Miss California Controversy (from Rumours)

[jwd]

Here's Miss California's press conference on the matter.

http://perezhilton.com/2009-05-12-mi...-words#respond

She has every right to express her opinion without the backlash that she has experienced. She's hardly a dumb or dimwitted girl, unless of course she's dumb or dimwitted because she disagrees with you. She's not anti-gay or a crusader against gay people. She happens to disagree with gay marriage, as does the majority of Americans, and coincidentally President Obama. She answered the question honestly. Geeesh! Disagree with her, write your Congressman, march for gay rights, speak out, elect politicians who will advance your cause. But to lambaste this girl does nothing but hurt the cause. People shouldn't have to fear expressing their opinions or their beliefs because of what may happen to them. I support Miss California's right to express herself as I support gay people's rights to express themselves without retribution or retaliation.

[DigYourGrave]

Originally Posted by carol7lynn

The real issue is why did Perez think it necessary to bash Lindsey? Did Lindsey snub him back stage?

Carol Lynn
SoCalGal

Realistically? Yes, he probably did. Wouln't you?

[David]

Originally Posted by jwd

Here's Miss California's press conference on the matter.

http://perezhilton.com/2009-05-12-mi...-words#respond

She has every right to express her opinion without the backlash that she has experienced. She's hardly a dumb or dimwitted girl, unless of course she's dumb or dimwitted because she disagrees with you. She's not anti-gay or a crusader against gay people. She happens to disagree with gay marriage, as does the majority of Americans, and coincidentally President Obama. She answered the question honestly. Geeesh! Disagree with her, write your Congressman, march for gay rights, speak out, elect politicians who will advance your cause. But to lambaste this girl does nothing but hurt the cause. People shouldn't have to fear expressing their opinions or their beliefs because of what may happen to them. I support Miss California's right to express herself as I support gay people's rights to express themselves without retribution or retaliation.

Well stated, Joe.

[trackaghost]

Okay, since I'm in the UK I'm completely unfamiliar with this story but surely if she has the right to say what she believes in a public forum, then people should also have the right to disagree with what she says in the public also.
I really resent her putting herself up as a model of women's empowerment though.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by LukeA

WTF cares what a dimwitted beauty queen thinks? She was asked the question in the pageant, and she answered it. Everything after has been instigated by hyperventilating indignation that does more to make the same-sex marriage issue look unstable and unfocused than anything else.

So the bigger question is why would they ask her such a question in a pageant? It seems like it was designed to create publicity. Ya think?

[David]

Originally Posted by trackaghost

Okay, since I'm in the UK I'm completely unfamiliar with this story but surely if she has the right to say what she believes in a public forum, then people should also have the right to disagree with what she says in the public also.
I really resent her putting herself up as a model of women's empowerment though.

I don't think it's a rights issue. It's not as if Congress stepped in & outlawed her speech. I think Hilton's hysterical response was boorish -- it's an issue of maturity & manners in civil public discourse. Hilton has shown himself to be nothing but an obnoxious brat.

[GoldDustOrphan]

David's correct, it's not a free speech issue.

What many people don't understand that every contestant of the Miss America pageant is an employee of the Miss America organization and, according to the contracts signed, must adhere to strict standards of behavior. The questions are engineered to test their poise, grace and diplomacy.

She began her answer with ..."No offense," a statement that is usually followed by another statement that is bound to offend. Most of the people judging the contest were gay, as was the person who did her hair and designed her gown. Many officials in the organization are gay. She is dumb if she thought the answer she gave wouldn't offend and upset the audience. Still, I'll give her that moment as a regretable flub.

Here's why she's dumb. She made it clear that she believed in "opposite marriage" between a man and woman, but during an interview with Greta Van Susteran that took place 10 days later, she no longer had an opinion, telling Susteran: "I'm not running for political office. I don't have the answers to everything, you know, in the world out there." She also refused to give her opinion on domestic partnership or gay foster parentsL "I'm not a politician, so I can't give you an answer to that." So, in fact, she really doesn't know what she believes, even though she joined the political campaign of a group dedicated to the repeal of same-sex marriage laws in the few states where they exist.

