Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [33]
The Save Our Children campaign was an instant media hit. Bryant easily collected 64,000 signatures. Smelling an opportunity, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Senator Jesse Helms, and other distinguished gentlemen of the right soon joined the fray. Falwell added his own insight into the character of militant homosexuals, who he claimed would “just as soon kill you as look at you.”28 Falwell shared the stage with Jack Wyrtzen, head of Word of Life International, who declared to a chorus of amens that if the ordinance were upheld, it could mean “the end of the United States of America.”
The militant homosexuals fought back by militantly boycotting orange juice and sending Anita Bryant militant postcards that read “We are switching to prune juice, and we will send you the results.”29 They wore T-shirts with militant messages like “Squeeze a fruit for Anita.”30 Though Florida Citrus stood by her, Bryant felt the squeeze when the Singer Sewing Machine Company cancelled a syndicated television show that she was to host. In a press conference, she declared, “The blacklisting of Anita Bryant has begun,”31 seemingly oblivious to the fact that she had championed the “blacklisting” of homosexuals. She would later declare herself to be the victim of “a national conspiracy to do away with Anita Bryant,”32 seemingly oblivious to the fact that she had once again referred to herself in the third person.
Nonetheless, despite the “highly financed, highly organized” efforts of the militant homosexual conspiracy, Bryant’s referendum succeeded in a landslide vote, winning by 69 percent. As with the campaign against the IRS desegregation effort, success did not cause the right wing to lower its opinion of the power of the conspirators. After the success of Save Our Children, the Militant Homosexual became more powerful than ever.
The Homosexual Explosion
Tim LaHaye, the humanist avenger and Moral Majority founder discussed in chapter 2, has a knack for writing conspiratorial screeds when the moment is ripe. His 1978 book, The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality, documented “the homosexual explosion” taking place in America:
At the instigation of the pro-homosexual media, public schools, politicians in high places, and gay militants, the tidal wave of homosexuality that has reached enormous proportions today threatens the very existence of a moral America.”33
According to LaHaye, as soon as the “organized, militant” homosexual community achieved its goal of equal employment, homosexuals would infiltrate the nation’s schools to prepare the nation’s ripe young minds for gay brainwashing. He wrote:
When all job discrimination for homosexuality is removed (and it will be if the silent majority remains silent), teachers can be expected to brainwash our children with the “blessings” of the unhappy gay life. Misery loves company, and you can expect homosexual teachers singlehandedly to double the homosexual community within 10 years . . . Permitting homosexuals to orient young, impressionable minds toward homosexuality will be the bottom line in our culture. When we cross that line, I believe we will have descended to the ultimate in abominations. ai34
The Militant Homosexual and his ward, the Gay Agenda, have been oppressing American children ever since. In 1981, Jerry Falwell echoed Anita Bryant and Tim LaHaye in saying, “Please remember, homosexuals do not reproduce! They recruit! And, many of them are after my children and your children.”35 Years later, Falwell became the object of international ridicule after outing Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby:
The character, whose voice is obviously that of a boy, has been found carrying a red purse in many episodes . . . He is purple—the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle—the gay-pride symbol.36
But to believers in the gay conspiracy, Falwell’s accusation did not seem absurd. If the homosexuals control the media, and if they aim to recruit children, then they would naturally create gay characters to seduce America’s toddlers.