u/WiscoT1966

I’ve been researching the political and religious history behind Anita Bryant’s 1977 "Save Our Children" campaign, and I recently completed a short documentary tracing the evolution of the rhetoric that campaign helped popularize.

What interests me most is not simply Anita Bryant herself, but the way “protecting children” was transformed into a moral and religious justification for political action against a minority population.

The film follows that rhetoric from Dade County through Bryant and Jerry Falwell, the emerging New Christian Right and Moral Majority, later anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns in Houston, and some of its contemporary descendants.

One of the questions I came away with is, in my opinion, particularly relevant to this community:

How did a particular form of conservative Christianity turn opposition to LGBTQ+ civil rights into a religious obligation—and what theological alternatives were marginalized when that happened?

I’m also interested in whether people here see the modern “protect the children” argument as essentially the same political theology Bryant and Falwell were developing, or whether you think it has changed in important ways.

I made the film, so this is technically self-promotion, but I’m posting it because I’d genuinely like to discuss the history and argument rather than simply drop a link.

Anita Bryant and the Politics of “Protecting Children”
https://youtu.be/B2nOVaf7aoA

Sources and further reading are included in the video description.

I recently revised a short documentary examining the gap between Charlie Kirk’s documented public rhetoric and the much more sanitized narrative that emerged after his death.

The film focuses in particular on his anti-trans rhetoric, extremist evangelical politics, and the highly produced college “debate” format that helped build his public persona.

My interest is not in celebrating his death or excusing political violence. It is in the larger question of how religious and political movements reconstruct the public memory of influential figures—and what disappears when commemoration replaces documentation.

I’m also developing a longer historical series, The Rise of the New Christian Right, tracing the political infrastructure and religious-right strategies that emerged from the 1970s onward.

I made the film myself, so this is creator-owned work. I’m posting it here because the intersection of Christianity, political power, anti-LGBTQ organizing, and Christian nationalism seems directly relevant to this community, and I’d genuinely welcome substantive discussion—particularly about how religious movements reconstruct the public memory of influential political figures after their deaths.

Video: https://youtu.be/Kbp9JOmr-A4