By the way, in regard to the holocaust. Did you ever wonder why the pink triangle is a symbol of gay politics? That's the symbol gay concentration camp prisoners were forced to wear on their way to the gas chamber or firing squad. Germany was very permissive and tolerant of its visible gay community, until Hitler came to power.

[LukeA]

Originally Posted by GoldDustOrphan

Here's why she's dumb. She made it clear that she believed in "opposite marriage" between a man and woman, but during an interview with Greta Van Susteran that took place 10 days later, she no longer had an opinion, telling Susteran: "I'm not running for political office. I don't have the answers to everything, you know, in the world out there." She also refused to give her opinion on domestic partnership or gay foster parentsL "I'm not a politician, so I can't give you an answer to that." So, in fact, she really doesn't know what she believes, even though she joined the political campaign of a group dedicated to the repeal of same-sex marriage laws in the few states where they exist.

Exactly. So, why give any weight to what she has to say? The way I see it, the only reason why we're even still discussing this is because the pro-same sex marriage movement, in all their shortsighted, indignant bluster, has unwittingly given her the platform she currently enjoys.

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

So what should she have done then? Lied about her beliefs?

[jannieC]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

So the bigger question is why would they ask her such a question in a pageant? It seems like it was designed to create publicity. Ya think?

Thank you.

Particularly in light of who was sitting in front of her. It's nutso that we even care what she thinks. And as far as her fakeness (hair, boobs, tan)., this was a beauty pageant. Par for the course.

[carrie721]

Originally Posted by jannieC

Thank you.

Particularly in light of who was sitting in front of her. It's nutso that we even care what she thinks. And as far as her fakeness (hair, boobs, tan)., this was a beauty pageant. Par for the course.

why do we care? because she's blonde and on tv.

i kid, i kid.

i care because what she said has been piped into millions of homes and helped energize a movement that affected both my life and those of most of my closest friends in a very personal, negative way. the "fakeness" is prescient because it speaks to her hypocrisy, but i'll get to that later.

as i understand it, all the questions they were asked were related to current social issues. so i think it is fair game. the publicity has worked both ways - for the issue itself and for carrie, and anyone could have predicted that outcome. so to say it is just a publicity stunt on perez's behalf is only to look at part of the story.

as for perez, i think his response was stupid and histrionic and i wish he'd STFU. if anyone came out of that debacle looking like a vapid, hateful sow it was he.

are carrie's opinions rooted in hate? i honestly don't know, but based on what i have heard her say, i kind of doubt it. i think that many people who disagree with gay marriage feel that way because of a fundamental lack of understanding about the issue. and all of the marches and screaming matches in the world aren't going to change anyone's mind.

obviously, there are people who are filled with hate. but there are also people who just don't understand why we want marriage. i have talked to a good number of these people personally. frankly, i think it is a mistake to use the word "marriage." it is word associated with an institution with a long, convoluted history and it is simply too easy for people on the outside of the matter (which is, by most estimates, 90% of the population) to balk at the word without taking the real issues into consideration.

we want next-of-kin rights. we want partner benefits. we want federal recognition of our unions. we can get all of that without the use of the word "marriage." would that make gay unions second class in the eyes of some? maybe. i couldn't care less. i don't need the word "marriage" to ratify my relationships. when we fight for the word, we muddy the waters. it gives anti-marriage voices an easy opportunity to say that we are seeking society's approval for our behavior, that we are aping the straights. that misunderstanding is the root of the problem and the onus is on us to make the issue as cut and dried as we can.

