Why Carrie Prejean matters
I have been grappling with why I feel so enthralled by Carrie Prejean’s unfortunate recent circus. My only reaction to NOM’s “Gathering Storm” ad, for example, was laughter. My reaction to Virginia Foxx’s comments calling Matthew Shepard’s murder a hoax was as pure hate as I can remember feeling. Whenever anyone says that they are for civil unions but not marriage, I feel anywhere from indifferent to exasperated. Watching Carrie Prejean, though, struck me as different. I didn’t feel schadenfreude at her losing the competition; I only felt bad for her. People like NOM director Maggie Gallagher are worthy opponents because it’s their job to be anti-gay, so you can at least count on them to be able to respond to questions with something researched, prepared, field-tested, or at least them having been exposed to the subject matter at hand. Poor Carrie, though, was thrown into the water with no preparation.
(Quick catchup for people unfamiliar with this situation: Carrie Prejean, Miss California, was asked about her stance on gay marriage by provocateur and judge Perez Hilton, she said she was against it, he called her names, she went on a speaking tour at some Christian colleges and appeared in an anti-gay marriage ad, people continued to get pissed off at her and revealed that the pageant paid for her breast implants, nude photos of her were released, she will probably get stripped of her crown, everyone claims victimhood status.)
I was pretty accurate in my original assessment of her – she never has had to explain herself before, so she just spoke from her gut through her beauty pageant training, the conflict between the two apparent on her face. Which I think is why she resonates with such a large portion of Americans. Here’s the proof – she appeared on Fox News in the early aftermath last week to try and defend herself:
VAN SUSTEREN: What is your thought on civil unions?
PREJEAN: My thought on civil unions? You know what, Greta? I don’t have the answers to everything. I’m not running for political office. I don’t have the answers to everything, you know, in the world out there.
But I think that there should be rights for people, you know, especially in California. I think that people that are homosexual should have some rights, you know, hospital rights, and things like that.
But I would like to be more educated on that, so when I do have a better answer for you, I will get back to you on that one.
But so far I just support traditional marriage, and that’s my main focus.
This subject has never crossed her mind for more than twenty seconds. She has no idea about anything regarding gay rights. She admitted to being ignorant, yet she still agreed to advocate for the denial of rights and recognition. Which is why the character assassination/exposure of her hypocrisy (take your pick) only irks me a tiny bit.
Let us inelegantly pivot from the Carrie soap opera, entertaining as it may be, to the wider issue this exposes. Carrie Prejean isn’t the only person who is ignorant about gay rights issues and can’t even see the connection between gay marriage and civil unions, not to mention Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or hate crime legislation. And I don’t mean ignorant as a negative term. I mean ignorant in the way that I am ignorant about, say, Tibetan sovereignty, or how to speak Bulgarian. Sure, I could go read a book, but like… learning. Ugh. Not something that really affects me personally.
Is there a way that we can change the debate to more thoughtfully engage these people that genuinely believe that we are attacking marriage? Not the Fox News commentators or the James Dobsons, but the people who don’t know gay people but keep their opinions to themselves? People that we need on our side to vote for gay-friendly legislators, to vote down future Prop 8’s, to be able to say, at the very least, “I can see why gay people feel passionately about this.”
Let’s concede one point in the gay marriage discussion: Marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman. Carrie’s right. Let’s not feel like we need to argue every single point. Honey, vinegar, bees. Don’t take this to its extreme and try to refute it by talking about biblical property rights, or anti-miscegenation laws, or historical polygamy. For a crap ton of people, 100% of marriages that they have known, their parents have known, and their grandparents have known have been between a man and a woman. That’s good enough in my book to be a tradition and a definition. To not acknowledge this is disingenuous and alienating. Hell, I only know 3 gay married people. And one is divorced. Let’s change that part of the conversation to be why we need to change the definition of marriage, why the tradition is no longer acceptable in its exclusivity, why it’s beneficial for everyone to evolve on this.
