1974.

BRYANT: It was not a nervous breakdown–it verged on it, certainly, but it really makes me mad that the militant homosexuals try to use it against me by saying, “She flipped out, she went crazy.”

PLAYBOY: Well, what did happen?

BRYANT: I lost three people very dear to me in one year. I sang at all their funerals. Dan Topping [the former owner of the New York Yankees], my Grandpa Berry and a gal named Teddy who was like a big sister to me and who was about my age when she died. I couldn’t understand why God would just nip her in the bud when she was in the prime of her life. There are few people I can share my heart with, and I could talk to Teddy about things I couldn’t even talk with Bob or my pastor about. It was that deep. Then Bob developed a heart condition and almost died, and I had to think for the first time about raising four kids alone without Teddy to lean on anymore. It was after Grandpa Berry’s funeral when the straw landed that broke the camel’s back. It was like God wanted to put me flat on my back so the only way I could look was up. He knew I was holding out on Him and He wanted the whole of me, not just part of me. He knew I had a lot of rebellion and anger and bitterness in me. I thought I’d forgiven my daddy, but I hadn’t–I still hated and resented him, and the pent-up hatred was poisoning my marriage and my relationship with people all around me. So I collapsed after Grandpa’s funeral–I totally gave up. I lay down and I just…. I’d decided not to see his body, but after I sang at the funeral, I changed my mind; before they buried him I wanted to see him. When I did, I just broke down and they laid me down on the pew right next to him and I couldn’t stop crying–I was just hysterical and that shook everybody up. They just couldn’t comprehend that I would go under–I was like the Rock of Gibraltar, and always had been, even as a child. I’d always learned to lift my head above the jungle and be responsible, no matter what. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be responsible anymore. I wanted to do away with all responsibility–I was so tired. I think had I been anyone else, I probably would have had a heart attack or a total nervous breakdown, but I just came to a point where I didn’t want to do anything. I just sat in my office and looked at the stack of letters from people who were asking me for advice and counseling–and I just couldn’t be responsible anymore. I needed advice and counseling, and the one person I could have talked to, Teddy, was gone. I said, “No more,” and I would just sit in my office all day. I said, “I’m not going to do anything else, ever.” It scared me to death. Bob was scared to death, too.
PLAYBOY: Did you consider seeing a psychiatrist?

BRYANT: No, it was so painful–it was like I felt I’d be committing a sin by going to a psychiatrist; can you imagine that? I thought it would be denying Jesus. And I knew that a lot of psychiatrists tell you things totally contrary to Biblical teaching, such as in order to get along with your husband, go out and have an affair, or something like that. But friends of ours told us about this Christian retreat in Rosemead, California–it’s sort of a Christian counseling center, quite famous. Marabel Morgan and lots of famous Christian people have gone there. So I decided I had to do something, that God was sending me out there. The night before I went, I told Bob, “I don’t think I’m ever coming back.” I really thought that–I was so scared and weary. We arrived at night and I met the psychologist and I liked him very much. I was told to come back the next morning and to plan on staying for at least two weeks. When we got to the hotel, I just could not sleep. I didn’t want to wake Bob, so I went into this tiny bathroom and closed the door and got down on my hands and knees and just started praying. Something from way down deep inside of me was trying to come out. It was, so strange. I took a legal pad and a pencil and I started writing down these things that were bugging me. I filled 17 whole pages.

PLAYBOY: What did you write?

BRYANT: Some things I wouldn’t want printed because it does no good to bring them up, but…well, the hatred of my father and the resentment toward Bob, things that went way back into my childhood and other more recent things, such as little difficulties I was having with the kids that I’d kept pent up. And the fact that I’d had all the responsibility pushed upon me for so many years–I had had responsibilities thrust on me no 12-year-old should have had, and they were still weighing on me. Anyway, I felt like a different person when I walked into the psychologist’s office the next day and showed him the 17 pages. He said, “It looks like my work has already been done for me.” God had been taking me in different stages, but I was holding out on Him without even knowing it, and now I was saying, OK, God, I’ll give You my emotions, too. I still felt very ashamed that I’d even had to go to Rosemead–I just felt so guilty because of bad teachings about psychology and I didn’t want anyone to know I’d even gone.

