Private Opinion, Public Stand

Some things are just better left private. But then when people feel strongly that their convictions have merit, are justified, are moral and ethical, they also often feel an obligation to air them publicly. As though to do otherwise is to fail their moral right to state what they feel is the difference between right and wrong. There are occasions when people verge on the sanctimonious, spurred by religious conviction, and the resulting fall-out leaves them socially punished.

That seems to be what has occurred with a contestant in a beauty contest; a runner-up to the Miss America 2009 crown. Beauty contests to begin with are fairly outmoded. They never did much justice to women, traditionally, and they aren't wholesomely beneficial currently . We are more than our outer integuments; our form has function. Beauty contests can be seen by many who respect intelligence and character above beauty, as demeaning to women. On the other hand, beauty is as beauty does, while it does impress.

No one is truly immune to the appreciation of beauty. In a flower, a bird, a landscape, and the human form, among other expressions of natural beauty. The symmetrical, the colourful, the well-formed, attract us, quite naturally. And we celebrate objects of beauty, whether man-made or formulated by nature. Still, beauty contests seem like an anachronistic celebration of man's ascendancy over womankind. That said, beauty pageants are an institution that seem destined to continue appealing both to contestants and to observers.

And, one supposes, it is unfortunate when an event like that becomes politicized, as it did for Miss California, Carrie Prejean who, when questioned during an interview, responded that in her opinion marriage should be restrained to the traditional societally-recognized pairing of a man and a woman. It's not clear whether she has any ill feeling toward same-gendered couples and simply feels that traditional marriage should comprise of a man and a woman, or whether her opinion stems from homophobic convictions.

But the end result of her declaration in a very public venue, soon broadcast widely, particularly in the gay community, was that she became the recipient of a lot of verbal abuse and accusations. A strenuous and vociferous lobby against this woman took place, and she placed second in the Miss America beauty pageant. It's fairly clear that her remark rejecting the legalization of gay marriage worked against her.

It's hard to say exactly how this should be interpreted; whether she has been socially rebuked for good cause, or whether she was victimized for her outspoken belief in the traditional sanctity of the marriage contract; a man and a woman begetting children through the institution of a long-accepted social contract; religious or secularly lawful. For many people it is unsettling and more than a trifle ludicrous that same-sex couples see the institution of marriage as valuable to them; symbolically perhaps, functionally, how?

One can be comfortable with different modes of sexual expression, while still defending traditional social arrangements like conventional marriage. But in the super-heated debate between religious denials of the fitness of extending the marriage contract to same-sex couples, and the outrage expressed by newly-empowered differently-gendered populations, it's risky business.