We agree that marriage is an important institution, we agree that it is something to aspire to and to preserve, and we agree that relationships are indeed central to identity and happiness. They are right, and we are right.
And agreeing off the bat that Perez is a dick might not hurt in winning us a few points too.
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FYI. There was never a right to gay marriage. It’s made up. Second, I am impressed by your article ;however, leaving Prejean taunting comments on her Facebook doesn’t help your argument. Disagreement and ignorance do not go hand in hand. If you want Prejean to practice what she preaches then fine…do it yourself as well.
Hey Chris,
Glad you enjoyed the post/Glad that it caught your attention enough to comment. I’m not really sure what you mean when you point out that there was never a right to gay marriage, since my main point of what I wrote was that this whole gay marriage thing in the last five years is a historic precedent. So I guess we agree on that? Right?
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but our more central disagreement would probably be that I believe that gay relationships are morally and emotionally very much equal to heterosexual relationships, while you believe heterosexual relationships are morally and/or emotionally superior, therefore exclusively heterosexual relationships should be recognized by our government. Feel free to restate in your own words if I misrepresent your position.
And like I said in the post, this isn’t really about Perez Hilton or Carrie Prejean, it’s about regular people like you and me. I’d be honored and flattered if Carrie read this, but I’m just as happy having people like you come on to my blog and get to know a real, live gay person.
For transparency’s sake and for readers not friends with Carrie on Facebook, this is what I left (satire intended, of course):
And some quotes from Carrie’s recent statuses, chosen to be indicative of the points I was attempting to rebut:
(Which I interpreted to mean that Carrie believes God does not want gay people to get married)
And from an article that she posted, which I assume means she endorses its message:
(So maybe she feels her rights are being infringed upon by gays?)
Hey Steve,
First I’ve strolled through here (put my last name to show myself as a different person to your first post).
I like your article, I just recently heard about Carrie Prejean and I read a lot of people saying her miss america thing was really horrible. I actually felt bad for her after I watched it though. I mean she wasn’t hateful, she just gave her opinion like she was asked and I do wish that less news stations would have jumped on her simply for giving her opinion.
Then again she did much more than that against gay people after the fact so I’m sure that fueled the fire but I think the initial backlash against her made those who are fighting against gay rights have a reasonable argument, that those of us in support of them don’t even want people to give their opinions.
Anyways, just wanted to drop in and give my opinion on that whole mess.
I’m sure you heard about Maine recently, wooo!
I just find it nauseating to see people who are so sure that gay marriage is good for everyone. First of all, you have no proof! Really? Supposedly Gay marriage won’t hurt my marriage as some obnoxiously point out, but now its going to give it a shot of vitamin C. Get real.
The point is while no one can predict what the effect of gay marriage will be, we should all agree that marriage is an institution that is incredibly important to society. And we have a history of laws trying to protect it as proof.
The reasonable view is that heterosexual unions need their own institution because of their generative abilities which create extra stresses and responbsiblities and of course they do a nice job in providing society with the next generation. I guess that’s beyond discussion these days because otherwise rational people scream up and down about a made up civil right to marry.
Guys, this is the 1960s all over again. This is taking marriage from a primarily child centered institution in law and culture to a primarily adult centered relationship based only on love and committment. Its exactly what happened in the 1960s but this time we are making it permanent. Can’t any gays see how harmful this is to everyone involved? I suspect your drive to be accepted will make you do ANYTHING.
Chris M, I think you hit the nail on the head. As I noted, Carrie doesn’t have a reason for opposing gay marriage that isn’t “I oppose gay marriage because I said so, and now I oppose it more because people that are for it are mean to me”. I would much rather gay marriage opponents, and specifically gay marriage opposition spokespeople, be able to argue against expanding civil marriage eligibility with reasons that aren’t “God said so”, as Tony has done.
