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Loading ...Calif. pageant may dump Prejean
05.06.2009 9:11am EDT
(San Francisco, California) The directors of the Miss California USA pageant are looking into whether title holder Carrie Prejean violated her contract by working with a national group opposed to same-sex marriage and by posing semi-nude when she was a teenage model.
Pageant spokesman Roger Neal said Tuesday it appears Prejean has run afoul of several sections of the 12-page contract that all prospective contestants were required to sign before competing in the November state contest.The detailed document prohibits the titular Miss California from making personal appearances, giving interviews or making commercials without permission from pageant officials. In the last 10 days, Prejean has made televised appearances at her San Diego church and on behalf of the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage.
The contract also contains a clause asking participants to say whether they have conducted themselves “in accordance with the highest ethical and moral standards.” As an example, it asks if they have ever been photographed nude or partially nude.
“As you can see from the contract, she violated multiple items,” Neal said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
A photo of Prejean wearing only pink panties with her back turned to the camera appeared Monday on the gossip blog theDirty.com. She issued a statement early Tuesday saying she posed for the shot when she was a 17-year-old model and objected to its release as an attempt to belittle her religious faith: “I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos.”
Prejean spokeswoman Melany Ethridge said she could not comment on the contract because she was unfamiliar with its contents. Ethridge said she had not heard the pageant directors were reviewing it.
Prejean, a San Diego native who attends San Diego Christian College, was named the first runner-up to Miss North Carolina in the Miss USA pageant April 19. Her response to a question during the pageant that she opposed same-sex marriage made her a media sensation, darling of religious conservatives and the target of embarrassing disclosures.
Her post-pageant activities also have estranged her from the two directors of the state pageant, who under the terms of the contract have almost unlimited control over Miss California’s activities, including the right to revoke her crown for breaching its provisions.
On the day last week that Prejean was in Washington with National Organization for Marriage leaders to announce her support for a new advertisement the group created based on her pageant experience, Keith Lewis, co-director of the California contest, expressed concern.
“There is a contract that all participants sign that is very involved and very intricate and limits a lot of their activities,” said Lewis, a Los Angeles talent agent.
Meanwhile, the Miss Universe Organization, which also owns the Miss USA pageant, confirmed Tuesday that it had sent a letter demanding the National Organization for Marriage to remove the Prejean spot from the air and the group’s Web site. It includes footage from the April 19 pageant.
The Miss Universe Organization “neither sanctions nor disapproves of the viewpoints expressed in the advertisement but cannot allow its copyrighted material to be used without permission to support the National Organization for Marriage’s political agenda and fundraising efforts,” organization President Paula Shugart said.
NOM executive director Brian Brown said the group did not plan to comply with the pageant’s request.
“It is clearly fair use, and all they are attempting to do is silence us by using false legal claims,” Brown said. “But they have another thing coming if they think these ads are coming down. None of us are relenting, least of all Carrie.”
NOM President Maggie Gallagher also issued a statement Tuesday sympathizing with Prejean over the release of her modeling picture and saying it did not disqualify her as a traditional marriage advocate.
“Of course Carrie is not perfect,” Gallagher said. “On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: You don’t have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage.”
I don’t think we should have NOM listed as a hate group. They are clearly a domestic terrorist organization. If the pagent officials don’t remove Prejean’s crown, she’s going to continue to make fools of them and spit in their faces as well as ours.
Robi, sit down and be quiet!! You talk too much. Don’t you realize by now, if you live on the same planet as the rest of us, that GAYS have to stand up and fight, instead of being little goody-goody polyannas? Being nice and defenseless is the what those horrible religious fanatics and other gay-bashers want us to be. No way – I say fight!!
Gallagher said, “You don’t have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for (‘traditional definition’ of) marriage.”
All you need are:
1. Select Bible verses
2. A narrow mind
3. Fake boobs
Robi, she was talking about how she was raised up and how she isn’t capable of thinking for herself being the reason why her and the majority of organized religion having this stance against gay marriage. The fact that women’s right’s and interracial marriage have come a long way, you’d think that people would have grown up by now.
Julia Said: “@ L. J. As long as men like Donald Trump have their say with all their dollars, women will be paraded as sex objects. To them women are still possessions to be shown off, the younger and sexier the better — like divorcing the old and marrying the younger.”
