Nearly a half-century ago this summer, local voters seemed eager to approve a California ballot initiative that would ban gay teachers from classrooms unless they hid in the closet.
Our state leaned Republican in the 1970s, and San Diego County was an even darker shade of red: We hadn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since World War II. Right before the election, local Christian congregations rallied with evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, who urged thousands of churchgoers to support moral values.
But amazingly, Prop. 6 was handily defeated both here and across the state. Its foes owed their victory to prominent Republicans — including a future president and San Diego’s mayor – who faced off against the growing Religious Right movement within their own party. Few players, however, were as important as Nancy Reagan’s florist.
As San Diego’s annual Pride Parade approaches this weekend, here’s a look back at an epic election battle and how it played out here.
Why Was There an Initiative to Ban Gay Teachers?
It all goes back to a Top 40 singer named Anita Bryant who was best known for starring in commercials for Florida orange juice. In 1977, appalled by Miami’s new nondiscrimination law, she started an anti-gay coalition called “Save Our Children” that opposed “the threat of militant homosexuality.” She successfully led an effort to repeal the law at the ballot box, inspiring John Briggs, a conservative state senator from California’s Orange County.
Briggs celebrated the election victory in Florida with Bryant and returned home with big aspirations. “He wanted to run for governor of California and thought that this sort of social conservative anti-gay message could help him politically,” said Los Angeles historian Neil J. Young, author of 2024’s “Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right.”
In 1978, Briggs put forward Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, which would have allowed school districts to fire gay teachers. “I want to keep them in the closet,” Briggs announced.
The measure preyed on fears of that gay teachers would turn students gay. “Anita Bryant famously said that gay people couldn’t reproduce, so they had to recruit the children,” Young said. “Ideas about homosexuality and pedophilia being intertwined were prominent in this era.”
The message turned out to be “wildly effective,” he said. In fact, early polling suggested the ballot measure was heading toward a big victory.
What Would the Initiative Have Done?
Prop. 6 would allow school districts to fire teachers, administrators, counselors or teachers aides if they engaged in a “public or indiscreet” homosexual act or engaged in “advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting” homosexual activity.
In a San Diego radio debate, Briggs accused the pastor of the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church of trying to recruit people. “This is your mission in life,” he said. “You’re a homosexual, and that’s why you want to recruit people into your organization.” The pastor angrily denied it.
Elsewhere, Briggs declared that “right now in California, a teacher can stand up in the classroom and say he is homosexual and introduce his wife, Harry, and not a single thing can be done about it.”
How Did the Fight Over Prop. 6 Play Out Here?
Conservative church groups supported the measure, and a San Diego “God and Decency” rally led by Briggs and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell drew more than 6,000 locals in October 1978. “We love homosexuals,” Falwell said. “We want to see them born again, but not while they are standing in our classrooms perverting our children.”
But don’t worry about violence, he said. While some societies have hanged and shot gays, “it can’t happen here.”
At the rally, Briggs predicted San Diego County would support the measure by a 2-to-1 margin.
But the San Diego County Ecumenical Council, representing 110 Christian congregations, opposed Prop 6, saying it’s “punitive, not compassionate.” The editorial board of The San Diego Union, the city’s leading newspaper and a staunch conservative voice, declared the measure was like “swinging at a mosquito with a meat cleaver” and “could invite Salem witch hunts in every California school district.”
San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, who lost a Republican primary bid for governor in 1978, came out against the measure. So did the county board of supervisors.
In June 1978, the fourth annual San Diego Gay Pride Parade drew 700 people for a march from downtown to Balboa Park, and speakers attacked the measure at a rally. “Anita Bryant has come to California in the form of John Briggs,” said a representative of Save Our Teachers.
How Did Top Republicans Turn the Tide?
Give the credit, in part, to Nancy Reagan’s gay florist.
According to “Coming Out Republican,” a prominent gay activist named David Mixner reached out to former Governor and future President Ronald Reagan by talking first to his wife Nancy’s florist. The florist knew a closeted Reagan aide who arranged a meeting between the two men.
Mixner told Reagan that Prop. 6 would “create anarchy in the classroom” and encourage students to get revenge on teachers they didn’t like by accusing them of being gay.
Reagan, in addition to former President Gerald Ford, came out against the measure shortly before the election. “Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles,” Reagan wrote in a newspaper commentary.
“In conservative language, Reagan said that if this passed, it would create a huge government bureaucracy that would be in the business of surveilling California citizens,” said book author Young. “He said it was really a violation of people’s individual freedom and their personal privacy.”
Reagan’s opposition helped turn the tide against Prop. 6. On Election Day in November 1978, it went to defeat statewide by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. In San Diego County, the margin was 55 percent to 45 percent against.
What Is the Legacy of Prop. 6?
At his rally just before the November 1978 election, Jerry Falwell told thousands of San Diegans that Reagan would regret his opposition to Prop. 6. at the ballot box in 1980. Instead, Falwell and his Religious Right movement helped Reagan get elected as president. Falwell died in 2007, and his son Jerry Jr. lost his job as leader of Liberty University in 2020 due to a sex scandal.
John Briggs died in 2020 at age 90, reportedly after writing that he has “put aside the ’70s and ’80s and respectfully request others do as well and move on to the civil side of life.”
Gay activist David Mixner died this year. Anita Bryant is still alive, and her granddaughter says she came out to her after Bryant nagged her about finding “the right man.” The granddaughter reportedly replied, “I hope that he doesn’t come along, because I’m gay, and I don’t want a man to come along.” Bryant’s response: “Oh.”
In regard to its long-term political impact, Prop. 6 inspired gay Republicans to come out of the closet and become politically active, Young said. “It had a real impact the broad swath of today’s LGBTQ political activism.”
As for San Diego, the 1990s and 2000s would bring the rise of LGBTQ political power as lesbians and gay men were elected to positions such as city councilmember, county district attorney, and state legislator. Carl DeMaio, a gay Republican councilmember, ran a strong campaign for mayor in 2012. This year, he seems likely to win his bid for a state Assembly seat.
Meanwhile, Democrat Todd Gloria has been mayor since 2020, making San Diego the largest American city to have elected a gay male mayor, and he’s likely to win reelection this year.
For more about San Diego’s LGBTQ history, check our previous articles about local gay life at mid-century, a landmark 1970s criminal case that spurred gay activists to action, the role of AIDS in city politics, and the work of lesbian historian Lillian Faderman. Plus: Meet San Diego’s early LGBTQ pioneers (our contributor Randy Dotinga profiled one of them for The Washington Post) and learn about local LGBTQ historic sites.
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