It's hard to believe that the Miss USA beauty pageant – run by Donald Trump, hosted by Billy Bush of, yes, that Bush clan, and judged by, among others, the star-wannabe gossip blogger Perez Hilton – could have gotten any stupider than its intrinsic inanity, but when Hilton used the Q&A portion of the pageant to ask frontrunner and "sweet Christian girl" Carrie Prejean (Miss California) whether same-sex marriage should be legalized, her answer managed to plunge the proceedings to yet another nadir:
Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other, um, we live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage, and – you know what? – in my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think that it should be, between a man and a woman. Thank you.
Considering that beauty pageants have a 1950's Rosie-the-Riveter-who? sensibility about them, I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone when a contestant holds political opinions from the same era. But such reasonable explanations would necessarily preclude a week's worth of Drama! and Scandal! and Recriminations! in turning the loser of a two-bit dog-and-pony show into the glamorous martyr of a sequin-drenched political circus.
Miss California, having promptly lost the pageant to Miss North Carolina, nee Kristen Dalton, after her disastrously bigoted answer, is now taking to the airwaves (Wow — the Billy Bush Show? What a coincidence!) to claim her sweet Christian answer cost her the crown"
It is a very touchy subject and [Perez Hilton] is a homosexual and I see where he was coming from and I see the audience would've wanted me to be more politically correct. But I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything.
Those beliefs presumably not including supporting basic equality for those darn touchy queers. 'Cuz that's not what God, who was testing her faith by having one of those darn touchy queers ask her the question, wants. The only reason God even makes gay people is to test the faith of sweet Christian heterosexuals - he doesn't put them here to live full lives of their own and fall in love and have families and get married. Duh!
And because this entire controversy just wouldn't be complete without one more heaping bucketful of calamitous idiocy, Perez Hilton helpfully explained that "she lost not because she doesn't believe in gay marriage; Miss California lost because she's a dumb bitch." It's amazing how frequently homophobia and misogyny arrive hand-in-hand at the same parties. And why wouldn't they arrive together at this one? After all, a beauty pageant is just porn for sweet Christian patriarchs.
That is, when they're not looking at actual porn. Just the way God intended.