Actually, Julia, it seems you’re implying that women are forced, by men, to enter beauty pageants and to pander to sexists who see them only as property. So, is it reasonable to assume you’re saying women don’t have free will, and that they’re all owned by men in the first place, so they’ve no choice but to enter beauty pageants if men tell them to?
I’ve been under the impression that women are just as free-willed as men are, and that the only reason they do anything they do is because they want to, just like men. I’m having trouble understanding what Donald Trump’s money has to do with anything. Even with his billions, he still can’t force any other human to do anything he or she doesn’t want to do, including entering beauty pageants and allowing him or herself to be objectified by the masses.
Tom said that we HAVE to fight. (emphasis mine) However, when we fight the way he wants us to fight, we end up looking like everything they say we are. There are better ways to fight but, and here’s the problem, no one wants to fight those ways because it means we have to actually DO something and not just be windbags. So we’ll continue to look like the worst of the worst and they’ll keep looking like the sanest voices in town. Sad, because we really are stronger and smarter.
Let’s say that the California pageant people take heed of the hue and cry and enforce the provisions of the contract and dethrone or decrown or toss this vapid beauty queen out on her butt. How much more press will she get? How many more interviews will she be slated for? How many more commercials will she star in as the “victim” of the gay mafia, or those terrible “queers”, or the “gay agenda” than if she had just been left alone to fade into obscurity following her fifteen minutes of fame as the darling of the religious right nutjobs?
The more we, as gay people, rant and rave and curse her, the more she becomes the underdog and the more important her words and actions become to NOM and other haters. How unfortunate that we continue to “play” into their hands and continue to devote hours of time and pages of text to her and her immature opinions. The more our side vilifies her the more the haters will adore her. It is we who are making her a martyr to be used against those “awful” gay people.
Oh, please . . . do anything and everything to get her out of our face, and out of print. I never knew or heard of anyone who worked so tirelessly to keep their narrow minded agenda up front and personal against a group of people who never did a thing to harm her.
Thanks TJ62,
at least there someone else who agrees we should lay off the bashing, but becareful,i’ve already been told to shut up and called names, they might start in on you.
Everything about Miss Kah-li-fornia is as fake as her boobs. Like pretending she is a Christian. REAL Christians don’t hate, don’t lie, and don’t do almost-nude photo shoots – especially when they are only 17! Nice parenting by her parents. Guess they aren’t REAL Christians either.
The only purpose of religion is to tell people who to hate and who should receive monetarry donations. Tax the churches until they shut up!
The question about removing her title is whether or not it would have happened without the gay marriage kerfuffle.
She’d probably still have gotten quite a bit of press without it, as the runner up. And if she had won, she would’ve gotten even more. Probably enough so that her half nude photo would’ve been found and released. Maybe not as fast, but certainly eventually.
Would she have lost her title after that? I don’t know. She violated her contract, so technically she should.
The question is, would the organization have turned a blind eye without all this publicity, or would they have gone through with it. If they’d have gone through with it, she shouldn’t get to keep her title just because of what she’s done. That’s like saying she SHOULD get to keep it because of what she’s done.
MISS GALLAGHER………THANX THE LGBT COMMUNITY IS STANDING UP FOR MARRIAGE……..MARRIAGE EQUALITY!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone on the far right is pronouncing a need to “protect” marriage. Since when has marriage become a person, place, animal or plant? Marriage is a state-sanctioned contract. There is nothing we can do that would diminish a contract between 2 agreeing parties. Instead of bashing people who disagree with us, we should be rising above the urge and trying to engage them in forcing them to explain their point of view. I can not turn my neighbor gay if he wasn’t already pre-ordained to be that way. We all know this. So let’s stop the bashing and start the challenging them. If they bring out ads that say “protect” marriage, then our should be putting out ads that challenge their statements. Nothing works better than for people to know us for who and what we are. Eliminate the fear through education and you eliminate the prejudice.
I agree with TJ62, Robi, and vanndean – yes we should fight, but fighting to win is more than just spouting off at the mouth. It means using some intelligence and getting some work done.
Perez Hilton called Prejean the b-word, and look what happened. Some of our allies started coming to Prejean’s defense. We got a bit of a backlash. I think that will be over soon, since Prejean is losing her luster.
We will win this. Americans increasingly support our rights. But it’ll be a tough march if we’re indistinguishable from our opponents.