When Miss California was asked her views about same-sex marriage during the recent Miss USA contest, Carrie Prejean said, “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 it should be, between a man and a woman.” Carrie’s comment has sparked a character assassination unlike anything I’ve witnessed in years. She’s getting smeared just for voicing an opinion.
Two examples will suffice. As FOX NEWS reported, Village Voice columnist Michael Musto who, after calling her “dumb and twisted” compared Carrie to a noted Nazi war criminal. And CNN correspondent Jane Velez-Mitchell quipped, “What if she expressed a racist opinion or an anti-Semitic opinion or a sexist opinion? That would be OK? No. Your opinion isn’t always OK, especially when you want to be the winner of this kind of pageant.”
Notice how this “journalist” equated a conservative viewpoint on marriage with being racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist. Given the blatant hostility leveled against Carrie Prejean by public figures and the press for voicing her pro-traditional marriage viewpoint, we believe this attack is nothing less than an early shot over the bow. If the pageant officials, judges, and the secular press can demonize and penalize Carrie for her views, what’s to stop them from bullying others into remaining silent on their Christian worldview?
This is why Dr. Dobson invited Carrie to be a guest on the Focus on the Family broadcast yesterday and today. Carrie’s experience illustrates the extent to which same-sex marriage proponents will go to hush the voice of anyone who publicly upholds the traditional view of marriage. I should point out that what Carrie has or hasn’t done in her modeling career isn’t the subject of the broadcast. Focus doesn’t take a stand on Christians modeling or participating in beauty pageants. Christians can disagree on that point.
After yesterday’s broadcast aired, some have written us wondering why we’d bring credibility to this model in light of the photos she’s posed for in the past. Without question, Dr. Dobson has been and continues to be a strong supporter of modesty. However, this broadcast isn’t a defense of Carrie’s modeling career. Rather, it’s a defense of the freedom of speech she, like any of us, should enjoy in this country. We’re not here to talk about pictures, we’re here to talk about the censorship of ideas.
Indeed, the larger issue, and the subject of the broadcast, is Carrie’s right to answer a question honestly and with conviction–without the fear of being lynched by the international press for taking a politically incorrect stand. The day after the pageant, Perez Hilton said on the Today Show, “I want [a Miss USA] who is going to be politically savvy, and that means saying things that will make everyone feel welcome.” He added, “I would have appreciated it had she left her politics and her religion out, because Miss USA represents all Americans.”
Time out.
It was Perez who asked the politically-charged question. If he didn’t want politics and religion introduced into the pageant, then he should have picked a different question. That said, Carrie was a representative of the state of California which, last November, voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. She answered the question in line with the majority opinion of the state she represented. And, as I mentioned in a prior blog, her answer was virtually identical to the way then candidate Barack Obama defined marriage when asked a similar question by Rick Warren in a debate.
If you have a chance, pray for Carrie Prejean, a young Christian woman, whose religious liberty and Christian worldview is under fire.
Sign up for the weekly e-newsletter
Leave a Reply