Panther Voices: When Miami-Dade was culture-war central

Gay pride parade in 1978.

Thirty-five years ago today, Jan. 18, the Dade County Commission approved a law that outlawed discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and public services. In a Miami Herald op-ed, Julio Capó Jr. ’11 – who graduated from FIU with a Ph.D. last summer and wrote his dissertation on the history of gay Miami – discusses how “South Florida played a pivotal role in the gay-rights movement — and gave voice to the contemporary vocabulary that has since made gay rights an enduring frontier in human rights.”

By Julio Capó Jr.

The culture-wars caravan is rolling into town. Assuming the Republican field isn’t whittled to one in South Carolina, the campaign will arrive in full force in advance of Florida’s Jan. 31 primary, and with it will come reinvigorated debates over “family values” and gay rights.

The topic is likely to remain front and center as GOP campaigns have detoured slightly from issues such as fiscal responsibility and unemployment rates on the heels of Mitt Romney’s victory in New Hampshire. For some time now, Romney has found it difficult to convince his conservative constituents that his checkered — if not contradictory —past with gay rights does not make him weak on “moral” issues.

The Huffington Post recently reproduced a handbill from Romney’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign in which the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community is wished a “great pride weekend.”

“All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference,” the handbill affirms. The flyers state that Romney’s campaign picked up the tab. His current campaign director, however, claims “I don’t know who distributed them…I never saw them and I was the communications director.”

Rick Santorum, arguably the most socially conservative candidate, is unconvinced. At last weekend’s debate in New Hampshire, he attacked Romney’s stance on gay rights. He contends that Romney, in his capacity as Massachusetts governor, “ordered people to issue gay marriage licenses.” In turn, Romney accused Santorum of making up facts.

This debate is not inconsequential. Romney, for example, maintains that he is an opponent of discriminating based on sexual orientation, but that he is also an opponent of same-sex marriage. This stance makes him the “moderate” choice, at least in the eyes of social conservatives. But in reality, all the major GOP candidates have come out against same-sex marriage, although Jon Huntsman has stated his support for civil unions. Meanwhile, just last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a bold statement before the United Nations: “…Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” President Barack Obama agreed.

This debate demonstrates the effects of four decades of liberal protest and reform in changing social and cultural values in the United States. It reflects the heated culture wars that rallied powerful coalitions of religious and conservative voters against issues that had largely been absent — or at least muted—from past politics. Gay activists have used the legacy of the black civil-rights movement to argue homosexuals represented an oppressed minority group. Meanwhile, members of a New Right equally relied on tradition, religious doctrine and the nation’s “heterosexual” past to dismiss such claims.

You can make a strong case that much of this began right here. Thirty-five years ago this week, South Florida played a pivotal role in the gay-rights movement — and gave voice to the contemporary vocabulary that has since made gay rights an enduring frontier in human rights. On Jan. 18, 1977, what was then known as the Metro-Dade County Commission passed an ordinance that shielded homosexuals from discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment. The trailblazing measure extended to homosexuals minority protections secured by African Americans during the previous decade.

Enter Anita Bryant and a group of local (and not-so-local) religious and political leaders. Bryant was a beauty pageant winner and singer of some renown whose wholesome image made her the perfect pitch-woman for Florida orange juice. Her Florida citrus campaign popularized the slogan, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

I asked a friend, who was 23 years old in 1977, if she recalled Bryant. “Yeah, yeah. She was the orange juice lady…Wait a minute. Didn’t she also hate the gays?”

This complicates matters. Bryant believed this ordinance granted gays and lesbians special privileges. Why not also protect murderers, nail-biters and any other member of an imagined “minority” group who asked for legislative rights, she questioned? Soon after the commission passed the ordinance, Bryant spearheaded the coalition’s efforts to obtain the necessary signatures to send the matter to a referendum on June 7. After a rancorous campaign that gained national attention, voters overturned the law, one that liberal and gay activists had strategically called a “human rights ordinance.”

Sure, the LGBT community lost this battle. But as cliché would have it, they won the war — a victory that streamlined gay issues as part of a larger political movement. Bryant became fodder for late-night comedians, lost several endorsements and suffered a devastating blow to her image when she and her husband divorced.

Meanwhile, the LGBT community mobilized, “came out” in large numbers, formed new political organizations and adopted an aggressive campaign to secure their human rights as sexual minorities. It also flexed its political muscles by threatening the pockets of investors who supported Bryant’s stance. The most obvious example was the national boycott, or the so-called “gaycott,” of Florida orange juice. Gay activists brandished posters, buttons and bumper stickers that manipulated Bryant’s classic orange juice campaign: “A day without human rights is like a day without sunshine.”

The gay rights movement has since added many feathers to its fedora. The marketing genius in framing the issue as part of a human-rights initiative is crucial to understanding where the debate stands today. The nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, was founded three years after the South Florida debacle. This LGBT mobilization prepared the community to take care of its own when the HIV/AIDS pandemic emerged in 1981.

In Miami-Dade, commissioners implemented an ordinance in 1998 similar to the one their predecessors passed more than 20 years earlier. In 2002, opponents collected the necessary support to take the issue to the electorate. This time, voters chose to keep the legislation on the books. Gay rights were “special privileges” no more.

The movement continues. At the local level, the Miami-Dade School Board added a new policy last year preventing bullying based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” This critical change to the nation’s fourth largest school district carries both practical and symbolic significance.

The culture wars remain as relevant as ever. The GOP primaries reveal that gay rights remain a popular wedge issue. How this will manifest itself in South Florida remains to be seen. But even those opposed to progressing gay rights have employed the vocabulary Miami popularized 35 years ago.

This opinion piece originally appeared in Miami Herald on Jan. 15.

Read and hear more: FIU News sat down with Capó to learn more about his award-winning doctoral work at FIU. He says the Mariel boatlift not only changed the South Florida community but also cemented a new, politicized gay movement throughout the United States.