Augh.
Seriously.
Also why I hate Focus on the Family and why James Dobson is really, really really no damn better than Perez Hilton.
In light of the whole Miss California thing (that I admiditedly was not paying attention to because I neither run in those circles nor do I care about beauty pageants. But anyway, first of all, I am somewhat proud of her for showing some sort of honesty in a contest that is mostly about being as plastic as possible, and perhaps Perez Hilton
did intentionally bait her, and perhaps the reactions of some were completely out of line.
But it had dick all to do with Satan or the nonexistent Gay Agenda and everything to do with an individual man's overinflated ego and it was basically anything and everything the man could do to keep his name on the headlines. As for the death threats--are you fucking kidding me? It may have happened but still, such actions are completely goddamn unnecessary, all for an answer to a completely loaded question.
That said, I do not believe that James Dobson, her parents, or the Christian media outlets still carrying this story are any better. By dragging this girl out and presenting her as some kind of fucking martyr for expressing an opinion that, like it or not, a majority of people do agree with, is
wrong. Say what you will of beauty pageants being exploitative (I really do not think they are), but marching the girl up and down every Christian media outlet that can be found
is exploitation pure and simple. It is the exploitation of a young woman whose dreams were shattered by the actions of one loudmouthed egotist inciting a few easily-angered hotheads. And in treating her as though she is some sort of martyr for the cause, there is way,
way more harm than good done.
On a brighter note, my mother might be accepting (or at least tolerant) of my Agnosticism. I goddamn hate the word "tolerance" when used by right-wing "Family Values" assholes. As for being "intolerant", I am intolerant of bigotry. I am intolerant of stupid asshats who want to deny rights to human beings by using the Bible all while ignoring the parts of the Bible that are just as goddamn horrible. For example, if someone imposed Biblical law and said that one can marry a twelve-year-old girl, I have to wonder if my mother would be on board with it. Or if, at the age of eleven, I were forced to marry my rapist for about a hundred bucks. Would she be okay with
that? It's in the Bible. And my mom likes shrimp--but according to the Bible, she wouldn't be able to have shrimp. Also working on Sundays can get you killed.
All of that shit is in the Bible, yet the Family Values asshats will ignore the stuff that they do not like and then accuse other people of "cherry-picking" the Bible when they do it just as much, if not moreso.
Thus, I am intolerant of hypocritical bullshit and the frank exploitation of a fellow young woman whose opinion I may not agree with, but who does not deserve the media flogging she is getting from the mainstream media, nor does she need to be dragged in front of each and every Christian media outlet as some sort of fucking martyr. I don't know which part of the whole story makes me want to throw up more, the exploitation by one loudmouth whose opinions go largely ignored, or the exploitation by a loudmouth who sells millions of books and who has many people who see him as God's prophet in Colorado Springs.
And
those are my real feelings on the subject. Done.
ETA: As of yesterday, I know which part makes me want to throw up more. Both the fact that Dobson and his Dashboard Bobblehead followers
and the girl's parents are propping her up as some sort of goddamn martyr,
and the fact that she is going along with this shit. Really? Are you fucking kidding me? Comparing herself to Esther? You kidding me? It's been a while since I've read a Bible that wasn't
annotated for my convenience, but I'm pretty fucking sure that no one is killing people wholesale for being Christian, at least not here in America, and I'm doubly sure that no one is going to kill people for being against gay marriage. Seriously. So fuck it. I know dick all about the world of beauty pageants and until now, I didn't give two fucks. Give it a month or two and no one else will give a fuck, either, and Focus on the Family will find some other threat to the family to flip out over. Fuck, given the short attention span most people have when it comes to news in general and entertainment news in specific, it won't even take a month. You know, if Christian media doesn't drag shit out like they always seem to do once they find a new martyr for the fucking cause.