PLAYBOY: Was it that hard to admit?

BRYANT: It hurt me to admit that I was that human, yes. It took me 34 years to be able to admit that.

PLAYBOY: Has your marriage improved since Rosemead?

BRYANT: I never realized before then how I dominated Bob, but, fortunately, he was stronger than I and we were able to work these things out. The main problem we had in our marriage was that, because of my father, I basically had a hate for men. I mean, there were times when I literally hated my husband–I couldn’t help it. But I was responsible because I allowed it to fester and didn’t take it to the Lord. And divorce wasn’t in my vocabulary, because I’d suffered the scars of divorce as a child and I knew what my children would suffer from it. But, above all, I knew it was against God’s word. Bob and I still have our ups and downs, because I’m not a goody two-shoes. I know now I’m a human being, just like anybody else. If it weren’t for Jesus Christ in my heart and life, I probably would have married several times. I probably would have slept around with guys and whatever. I always say that I’m just a sinner saved by grace.

PLAYBOY: What are your sins?

BRYANT: Oh, I don’t know…maybe the sin of intolerance. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY: That’s exactly what those you call militant homosexuals say about you.

BRYANT: I just meant it as a pun.

PLAYBOY: A pun? What pun?

BRYANT: I try not to be intolerant. All I’m saying is I don’t have anything to brag about. The reason I can relate to the homosexual is because I’ve had emotional scars in my own life. I really felt the rejection of my father, and that is one of the things that maybe lead someone going into homosexuality. Look, I don’t hate homosexuals–that’s the truth, no matter what they think of my motives. I’ve always said I love the sinner but I hate the sin.

PLAYBOY: You’ve been saying that America and her children are being destroyed. You’ve compared America to Sodom and Gomorrah; you say God destroys the kind of nation that America has become.

BRYANT: Absolutely. I believe that’s what has been happening to America.

PLAYBOY: Do you think it still is?

BRYANT: I believe now that we have a greater hope than ever before–that God is allowing America one last space to repent. If the parents of American children had stood by God’s word, had they not had their head in the sand for so many years, the destruction of America’s moral fiber wouldn’t have happened. But it happened so fast no one knew it was happening. But now it seems people have a hunger. They’ve seen how so-called humanism works. They were told, “Well, one way to change the world is to educate the people. You educate them to a certain point, they’re going to change.” Well, has that been true? Has that happened? No. Our country was strong for so long because we claimed we were one nation under God and God blessed us. I believe that right now, God has removed himself from America. If we’ll look through history, we’re in the same situation as were Greece and Rome, when homosexuality and other sins were so rampant they became the norm.

PLAYBOY: So this and your crusade are America’s last chance?

BRYANT: Yes. I didn’t even come to the realization that America was so far gone until the time of the referendum, when I got letters from groups all over the country describing the fights they were in and how they were righting some of the same things and it looked to me like a big octopus that had its tentacles around America and was squeezing our country to death. And it grieved me. I mourned for America for several days.

PLAYBOY: You cried for America?

BRYANT: Yes, I really saw for the first time in my life what was going on. I had been very idealistic about America all my life–I am still–because in reading the last book of the Bible, I know what the hope for the world is. And I think there’s a revival beginning in America now. What happened in Dade County is happening all over the country. I know that’s how God rewards prayer, and Dade County was the answer to a lot of prayers world-wide.

PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about the media for a moment. Do you think you’ve gotten a raw deal from the press?