Tony has good, reasonable points that gay rights advocates should be able to address:
-What would the effects be of legally recognizing same-sex relationships?
Fear of the unknown and respect for tradition are reason enough to give any healthy human pause and give a critical eye. It should be the responsibility of both sides to make this “unknown” familiar. This is why I hope Tony takes the opportunity to get to know me as a gay person through other articles on this site and why I make myself available as an example for gay marriage skeptics.
-Gay marriage is for all intents and purposes a union of two infertile people.
Of course. Now, to be fair, I’m only 22 and have no aspirations to have children any time soon, but Tony is assuming that all gay couples don’t have children. Or he may be saying that gay couples are unfit to parent adopted children – children, of course, that were made by straight people.
-Marriage provides needed support for children.
So either laws should be made to prevent gay people from parenting, including putting all children currently with gay parents in foster homes, or we should extend marriage rights to all eligible parents, because married households statistically provide the best environment for children.
I may be misrepresenting Tony’s argument or sentiment, but I think we can both agree that there are many marriage laws that are beneficial for children and for creating more ideal child-rearing environments.
Hi Tony,
I think Steve did a pretty solid job addressing most of what you brought up, so I am only going to address one thing you said.
“I just find it nauseating to see people who are so sure that gay marriage is good for everyone…”
Maybe some proponents of gay marriage have (incorrectly) claimed gay marriage would be good for everyone, but nowhere in Steve’s post do I see any claim of the sort. In fact, while it may not be readily pointed out in his blog, I think Steve acknowledges that the push for gay marriage is purely self-serving for the homosexual community.
I put to you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that self serving mentality. Struggles centered around equality, throughout American history, have always been self serving – and rightfully so. Everything from women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement were started by groups of repressed people who decided to finally say that they deserved the same rights and treatment as others received. What did men who came down on the side of women’s suffrage gain by women winning the vote? What did whites who came down on the side of civil rights gain through the repeal of Jim Crow laws? I am sure there are dissertations aplenty on these two topics, but at the very core the people in the “majority” who finally managed to express enough righteous indignation on behalf of a repressed group gained little more than the satisfaction that they had done the right thing.
This is exactly what is happening now. Anyone who has completed 8th grade social studies can tell you that when it comes to placing restrictions on the rights of citizens the conservative (read: status quo) mindset is ALWAYS wrong. Otherwise we would still be living in caves and run strictly as an alpha male society.
Hi Bennet,
I think Steve only really attempted in answering my first objection which is that gay marriage will hurt heterosexual marriage. My objection is based on the fact that it redefines marriage away from a child centered institution (which we’ve already begun 40 years ago) to that of an adult centered institution. His response was basically that as soon as I know more gay people than I already do, this will all somehow go away. Unreasonable.
I think its reasonable to define marriage at least pre 1960s in the following way:
1. One Man and one woman
2. PRESUMABLY Fertile
3. Exclusive
4. Permanent
Notice I’ve said nothing about love. If marriage is a table upon which society stands then these pillars are the supports for the table…. Ok…. lets go back to the beginning of the redefinition of marriage about 45 years ago and acknowledge the cultural meltdown of marriage that has occured since the 1960s and 1970s. We can pretty much eliminate #4 above since somewhere short of half of marriages end in divorce. And we can reasonably argue that with serial marriages… #3 is gone or at least diminished. These changes have been enormous and very harmful. So what does our definition of marriage look like in 2009
1. One man one woman. or 2 men or 2 women.
2. No longer presumably fertile
3.—
4.—
So what is this new institution because its almost unrecognizable? How will future generations recognize it for what it really is? Why will these strive for that is hard and yet is something so flimsy? How will other institutions within society acknowledge marriage when it has 1 pillar left? The answer is that without gay marriage they are already rejecting it in large numbers… As a society we marry less… we marry later and we still divorce like crazy. Marriage is wobbly. Knowing Steve and other cool gay couples isn’t going to help marriage. Steve thinks we all need to make familiar the unknowns… Look we already know where this leads… we have lived through a redefinition. We already know what a slow creeping cultural redfinition has done to marriage. The empirical sociological and physcological data is well documented that the prior redefinition of marriage has had dire consequences for society.