take a look at this misunderstanding in action:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110508.php3

thomas sowell is against gay marriage, but he is hardly hateful. he's one of the most intelligent, rational and unemotional commentators out there. i do not agree with him categorically but i do agree with him that no one is entitled to anyone else's approval. because my gay marriage movement is about rights and not permission, i think it would be prudent for us, instead of getting red in the face at people who disagree, to reframe our case. drop the word "marriage," focus on the legal rights we're after, and highlight the important role gay people play in society (by and large, we do not contribute to overpopulation. we adopt kids no one else wants. we raise property values everywhere we go. because many of us are childless, we can work long hours without it being a detriment to our families. etc).

whose fault is it that otherwise intelligent and informed people see whining, mewling victims when they look at the gay marriage movement? on the one hand, perhaps that is what they want to see. on the other hand, perez hilton, arguably one of the (if not the) most vocal and visible gay members of pop culture is exactly that -- a whining, bratty, nasty victim. and we are letting him speak for us.

furthermore, i just do not understand why people care so much about the word "marriage." why would we want a label for our unions that has such a f*cked up history? the importance of this issue has nothing to do with that legacy. marriage as we want it is an extremely modern concept; so why not acknowledge and promote that by leaving the word alone and forging a new path?

but back to carrie prejean. as i said, i do not think she is hateful. but my sympathy for her is extremely limited because she chose to align herself with people who truly are hateful: maggie gallagher and her ilk. however, the girl is so clueless that i think it would have been wiser to let her discredit herself on her own merits. she has been proven to be a hypocrite on more than one count, and that would have happened whether or not people had spewed their vitriol at her.

[JazmenFlowers]

^^^
:bow:

[sparky]

Originally Posted by carrie721

why do we care? because she's blonde and on tv.

i kid, i kid.

Um. Wait. Does the opinion of anyone who is not blonde and not on television even matter in this culture?

i care because what she said has been piped into millions of homes and helped energize a movement that affected both my life and those of most of my closest friends in a very personal, negative way. the "fakeness" is prescient because it speaks to her hypocrisy, but i'll get to that later.

I do not know that it energized anything at all. But I will get to that later.

as i understand it, all the questions they were asked were related to current social issues.

In the context of that part of the "show" it was not inappropriate.

so i think it is fair game. the publicity has worked both ways - for the issue itself and for carrie, and anyone could have predicted that outcome. so to say it is just a publicity stunt on perez's behalf is only to look at part of the story.

He asked a loaded question, and I do not doubt for a second that she knew exactly what was coming. If she had handlers and publicists who wanted to steer her clear of a conflict, she could have answered the question in a tone of voice that was respectful of both sides of the issue.

[as for perez, i think his response was stupid and histrionic and i wish he'd STFU. if anyone came out of that debacle looking like a vapid, hateful sow it was he.

Absolutely. He is a nasty, self promoting parasite. The sole reason his website even exists is that he promotes the people he likes and derides the people he hates. Thus, those he likes kiss his ass and get his accolades and place high priced ads through their corporations. The people he dislikes do not matter - he is making plenty of cash through his tie ins.

Do a history search. The shows that advertise get great coverage. Good or bad, it doesn't matter.

I have no IDEA who Spencer Pratt is. Or his fugly wife.
But the show they were on has had front page ads on his site for a year.

He is a businessman. This is Hollywood. No speed limit, this is the fast line. Vomit, etc etc.

are carrie's opinions rooted in hate? i honestly don't know, but based on what i have heard her say, i kind of doubt it. i think that many people who disagree with gay marriage feel that way because of a fundamental lack of understanding about the issue. and all of the marches and screaming matches in the world aren't going to change anyone's mind.

Well, no. They won't. The only thing that will change the minds of those people is knowing people they care about who are homos.
And sometimes not even that helps. Talk to my LDS friends who came out and had their entire families tell them they were effectively DEAD and refused to communicate with them.

BUT, most of the people who believe such things are so poisoned by misinterpreted and buffet style religious interpretations that they lost the concept of logic decades ago.

obviously, there are people who are filled with hate. but there are also people who just don't understand why we want marriage. i have talked to a good number of these people personally. frankly, i think it is a mistake to use the word "marriage." it is word associated with an institution with a long, convoluted history and it is simply too easy for people on the outside of the matter (which is, by most estimates, 90% of the population) to balk at the word without taking the real issues into consideration.