BRYANT: Let’s face it–quite honestly, the press can make anybody look like anything it wants to. I mean, there are a lot of things in all of our lives that you don’t want known–nobody’s perfect–that could ruin you. The press has placed me in a stereotyped box. Like, I’m not a prude, but that’s the image they want to portray, because they’re after me. I think it’s snobbery. You see, there are so many intellectuals in this nation and they’ve really become snobs as far as how they approach grassroots things. It’s really true. Like, when we started the opposition to the Dade County ordinance–all the press figured it was for one of two reasons: either to run for public office or for publicity for my career. They just couldn’t accept my real motivation, because they don’t know me. It took me a while to see that I was really under a microscope and had to watch what I said. I’m OK now–I think I could handle the Good Morning America show and Gore Vidal.

PLAYBOY: You mean the show on which Vidal mentioned you in the same breath with Hitler?

BRYANT: Yeah; I think I could handle that now. I must be doing something right. I taped the Today show last fall and did so well against Tom Brokaw–and he wasn’t being his usual nice self, let me tell you–that they asked us to tape a second segment, where he was nicer. So we’re OK now. We’ve been trained.

PLAYBOY: A baptism by fire?

BRYANT: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I mean, I learned. Let me give you an example. After Dade County, some people from the media asked me, “Would you go to San Francisco and Los Angeles?” And I said, “Sure, if I’m asked and if after I’ve prayed about it God says yes.” Well, immediately, they put it on the wire that Anita Bryant plans on going on a crusade across the country. Okay, to counteract that, I say to the press, I am not going out on a “crusade” across the country, to do in other cities what we did in Dade County.

PLAYBOY: There is no crusade in the works?

BRYANT: God is saying there’s a different route to go. There’s a part of me that is a Carry Nation, that would very much like to go across this country. We could fill up every auditorium in America. If we had done so after our victory in Dade County, we could have gotten such a momentum going that we could have wiped the homosexual out. That was a very real possibility. We realized that. We could have made a lot of money, too.

PLAYBOY: That sounds brutal. Do you mean you’d wipe them out personally?

BRYANT: Well, not quite. But I must admit, when you’ve known that kind of power, it is easy to succumb to it and use it for your own advantage and to wipe out a lot of things that need wiping out. But sometimes the Lord has a different way.

PLAYBOY: Are you a militant Christian?

BRYANT: Not at all. That word has such a bad connotation, like the Crusaders who went out and killed people who didn’t believe as they did. I don’t want that label put upon me; that’s why I’m so adamant about saying I’m not on a crusade.

PLAYBOY: Yet you are in the forefront of a kind of Christian ground swell?

BRYANT: If it hadn’t been for the committed Christians, we wouldn’t have won in Miami. They’re being used for God’s purposes, because the people God wants to arouse right now are the Christians. They’re the ones who will make a difference in the future of this country.PLAYBOY: Given that you now know it’s a sin not to speak out against moral depravity, why haven’t you embarked on a crusade throughout America?

BRYANT: Well, if nothing else, what we did in Dade County has had a nationwide effect. Koch’s bill HR2998 is buried—

PLAYBOY: Suppose it’s revived. Would you lead a fight against that?

BRYANT: Absolutely. But the reason we didn’t jump into a nationwide thing after our victory was that we needed a rest and I had no leading of the Lord to do it. I wanted and felt it was important to do it, but sometimes the hardest thing is to not go when the whole world is saying go. I mean, why not? It’s the logical thing, but God doesn’t always do things logically. All the people we’d been working with were chomping at the bit to go national, but I just did not have a direct leading of the Lord to continue in that light. I prayed and I prayed and wanted direction from God to do that and it wasn’t coming. And it bothered me. It’s been so hard to wait on the Lord.

PLAYBOY: Do you mean you’re abandoning the organization you established with your Dade County effort?

BRYANT: Oh, no. We’ve built up mailing lists and we’re putting out a monthly newsletter, and everywhere I go, I say to people, “Write to me so I can inform you as to what is going on in America.” We’ve got people watching and we’re really four years ahead of what any organization would be nationally, had it just started. Overall, God is showing me the core of where a lot of our ills lie. Right now, I want to have some meetings with important people and pick their brains as to what they see the need is and how we could go about things in a specific way, to counteract the feminists who say they represent the women of America but in no way do. I definitely believe those people are in the minority, and we have to gather the mothers together, through the churches, the pastors, the godly people of this nation. I see the plan coming together.