I’m sorry that straight people have fucked up marriage for you in the past 45 years.
Also, I responded to all of your objections originally. I wasn’t being rhetorical.
I’ll restate:
Do you believe that it should be legal or illegal for a child to be placed in the care of a responsible gay adult?
Well Steve I must have hit a nerve for you to dismiss the crumbling of marriage as a straight problem and all the associated sociological problems with it as a straight problem. You afterall had nothing to do with it, not your problem right?
Ok Steve I realize how frustrating it can be to write something and have the other person dismiss it without fair examination (just like you did with my examination of our marriage culture in the last 45 years). Its just don’t like being paraphrased and taken out of context and I’m sure you’d love to set the terms of the discourse in your language
. Nevertheless, I feel safe responding to one thing you’ve said:
“Marriage provides needed support to children”
I don’t see this at all. Perhaps you could explain?
Tony, I am off to work so I don’t have time to give you a fully formed reply but I do have something I want to bring up.
How can you say marriage is a child centered institution? It is NO such thing. Let us trace back through history a few years, shall we?
Circa 1950: Everyone lives in a perfect “Leave it to Beaver”-esque home. Except that daddy is angy and drunk a lot and mommy would leave him but women without husbands are failures.
Circa 1850: Really old guys marry really young ladies – I guess you could make the argument that this is child centered. One of the children is the wife in the equation, but hey, statuatory rape laws are for liberals.
Circa 1750: People don’t live that long, so let’s get married and have a boat full of children. Hmm this one might be child focused… oh wait. Nope, they only had lots of kids because children were cheaper farm labor than hired hands.
Circa 1650: Europe! Marriages between heads of important families are arranges, sometimes without the parties ever having met. Children focused? Mmmm, more like concentration of power and arrangement of alliances focused.
Circa God and Adam rode dinosaurs to church: Here is some biblical information for you, since people who are opponenets of gay marraige usually seem to be big fans of the bible. God thought of Adam and Eve as his children, and they were married in Genesis, prior to the fall. However they had no knowledge of sex (or the oh-so-important ability to procreate, as you seem to think) until they ate of the fruit of knowledge, summarily resulting in their ejection from the theme park. Wait a minute! the bible’s favorite son and daughter were the first holy union… but they couldn’t procreate? Looks like adult focused, not children focused.
Hey Bennett,
First of all knock of the snide remarks about religion. I haven’t used religion to attempt score points so don’t you either.
“Leave it to Beaver, all wives domestically abused before 1960,” blah blah blah I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned the Catholic church or Haliburton yet. Maybe W is to blame.:) that tired old cutsey crap — come on man this is a serious intellectual discussion. If you don’t want to acknowledge the negative changes in marriage since 1960s then you’re just not being a serious person.
Some marriages were arranged in the past and like I said marriage has little to do with love as far as its structure. I never included love in a definition of marriage although its helpful to those involved. But even 10 royal marriages in each country was arranged they usually had offspring to carry on. Again, child centered.
Look if you don’t believe me that government values marriage because children are produced from heterosexual unions, fine don’t take my word for it. Do your own due diligence… look at the laws against adultery, or former laws against fornication just to name a few. They are all set up to regulate child birth and to protect children. Now a days we got rid of the stick but we have carrots like tax breaks. As you can see, government has always had an interest in marriage because children result from heterosexual unions. To deny that is to deny our history of laws.
“To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
(and if we don’t make babies within 12 months, this is all null and void)
Tony, you are yet to make a coherent, cohesive argument about anything. That makes it pretty hard for this to be “… a serious intellectual discussion”.