page_title: Save Our Children
section_title: Moral Majority
hierarchical_section_title: Save Our Children / Significance / Moral Majority
caption_attribution_description: English: Fundraising card used by Anita Bryant to support Save Our Children. Many of their strategies were embraced by the Moral Majority, established two years later
context_page_description: Save Our Children, Inc. was a political coalition formed in 1977 in Miami, Florida, US to overturn a recently legislated county ordinance that banned discrimination in areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation. The coalition was publicly headed by celebrity singer Anita Bryant, who claimed the ordinance discriminated against her right to teach her children Biblical morality. It was a well-organized campaign that initiated a bitter political fight between gay activists and Christian fundamentalists. When the repeal of the ordinance went to a vote, it attracted the largest response of any special election in Dade County's history, passing by 70%. In response to this vote, a group of gay and lesbian community members formed Pride South Florida, now known as Pride Fort Lauderdale, an organization whose mission was to fight for the rights of the gay and lesbian community in South Florida.
  Save Our Children was the first organized opposition to the gay rights movement, whose beginnings were traced to the Stonewall riots in 1969. The defeat of the ordinance encouraged groups in other cities to attempt to overturn similar laws.
context_section_description: The Save Our Children campaign was an intensely focused effort by conservative forces, many of whom received inspiration from previous controversies in the 1970s. Not since the Scopes Trial about the legality of teaching evolution in public schools in 1925 had religious organizations made earnest attempts to influence politics on such a wide scale. Fred Fejes credits the Save Our Children campaign as a significant factor in the rise of conservative Christian activism, noting "This was the beginning of the culture wars". Ruth Shack points to the connection between the rise of the New Right and the Save Our Children campaign: "Back in 1977, there was no organized religious right per se. Anita Bryant was a pioneer."
  In the late 1970s the Reverend Jerry Falwell moved from presiding over the megachurch Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia and hosting the Old Time Gospel Hour, to being involved in politics. Falwell took credit for defeating the Dade County gay rights ordinance and the failure of the ERA in Florida. He developed a campaign called Clean Up America in 1977 that was a fundraising vehicle for his television show. Falwell sent letters asking for donations, which included questionnaires asking "Do you approve of known practicing homosexuals teaching in public schools?" that he promised would be sent to politicians; he distributed information about how to put together political groups to influence elections and lawmakers. In 1979 Falwell spearheaded a coalition of religious groups that included Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews that he called the Moral Majority, which developed a branch dedicated to political action. Falwell declared in 1965 that he had no business in politics, but justified his involvement and the inevitable mix of religion and government with evidence that the social problems of abortion, pornography, sexual immorality, and drugs were bringing the United States to a dangerous precipice where Communism would prevail over Christianity.
  Falwell claimed that the grassroots efforts of the Moral Majority—registering millions of voters, informing the public, and using the media—had been a significant factor in the election of President Ronald Reagan. By 1982 they had a budget of $1 million and millions of volunteers. Around the same time, gay men were being stricken with AIDS, desperate for money for research and services. Spokesmen for the Moral Majority connected it to God's will, asserting the general public needed protection from "the gay plague", and warned, "If homosexuals are not stopped they will infect the entire nation and America will be destroyed."
caption: Fundraising card used by Bryant and Save Our Children; their strategies offered a basis for the Moral Majority, who claimed to be saving America from immorality and Communism in the 1980s.
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