History rarely repeats itself, but it often rhymes.

The parallels between the backlash against trans rights and gay rights are astonishing.

This is Anita Bryant, chart topping singer, orange juice promoter - and the face of the anti-gay rights movement in the US in the 1970s. https://t.co/LIjKLMWe1P

Anita Bryant was very popular in her time. She topped the Good Housekeeping magazine poll as "Most Admired Woman in America" in 1978, 1979 and 1980.

A Gallup poll listed her in the top 10 most popular women on earth.

As you can see from from Time magazine in 1977, she was presented as the victim of a militant, violent male gay mob, and of what is now called 'cancel culture'. https://t.co/oT3byiGTOl

Anita Bryant spoke, at great length, about how she was subjected to death threats, bomb threats, threats to kidnap her kids, and "received hate mail with human faeces and voodoo dolls regularly".

This was used as evidence that the gay rights movement was violent and dangerous. https://t.co/u3lVVc11Ep

Anita Bryant did famously have a pie thrown in her face by the gay rights' activist Thom L. Higgins.

That led to the New York Times and some liberals at the time to leap to Bryant's defence, arguing she had the right to her views "without suffering abuse". https://t.co/kwgUMtiNrb

Now, Anita Bryant claimed that she was not motivated by homophobia or prejudice at all. She declared: "My stand was not taken out of homophobia, but of love for them [gay people]." https://t.co/h23S97Pmde

Instead, Anita Bryant claimed to be defending the rights of children. Her coalition was called 'Save Our Children'. She believed that the gay rights movement discriminated against children's rights, and that gay people sought to brainwash and recruit vulnerable children. https://t.co/Bxa5QfHnoJ

Anita Bryant set up a "charitable organisation" which claimed to treat gay people - to detransition them, if you will - and to provide inspirational case studies of "ex-gay" people.

Today, of course, we call this conversion therapy. https://t.co/kwcpnnNeoI

Now, today, Anita Bryant is not seen as a victim of a violent "militant" gay rights' movement, but as a villain who made life considerably harder for a marginalised and besieged minority. https://t.co/bzfvwBaqnj

Anita Bryant is still alive today, and has lived long enough to watch the anti-gay laws she championed be overturned, and US public opinion towards gay people dramatically change for the better.

Her granddaughter is gay. https://t.co/nx9I4iNXW8

There's a lack of appreciation today of how bitterly controversial gay rights was once deemed to be, how the gay rights movement was portrayed as a really dangerous, abusive, "militant" and violent rabble.

This is exactly how trans rights is portrayed today.