The real problem is that "marriage" has taken on a religious meaning in our cultural dictionary. Why? Um excuse me, it makes a ton of money for churches. It ultimately cannot have an exclusively religious connotation this country. Church and state? Atheists can get married in this country.

we want next-of-kin rights. we want partner benefits. we want federal recognition of our unions. we can get all of that without the use of the word "marriage." would that make gay unions second class in the eyes of some? maybe. i couldn't care less. i don't need the word "marriage" to ratify my relationships. when we fight for the word, we muddy the waters. it gives anti-marriage voices an easy opportunity to say that we are seeking society's approval for our behavior, that we are aping the straights. that misunderstanding is the root of the problem and the onus is on us to make the issue as cut and dried as we can.

Hallelujah Bob. The word means nothing. The rights mean everything.

take a look at this misunderstanding in action:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110508.php3

thomas sowell is against gay marriage, but he is hardly hateful. he's one of the most intelligent, rational and unemotional commentators out there. i do not agree with him categorically but i do agree with him that no one is entitled to anyone else's approval. because my gay marriage movement is about rights and not permission, i think it would be prudent for us, instead of getting red in the face at people who disagree, to reframe our case. drop the word "marriage," focus on the legal rights we're after, and highlight the important role gay people play in society (by and large, we do not contribute to overpopulation. we adopt kids no one else wants. we raise property values everywhere we go. because many of us are childless, we can work long hours without it being a detriment to our families. etc).

I agree completely.

His understanding of the history of marriage is embarrassing and colored by a post WW2 religious point of view. Hello Same Sex Unions In Pre Modern Europe:

http://www.amazon.com/Same-Sex-Union...4099370&sr=8-1

I give him a punt on his logic, but he is hardly a scholar of history outside his education.

Nonetheless your reaction to his logic is valid.

whose fault is it that otherwise intelligent and informed people see whining, mewling victims when they look at the gay marriage movement? on the one hand, perhaps that is what they want to see. on the other hand, perez hilton, arguably one of the (if not the) most vocal and visible gay members of pop culture is exactly that -- a whining, bratty, nasty victim. and we are letting him speak for us.

Perez Hilton, though he may be an entertaining blogger, is a sorry, cliched, and pathetic example of a gay man. All he does is reinforce the sad stereotype that a gay man is nothing more than a woman who was sadly born into a man's body. He obsessed with fashion, style, body image, petty bickering, personal grooming, and idle gossip. He couldn't change a tire or turn off his gas meter in an earthquake to save his nearly worthless life. He is everything straight men spit on gay men for and rightly so. For the record, I doubt he would claim he has more testosterone in his body than Joan Jett has in her earlobe. And he shouldn't. He is a sorry excuse for a man.

He is merely a male.

BUT, I applaud his stance. And I saw him next to me at a marriage march in downtown LA. He is a ridiculous queen but he puts his money where his lip glossed mouth is.

furthermore, i just do not understand why people care so much about the word "marriage." why would we want a label for our unions that has such a f*cked up history? the importance of this issue has nothing to do with that legacy. marriage as we want it is an extremely modern concept; so why not acknowledge and promote that by leaving the word alone and forging a new path?

Yes. Ditch the loaded word and keep the rights. A commitment
is a commitment. Especially, but not exclusively, when it involves children.

but back to carrie prejean. as i said, i do not think she is hateful. but my sympathy for her is extremely limited because she chose to align herself with people who truly are hateful: maggie gallagher and her ilk.

I do not know that she is hateful. She is surely stupid.

As is her manager, her attorney and her agent.

She is being USED my NOM and she is happy to be used.

She didn't really energize anything. She is being manipulated by a group of people who are on the wrong side of history and she is too deluded to know it.

What else does a runner up have to grab onto? She and her entire
machine missed the boat on this. This will result in 7 minutes of infamy.

And let the chips fall where they may.

