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The phrase in question revolves around a rather odious quote, so I beseech all reading to please suppress your political leanings and focus instead on the meanings of the phrases employed.

In around 1977, Anita Bryant, singer and vocal celebrity advocate of the "Save our Children" campaign aimed at curtailing the freedoms of American LGBT citizens, stated:

"If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."

My fascination focuses on the last part of her sentence - what on earth constitutes a "nail-biter"? Surely Anita Bryant didn't hate onychophagists quite that much?

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    I honestly think she did mean onycophages, as a hyperbolic extension of the idea of providing federal protection to people with "weird mental disorders" (which is how she, and unfortunately, much of the country, viewed homosexuality at the time). It was a joke. The kind the term "in poor taste" was invented for.
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:03
  • Interesting viewpoint - but were these people denied any rights in particular at the time? Or do you think I'm looking at it too closely?
    – seagull
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:05
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    There's no reason to assume Bryant harbours any particular animosity towards people who bite their nails (or sleep with their oversized dog). She might have just selected them at random as "potentially-identifiable minority groups", where she could have said, for example, brunettes and people who like Marmite to make the same point (it's silly to legislate specially for every identifiable class of people). But it's all just opinions - hers or ours.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:08
  • "Legislating separately" is a good point. Thanks!
    – seagull
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:12
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    @seagull Exactly: it's not that nail-biters were denied rights, it's that to people like Anita, it seems absurd to pick some set of people with a weird problem and grant them special protection. Like, I don't know, proposing a bill to grant people who like to make balloon animals protection from prosecution under noise ordnance laws because their balloons pop a lot and they're tired of being arrested for the noise it creates; it seems not like the lifting of a right denied, but granting a special privilege to weirdos. Because Anita and her ilk thought homosexuals were perverts.
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:12

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She may have been conflating the usual "slippery slope" argument that legitimizing homosexual behavior would lead to legitimized bestiality and incest with the argument that homosexuals should not be a 'protected group'.

I submit this excerpt from "The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle".

enter image description here

The quote is contemporary with that of Bryant's, and she was a Miami resident at the time.

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    Nice research! This answers my question. Thanks, everyone.
    – seagull
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 12:16

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