A New Religious Right Star is Born

by Michael Jones · 2009-04-24 07:19:00 -0700
Topics:

Carrie Prejean

Forget Sarah Palin, Kirk Cameron, Mike Huckabee, or even Chuck Norris.  There's a new religious right star in town, and she goes by Miss California.

The National Organization for Marriage - the radical, right-wing organization behind the "Gathering Storm" ad - has coined Miss California, Carrie Prejean, "Queen Esther," for her viewpoints against marriage equality.  Read this atrocious message from the National Organization for Marriage (link to a PDF of the NOM newsletter, which you can download), and try not to laugh at how bizarre these people are:

Let's start with Miss California. Think about it. At the exact moment when media is pushing one main manufactured message point--give up, despair, the younger generation is on our side, you have no hope--what happens?

A gorgeous 21-year-old beauty queen is asked in a split second to choose, as Maggie Gallagher writes, between the truth and the tiara, between her convictions and the crown, between courage and capitulation.

It was, as a San Diego pastor friend of mine put it, a real "Queen Esther" moment for Carrie. Her faith was tested and she passed with flying colors--she showed the whole world the crown that she is really seeking, didn't she?

Really?  This same Miss USA contestant that stammered out an answer that made very little sense on its surface, other than boosting the talking points of a few radical religious groups?

But like parasites, organizations like the National Organization for Marriage, and media outlets like Fox News, are gravitating around Miss California for having done something that they themselves couldn't do for the past few weeks - take the fact that in Maine, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, most people believe that same-sex marriage is a civil right that ought to be allowed, out of the headlines.

Carrie Prejean may be the next darling of the religious right (a 21st century Anita Bryant, perhaps).  But if the best that organizations like the National Organization for Marriage can do is a find momentum from a beauty pageant contestant who answered a question like a nervous spelling bee competitor, then marriage equality may happen a whole hell of a lot sooner than most folks think.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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