Anita Bryant, former Miss America and Orange Juice spokeswoman, campaigned with a vengeance to pass a 1977 anti-gay adoption measure in Florida. Her ceaseless efforts proved successful and the ban went into effect for over 30 years. Encouraged by her triumph Anita nationwided her attacks on gays and lesbians, but met with defeat with even President Reagan coming out against her discriminatory proposals. Later in Iowa she was subjected to a pie in her face by a gay activist.
Anita instantly quipped,”At least it’s not a fruit pie.” and then beseeched her attacker to repent from his ways of sin.
The nation rejected her campaign and she was ousted from her job for the Florida Citrus Commission and her marriage failed due to pressure from her fundamentalist husband. Her attempt to recoup her losses through music ended in bankruptcy and she retreated to Oklahoma City to lick her wounds.
The capitol of the Sooner State appealed to Anita Bryant mainly because over half the population are registered as Evangelists and nearby Tulsa is heralded as a major buckle of the Bible Belt. Religion grasps the faithful with heartfelt devotion, but Oklahoma City has earned a more wicked reputation for rampant prostitution of South Robinson, three strip clubs, and a widespread swinger’s scene.
The city court responded to the uprise in sin by seizing all videos of the Oscar-winning German film THE TIN DRUM on the grounds that any sex scene with a minor is both obscene and a crime. The judge explained his decision by saying,
“The police brought me by a movie with one scene. The scene involved what appeared to be a young boy about 6 or 7 and he was having oral sex with a girl who was about 16 in a bath house. By definition of our criminal code, if anyone under 18 or anyone portraying someone under 18 is having sex, it is by definition obscene.”
Street prostitution has proven harder to combat, but a video vigilante has taken on johns, pimps, and hookers with his camera by unmasking their wanton ways on his website. Brian Bates aka the Video Vigilante has posted hundreds of bushwhacking VDOs on YouTube to fight the sex trade on old Highway 77. This do-gooder goes the distance by dropping a VDO to the offender’s house and informing their girlfriends or wives of the sin living under their roof.
His fervor got him in trouble, as he was arrested in 2008 for soliciting prostitutes to bring johns to a locale better suited for his video sniping.
Some consider him a hero or others call Bates a villain.
I have another word for him.
Snitch and the Bowery Boys never hung out with a dirty rat.
Me neither.
When a man takes justice into his own hands, his greatest danger is that he get caught jerking off – James Steele
ps Bates recorded a pimp sending a teenage hooker to sell her flesh. He caught it on his video. Isn’t that obscene according to the judge involved in THE TIN DRUM case?
Anita Bryant would know the truth.
She believes in God.