Anita Bryant
former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and former spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission (marketing orange juice).
She later became known as an outspoken opponent of gay rights and for her 1977 "Save Our Children" campaign to repeal a local ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, an involvement that significantly affected her popularity and career in show business.
Bryant became one of the first persons to be publicly "pied" as a political act (in her case, on television), in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1977.Bryant quipped "At least it's a fruit pie," making a pun on the derogatory term of "fruit" for a gay man.
While covered in pie, she began to pray to God to forgive the activist "for his deviant lifestyle" before bursting into tears as the cameras kept rolling. Bryant's husband, after promising not to retaliate, later took another pie and threw it at the protesters who had pied his wife.
By this time, gay activists had ensured the boycott on Florida orange juice had become more prominent and it was supported by many celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Paul Williams, Dick Clark, John Waters, Carroll O'Connor, Linda Lavin, Mary Tyler Moore, Charles Schulz, Billie Jean King, and Jane Fonda.
Even many years after her campaign, the gay community continued to regard her name as synonymous with bigotry and homophobia.
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