Anita Bryant, a multi-Grammy nominated singer and former Miss Oklahoma who later became a high-profile campaigner against gay rights in America, has died at the age of 84.
Dan Savage usually posts Not the obit I wanted to read today.
I bet he didn’t this time.
You mean, she was still alive? I thought she had passed away a long long time ago.
She was the same age as my mother (born in 1940). When she was on TV a lot, in the mid-to-late 1970s, both on ads for Florida orange juice, and news coverage for her anti-gay campaign, she was only in her mid-to-late 30s, but looked at least a decade older than that. The picture below is her in 1977, and to me, she looks a whole lot older than 37.
She definitely looks older than 37 to me too.
Wow. Yeah. My mother was also born in 1940, but until she succumbed to the cancer that would kill her, always looked younger than she was in a painting-in-the-attic sort of way. When my mother was that age, she could pass for straight-up 30.
Not fair that my mother died first.
My mother was a supporter of gay rights, even in 1977. My brother and I had a babysitter who was gay. He was one of my father’s grand students, and out to my parents, and they were perfectly fine with a gay male babysitter in the early 70s.
All that Florida sunshine.
Her attitudes were far older than her years. Some people are just born ancient.
He posted “Not the obituary I wanted to read today…but it’ll tide me the fuck over.”
Like a national kidney stone, she passes and provides some small relief.
Anita had disappeared from the national scene a long time ago. I was surprised when I read that she was actually performing a local musical revue somewhere down south in the book Roadside America. Then that show closed and she showed up in Pigeon Forge, as related in the Roadside America website. Then that closed in 2001:
Yanno, although she was horrid and appalling at the time, these days that kind of gay bashing seems quaint and almost innocuous compared to the despicable bile-spewing monsters that overwhelm our public discourse today.
From the mortal coil, she has passed. But for kindness and tolerance, she has failed. Now there is a tiny bit less hate in the world, and that’s a good thing.
Lord, according to that picture at least, she looked oldish on the Ed Sullivan show! 
Yale Medical Study: Photoaging (Sun Damage)
I’m thinking you meant that as a joke, but it is actually true. I’m notorious for avoiding direct sunlight for any time longer than absolutely necessary, and my skin definitely shows the benefits. Sun worshipers pay a price, and perhaps she was one of them?
In China, a Long Tradition of Dodging the Sun [Photos]
According to this web site, “Asia Society”, many Chinese women agree with me.
I remember when she first made headlines for her anti-gayness, the paper had an editorial cartoon of Bryant chasing a couple of homosexuals while brandishing a whip. The gays had signs reading “ANITA, YOU’RE SICK SICK SICK” and “LYNCH ANITA FROM AN ORANGE TREE” while sticking their tongues at her peevishly.
Later, Howard the Duck had an issue where the masked morality-imposing brainwasher villain was revealed to be her. They didn’t actually show her face or say her name (lawsuit avoidance 101), but the dialogue strongly implied it was her.
Definitely part of it, as was, maybe, sun damage to her skin. Also, her hairstyle seems really dated by 1970s standards (it reminds me of Betty Ford’s hairstyle), as do her painted-on eyebrows.
She was a singer, but the type of music that she sang was popular with a generation older than her own. She was the same age as singers like Toni Tennille, Nancy Sinatra, and Dionne Warwick, but she didn’t have a song chart after 1964 (when she was only 24); rather than adapting as music changed post-British Invasion, she stuck with singing pre-Beatles pop, and continued to sing that same style of music throughout her career.
No, quite serious. A phenomenon well-documented, for some time now.
Maybe that’s why I thought she had already passed way. Her vocal anti-gay position forced her out of the public limelight.
Added: I’m having trouble searching to see if she ever changed (or even revised a little) her position against the LGBTQ community. It’s very unfortunate if she did not change.
Wikipedia has a few quotes that suggest she might have mellowed a tiny bit on it, but it certainly doesn’t sound like she had truly changed her mind (bolding mine):