“Male Virility Is a Cultural Tradition”: Anita Bryant, Miami’s Cuban American Community, and the Rise of the New Right

In early 1977, the Metro Dade County Commission passed an ordinance that forbade discrimination against homosexuals in housing, public accommodations, and employment. It extended to lesbians and gays legislative protections secured by African-Americans during the previous decade by civil rights legislation. Soon after, civic and religious leaders, among them local-based national celebrity Anita Bryant, challenged the ordinance and led a successful petition drive for its repeal. While Dade County citizens rejected the ordinance, this defeat defined a watershed in gay history in that it guaranteed—in national culture—the very end rejected in Miami by the repealers: the political legitimacy of the gay rights movement.

This presentation explores the vital role Miami's Cuban-American community played in this shift. This immigrant group helped turn Miami into a battleground for the movement that politicized the sexuality of queer women and men. The strong Cuban presence in Miami played an integral role in the campaign. Polls revealed Cuban-Americans voted in large numbers to overturn the ordinance. In addition, the issue of homosexuality proved a useful "wedge" issue for conservatives in Miami who capitalized on the issue by creating inter- and intra-ethnic divisions in the city. Just as lesbians and gays fought to enter mainstream political conversations with this initiative, Cuban-Americans showed up at the polls to flex their electoral muscle and stake their claim in the metropolis. In fact, many Cuban-Americans celebrated Bryant's 1977 victory as a sign of their arrival in urban politics. Their "arrival," however, was met with resistance. Miami residents demonstrated they were not ready to share urban decision-making with the Cuban-American community. This included resistance to the Marielitos, a massive wave of Cuban immigrants read as "criminal" and "deviant" and purged from Fidel Castro's government in 1980, and the overturning of a bilingual ordinance in the city.