Glutton for PWNishment

You may or may not recall that a month ago during the Miss USA pageant, there was quite an uproar about Miss California, Carrie Prejean, and her quite pointed answer to a question. When grilled by judge Perez Hilton on the merits of gay marriage, Prejean defended her stance that “in her country and family, marriage is between a man and a woman,” adding, “no offense to anyone out there.” 

While I admittedly do not agree with Miss California on her rather narrow definition of marriage, I find it amusing that it has ignited such a controversy in the past few weeks. In response to Prejean’s admission of this opinion, a director of the Miss California Pageant resigned and Prejean was paraded on a host of flashy cable news shows to defend her position. 

Let’s get one thing straight, pageants are just silly. Aside from being amusing, (in the way VH1 reality shows or the like are entertaining), they serve no real function. I’m not going to give the traditional feminist argument about them. Whatever. If Donald Trump wants to sponsor an institution that suffers waning public interest and outdated female standards of beauty, it’s just as well. I’m sure it’s fun for these women, probably popping uppers before the show so they can be leered at by the envious masses. 

Still, Carrie Prejean is being roasted over an open spit for having a viewpoint that a sizable portion of the population shares. If she wants to cling on to her dying, archaic stance on gay rights, let her. She can look like segregationist Strom Thurmond, standing inflexible at the dawn of a new equality paradigm. It also is amusing, being that Miss California is the homegrown, physical embodiment of Proposition 8. Are the people of California more worried about their beliefs being misrepresented by a pageant queen or by their own poor public policy choices?