PLAYBOY: So you, in fact, have a national organization in the gestation period right now?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. I think we can inspire other people to stand and be a catalyst in their communities for bringing everybody together. To take a stand in their locale and find out what affects your children. Who is teaching them? What are they teaching them? Do you know? Do you really care? Who is deciding what the laws are in your community? What kind of men and women are they? Are they really moral? Check them out–get committed, get involved.

PLAYBOY: That sounds like a crusade to us. and a self-righteous one at that.

BRYANT: No, more of an encouragement. I think when you tell genuine true-life stories of other people and what they’ve accomplished in their communities, it’s a great help. Not an over-all guerrilla tactic of how to go out and change the world–that’s not my belief. But I do believe we have a right to stand up and say what we mean. It’s a big job. It’s not easy to do without being misconstrued. That’s the hardest thing in the world, but you’ve got to take a stab at it, you’ve got to try.

PLAYBOY: Do you intend to structure your effort more formally?

BRYANT: That’s coming. It’s in our heads now and we’re bringing people in and talking with a lot of people. We see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place, slowly but surely. We have a concept now called Anita Bryant Ministries, which would have centers in every key city across America. It’s just in the embryo stage, and I’ve been praying about it. I want to be very sure that’s the Lord’s leading.

PLAYBOY: Would these be centers where homosexuals could repent, as you might put it?

BRYANT: Not just for homosexuals but for drug addicts, and America’s 1,000,000 runaway children, and families that have marital problems and don’t have a church home or a pastor they can go to. These people might come to an Anita Bryant center, and we could meet their needs on a spiritual level. Then we could perhaps set up homes for homosexuals and also for lesbians, so that if they were really sincere in getting out of their lifestyle, they could sign up for a year with us. It takes a long time and a lot of compassion and love and dedicated people to minister to homosexuals in that way, and that would take a lot of work. We could also work all denominations, educating pastors and lay leaders as to how to meet the emotional and moral challenges that confront America today that are not being met.

PLAYBOY: Although at one point you claimed to have some sympathy for feminists, you nevertheless refer more often to the feminist movement as if it were some kind of conspiracy against decency.

BRYANT: Well, look at that Houston convention last year. The government gave the feminists $5,000,000 and Phyllis Schlafly not one penny. It was a closed shop. It’s almost Communistic the way Phyllis Schlafly and the ones who truly represent the grass roots of American women cannot even get the forums to be represented in.

PLAYBOY: So the Communists are conspiring to keep the patriots out of the picture?

BRYANT: Well, it’s very suspicious that in many of the state conventions before Houston, they did not even pledge allegiance to the flag and they did not sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It goes hand in hand, it seems to me. Whether they’re all in a big conspiracy together, I can’t say. You can’t really say that anymore, because people pooh-pooh it and they say, “Well, that’s a very right-wing cop-out,” so you don’t even say that; but it seems very obvious that the Communist element is a part of all this, because a lot of these people have no reverence for their country. I still believe that America, with all her faults and trials and tribulations, is the greatest country on the face of this earth, and if women could get their eyes off of themselves and their own human life, if they could look at what they have and be grateful and thankful for it … I mean, where else but in America could someone like myself have made it? Where else could someone who was raised in poor surroundings attain what I have attained at the age of 38? Who needs the E.R.A.? The key to women’s rights is to activate the laws that are already on the books. Most of them are too lazy to do that. I mean, women are even admitted into the Armed Forces now. What more do they want? I mean, don’t talk to me about discrimination. I’ve experienced it. I’m an eighth Cherokee. My dad was a roustabout, low man on the totem pole. We didn’t even have a decent house to live in. I went to school in hand-me-downs. I just praise God that I live in a land of plenty where someone can come from the bottom and go up. If you want to make it, you can.

