Bigotry's Mirror: Carrie Prejean Just Needs Some Education!

Miss USA Runner-Up Carrie Prejean was interviewed by gay media activist Rex Wockner yesterday at San Diego's Sanctuary of the Rock Church. The link is here, via Memeorandum.

Readers should read the whole interview. Other than manners, I make no distinction between Rex Wockner and Perez Hilton. Wockner's questions are just as much "set-ups" as were Hilton's at the Miss USA pageant. For example, Wockner's very first query attempts to establish Ms. Prejean as an anti-gay bigot:

Clearly, nobody would ever get up there (at the Miss USA pageant) and say, "I don't think black people should be able to marry white people" or something like that. Or nobody would get up there and say something sexist. And people are wondering if maybe we've gotten to a moment in American culture where you can't really say something that's interpreted as anti-gay anymore, like you might have been able to five years ago ...

Ms. Prejean responded well, but without seeing her response in person or by video it's difficult to assess her comfort level. She was right to suggest the discussion should be about tolerance, but let's add to that: Whose tolerance is at issue here? Tolerance for a traditional Christian woman to have her own opinions about the proper relationship between men, women and matrimony? Actually, no: Leftists reject Prejean's traditional views. As Ed Morrissey notes this afternoon, Miss USA officials have stated that Ms. Prejean needed to "apologize to the gay community." But for what? Having an opinion, and for responding honestly to Perez Hilton's homesexual views and agenda?

Note too that Wockner's question - "black people should be able to marry white people" - is bogus. The comparison of gay activists today to the same-sex interracial couples prior to Loving v. Virginia has long been discredited, but radical leftists continue to deploy it as a battering ram designed to make traditionals feel guilty, and thus force them to capitulate to the extremist gay marriage program. Have people forgetten Marjorie Christoffersen already?

Ms. Prejean turned the tables on Wockner, in any case. He asked her "what would be so wrong" with two women getting married, and she turned it around and asked to him, "What don't you see wrong with that?" and "'Why"? In response, Wockner repeats the left's redefinition of the marriage institution:

Uh, why don't - oh, this is fun - why don't I see anything wrong with it? Uh, because they're in love with each other, and they want to spend their lives together, and marriage is kind of the way that our society recognizes that two people love each other and want to spend their lives together and make commitment and be financially intertwined and be faithful and, you know, permanent. So, why should that be something that gay people can't do? There's gay people all around us all the time.

Well, there's nothing now in the laws of California that prohibits two people who love each other from spending "their lives together." Further, what's key here is that marriage is much more than recognizing love and making things, you know, "permanent." Love is wonderful, but gays can have a "permanent" relationship without being married. No, the key is that marriage "historically is recognized as a practice that his essentially procreative and regenerative." Same-sex couples cannot claim to be biologically equal to heterosexual couples. What they seek is to change society's discourse and overturn the historical and regenerative conception of marriage as between one man and one woman.

An interesting footnote here is Pam Spaulding's response to the interview. Spaulding attacks Ms. Prejean for her alleged ignorance:

I don't think Carrie Prejean is a spiteful and hateful person - clearly she hasn't given this issue much thought outside her social circle, and quite frankly, doesn't have to. She could have remained in her bubble of ill-informed views, but now, due to her high-profile, she is no doubt going to engage with many who have a different worldview, and hopefully people who can explore this in civil conversation. Perez Hilton's hostility after the interview has given license to the Right to hide behind the rancor as a defense. More encounters like the one with Rex Wockner will challenge Miss California in a positive manner to think more deeply about what discrimination really means.

Actually, it's clear the Ms. Prejean has given a great deal of thought to the gay marriage question. Would that so many more people had done so as much. This point about the correct "social circle" is more leftist authoritarianism. Just because traditionals choose not to hang out with gay libertines and barebackers doesn't mean they can't form an honest (and morally superior) opinion.

And Pam Spaulding's cant about "Perez Hilton's hostility" is pure smokescreen. Why treat Carrie Prejean in such a civil manner when you're not willing to treat other opponents of same-sex marriage with the same respect? Just a few weeks ago Spaulding was attacking traditional marriage advocates as "fundies," and she excoriated the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins in a post entitled, "Fundies gone wild: reaction to Vermont, Iowa, DC."

But recall that Mr. Perkins issued a press statement on Carrie Prejean last week, "Miss USA Pageant Guilty Of Cheap Ratings Stunt At Expense Of Miss California's Reputation." So, it's just kind of strange that the young Ms. Prejean is treated with such thoughtful concern trollery, when she's hardly different in views and opinion from the D.C. "fundies gone wild."

Leftists are the true bigots here. Perez Hilton is representive not anomalous, and Pam Spaulding's hollow efforts to separate herself from gay activist "bitch" hatred should be seen for exactly what it is: reverse discrimation and a hypocritcal scam.