Sure, she has gotten 1000% more press than any other also ran would have gotten. But did she and her staff never bother to do a google search on Anita Bryant?

however, the girl is so clueless that i think it would have been wiser to let her discredit herself on her own merits. she has been proven to be a hypocrite on more than one count, and that would have happened whether or not people had spewed their vitriol at her.

No doubt about it. She is as dumb as an empty wig box.

Anyone with a 6th grade education can see that. She is the classic
example of 'give her enough rope and she will hang herself.'

Oh, but let us just for a moment examine the hypocrisy angle.

Just for fun.

She is a contestant in a Beauty Pageant.

When you get down to it, that is not about talent. Or intelligence.
It is about one thing and one thing only: the winner is the girl that more guys want to stick it in.

Period.

And to that end, the women parade around in bathing suits.
Bathing suits that cover nothing but their nipples and their openings below the waist. BARELY.

To make them more appealing in terms of appealing to a man's breeding instinct (and by breeding I mean not procreation but merely the act that might lead to procreation), they do the following: wax themselves, dye their hair, bleach their teeth, starve themselves, cover their entire bodies in paint, wear high heels in order to make their hind end appear to be more appealing and available for penetration, and often times undergo surgical procedures to achieve the same aforementioned ends.

I find it WILDY comical that Miss Prejean has been quoted as saying the "devil" was asking her the question about same sex marriage and she felt she had to respond according to her religious faith and beliefs.

This begs the question of who was asking her the question of if she should go under the knife (at the expense of her sponsors!) to get breast implants to make herself to look more sexually desirable as an unmarried woman and win a beauty contest? Whose voice was she listening to when she posed for photos before the pageant where she willingly bared her post surgically enhanced nipples and breasts? Was that the voice of God or the voice of the Devil? And which did she listen to then?

Furthermore, I wonder if she has done a complete reading of Leviticus, which is the only place in the Old Testament that speaks of homosexuality? Has she ever eaten shellfish? Has she ever worn a garment made of mixed fibers? Does she willingly participate in stoning to death women who are not virgins who get married?

Those are only a few of the legs she has to stand on. There are many other frail and sure to collapse legs I could bring up. But why bother? She knows less about the bible than I do.

Hoot about a religious text and you better follow it to the LETTER.

The bottom line is this: in this age, if you engage in public discourse about politics, you better have a spotless record. And prepare to have every single infraction your record contains splattered online. In high resolution and on every website in blood red capital letters.

God help the person who attacks anyone on religious grounds.

If you choose to live by that sword, be prepared to die by it.

And this sad little Orange County girl is going to die a messy, bloody, misinformed death in a very public way.

She stepped into the ring. And she knew the rules.

[strandinthewind]

^

I agree for the most part. However, the same people who vehemently oppose gay marriage also vehemently oppose civil unions. In the end, the easiest solution is for the government to get out of sponsoring any king of marriage as a civil contract. Let the churches marry according the tenets of the respective faith. Then, let people use contract and testament law to accord rights currently given via "marriage," just like the opposers say gay people wanting marriage for that reason should do. They assert it is very easy to contract into these things - so, even the playing field by making everyone do it by contract. But, the crazies think that they are tread upon if the government does not validate their faith, which says to me that their faith is weak to begin with.

As for the sow known as Ms. California, she has made and, along with her peeps, will continue to make lots of money on this issue - ditto for Perez Hilton. It was a fair question and her answer was not the political one, which is the required one. She is not there to way what she personally feels. Rather, she must show she relates to all people.

As for people getting angry with her - of course they have a right to attack her for what she said. Free speech cuts both ways. Moreover, if she had said that blacks should not be able to marry whites, we would not be having this discussion and almost everyone, save for some racists, would be attacking her.

Finally, I wonder how many times she had to fellate Trump to get him to let her bend back - errrr I mean contract

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

So the bigger question is why would they ask her such a question in a pageant? It seems like it was designed to create publicity. Ya think?

It was Perez. What did she think he was going to ask her? How are your parents?