er organization, for example, was quoted as saying that gays and lesbians recruited, seduced, and molested children. Some articles went even further, as Bryant campaign supporters declared that gays and lesbians threatened everyone's safety. "So-called gay folks [would] just as soon kill you as look at you," Newsweek quoted Jerry Falwell as saying (June 6, 1977). Bryant herself was quoted as saying (Newsweek, June 20, 1977): "The more we let violence and homosexuality become the norm, the more we'll become such a sick nation that the Communists won't have to take us over--we'll just give up." Newsweek also quoted Bryant and her organization as saying that gays and lesbians were "human garbage," while a Time article cited a bumper sticker that urged, "Kill a queer for Christ." Neither Time nor Newsweek reported that Bryant or anyone else had offered any evidence for these charges. Moreover, only one of the four articles published in both magazines presented another side of the story. Time, for example, reported that gay activists said there had been no incidents in which gay and lesbian teachers harmed students in the 38 cities and counties that had passed anti-discrimination laws. Newsweek noted: "Most experts believe that child molesting and direct recruiting by homosexual teachers are extremely rare. Statistics, though skimpy, show that the majority of sexual attacks on children are heterosexual, not homosexual." The 80's: Allegations and Revelations Words Used in the 1980'savowed gay fruitconsensual grossness homophiledeviant militant gay, homosexualdeviate oddwaddyke pervertfaggot prissy sissyfaggot bitch professed homosexualfairy queer AIDS was the biggest gay story of the 1980's, with 22 ar...
