Anita Bryant, the Grammy-nominated singer and later prominent and controversial activist against gay rights in America, has died at the age of 84.

The New York Times reported that Bryant’s family said she died of cancer on December 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma.

“May Anita’s memory and her faith in eternal life through Christ comfort all who embraced her,” the family said in an obituary in the local newspaper The Oklahoman.

Bryant was born on March 25, 1940 in Barnsdall, Oklahoma. He began singing publicly at the age of six and occasionally appeared on local television and radio. She got her own WKY series, The Anita Bryant Show, when she was 12 years old.

With her healthy image, she won the Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant at age 18 and placed second in the 1959 Miss America pageant. In the same year she released her self-titled debut album.

She appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 with songs such as Broadway’s “Till There Was You.” The Music Manin 1959, and again with “In My Little Corner of the World” and “Paper Roses.”

Bryant appeared at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions and sang at the White House during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, one of her biggest fans. He was so impressed by her rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the 1971 Super Bowl halftime show that he asked her to sing it at his funeral.

Beginning in 1969, she was named spokesperson for Florida Citrus and coined the phrase, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

Beginning in the late 1970s, Bryant became a vocal opponent of gay rights and led the anti-LGBTQ+ campaign “Save Our Children,” which sought to overturn an ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The born again Christian told playboy Magazine in 1978: “I only got involved because they were demanding special privileges that violated Florida state law, not to mention God’s law.

“You know, when I was a kid you didn’t even mention the word homosexual, let alone figure out what the act was about. You knew it was very bad, but you couldn’t imagine what exactly they were trying to do by having one take a male role and the other a female role.

“I mean, it was too messy to think about and you had other things to think about. When I finally found out the implications, it was a complete revelation for me.”

The campaign was successful, but caused lasting damage to Bryant’s image and led to a nationwide boycott of Florida orange juice among the gay community and their supporters.

Bars stopped serving screwdriver cocktails and replaced them with a mixture of vodka and apple juice, which was named the Anita Bryant cocktail.

She told playboy that she lost around half a million dollars in concert bookings and a contract to host her own TV show as her public appearances became a magnet for gay rights protesters.

She may have been the first recipient of a protest cake in 1977, when Minnesota activist Thom Higgins got cream on her face during a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa. “At least it’s not fruitcake,” she said, appearing to refer to a derogatory term for a gay person, before breaking down in tears and praying that Higgins would be “freed from his deviant lifestyle.”

“Dissension” was part of their core argument that LGBTQ+ people didn’t deserve rights, while their idea of ​​protecting children through the argument that “homosexuals can’t reproduce so they have to recruit” still features in anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns today is represented.

In 1980, Bryant was fired from the Florida Citrus Commission, around the same time that she and her husband of 20 years, disc jockey Bob Green, were divorcing. The split caused her to lose the support of conservatives, who said she was no longer a positive role model.

Bryant married the late Charles Dry, her childhood sweetheart, in 1990. Together they made several attempts to revive their careers, but without success. She has been the subject of several productions, including the 2016 play Anita Bryant’s Playboy interview and the musical 2018 The loneliest girl in the world.

In 2016, Sir Ian McKellen read a powerful letter about a man who came out to his parents in the process Letters live Series. Taken from Armistead Maupin’s stories of the city, It was written from the perspective of Michael Toliver, a gay man who finds out that his parents have joined Bryant’s campaign in Florida.

A planned biopic about her life is reportedly in the works in 2019, written and directed by Chad Hodge and starring Ashley Judd as Bryant.

She is survived by her children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren.