After coming in second in the Miss USA pageant, supposedly for expressing her opinion on gay marriage, Miss California is now on a mission to "protect traditional marriage."The subject of beauty pageants and their role in propagating a certain image of women is another topic for this blog at another time.
Miss California expressed an opinion and has the right to do so under the first amendment. This country was founded partly on freedom of religion. But was Miss California's opinion an expression of hate toward gay and lesbian people wrapped in pretty words?
In America, religion plays a significant role in the meaning of marriage to some couples. When couples want to marry in their church, under the rules of a particular faith, they have the right to do that. Many faiths have specific rules about what is required of couples who marry. For example, in the Catholic church, a couple must agree to raise their children as Catholics in order to receive the full endorsement of the church. If the couple divorces, they must also receive an annulment from the church if they wish to remarry in the Catholic church. Each religion and their followers have the right to make those rules - for themselves.
What they don't have the right to do is to create laws that apply to all people in America. And that is where the subject of marriage has gone awry. In fact, if all of the religions represented in this country had to agree on which dogma people had to follow in order to marry - they could never agree.
Marriage by law is a completely different subject. It is a legally binding contract between two individuals designed to outline the requirements of the couple when it comes to sharing property, and dividing that property if they split up. The contract can only be broken through a court proceeding. Any spiritual or other meaning of marriage between people is between those two people. Therefore, it does not matter if those two people are of the same sex or not.
Furthermore, there are no laws that dictate who can marry and who cannot, and the American people don't get to vote on couples "up for marraige." Something tells me there would be a lot less marriages if this was the case.
Miss USA is supposed to represent America without hate words. By defending "traditional marriage," Miss California is propegating hate against gay and lesbian people. That is not an opinion, and that is just not that pretty.
Perez Hilton also contributed words that were not pretty when he called Miss California the B word. If we are ever going to get past this "debate," it has to be done intelligently. He should have presented a better argument.
It is important for young women to realize from this event that ugly words coming out of a pretty face are still ugly words.
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