PLAYBOY: That sharply contradicts what you were saying about America as a decaying nation, but let’s go on. Do you have any heroes?

BRYANT: Hmmm. I don’t have many. I don’t know if I have any. I think the reason I’m so disillusioned is because I really looked at Jimmy Carter as a hero, as one who had caught the eye and the heartbeat of the grass roots of America. I really had great expectations of him, and I found that in life, when you put different individuals on a pedestal, God very carefully takes them off the pedestal and shows us that we’re to put no one there.

PLAYBOY: Why did you sour on Carter?

BRYANT: Well, how can a born-again Christian who’s truly born again not take a stand against the sin of homosexuality? He himself stated in the Playboy Interview, which my husband bought for me to read, that he was against homosexuality, and yet he allows [aide] Midge Costanza to go down to Dade County on a local issue and campaign for homosexuality. She was paid by our opposition to come down. I won’t say any further what I know about her, because that’s not important, but the thing is that she has an open door to the President of the United States, who claims to be a born-again Christian, when homosexuality is at the very core of what God is against.

PLAYBOY: You mean the Playboy Interview helped convince you to go for Carter?

BRYANT: I felt overall that it was not bad, except for some of the choice words he used, and I even understood why he felt compelled to use them.

PLAYBOY: And now you feel betrayed by him?

BRYANT: Well, we’re pretty much in touch with the heartbeat of the grassroots people, and most of those people are totally dismayed and disillusioned with Carter. But, at the same time, our whole family prays for the Carters on a daily basis. I voted for him; I now have my doubts, but I cannot judge him–only God can. I’ll tell you this, I would never jump onto someone again so easily. I wanted to support Carter because I wanted to believe he was really a Christian, but his sister Gloria Spann said in an interview that she doesn’t even believe in hell. That’s hard to believe. I think I represent a lot of Christians, I would say probably the majority of Christians, and they’re looking at Carter right now and most of them are saying he’s a one-term President. I believe that when a man is president, we have an obligation as Christians to pray for him, so I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, because I want to defend him, and yet I can’t dismiss the straddling of the fence he’s done so far on all the important issues like E.R.A., homosexuality, the Panama Canal, etc.

PLAYBOY: You’re a registered Democrat, aren’t you?

BRYANT: Yes, and until the Dade County thing happened, I thought I was a liberal.

PLAYBOY: Now that you know you’re no longer a liberal, you favor such conservative politicians as Jesse Helms, Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan. Are you becoming a friend of Reagan’s?

BRYANT: I admire him and like him very much and if I were a Republican and he were running, I would probably vote for him.

PLAYBOY: But you intend to remain a Democrat?

BRYANT: Well, yes.

PLAYBOY: If it’s Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980, whom will you support?

BRYANT: At this point, I can’t say, because I want very much to talk to President Carter.

PLAYBOY: Do you think he’ll talk to you?

BRYANT: If he looks at it from a political point of view, no. If he were to look at it from a Christian point of view, he should.

PLAYBOY: If the election were held tomorrow, would you vote for Reagan or Carter?

BRYANT: Considering everything, Reagan.

PLAYBOY: Would you ever consider running for political office?

BRYANT: It’s totally contrary to me, and yet my eyes have been opened to the need for involvement. The day after we won in Miami, as I was on my way to the airport, I bet I had 15 people who said, you know, “Run for President!” I mean, I laughed at them. I could not believe it. I just won’t even think about it, let alone entertain the idea. It makes me sick inside. It makes Bob sick.

PLAYBOY: What if God tells you you have to run for office?

BRYANT: Well, I can’t answer that until it happens. I feel I can be much more effective as a mother coming from my own motivations.

PLAYBOY: But if God came to you next year and told you to run for office, you wouldn’t refuse?

BRYANT: I can’t refuse God anything.