For those who may have missed it, here’s Carrie Prejean and Matt Lauer, chatting on TODAY:
Ms. PREJEAN: I knew at that moment after I had answered the question, I knew that I was not going to win because of my answer.
LAUER: Because you had spoken from your heart.
Ms. PREJEAN: Because I had spoken from my heart, from my beliefs and for my God.
LAUER: Well, OK, so let me ask you this. So if I were to—and I won’t ask you. But if I were to ask you the very same question right now and say you get a do-over on this, how badly do you want to win that title? Would you have answered it differently?
Ms. PREJEAN: No, I wouldn’t have answered it differently. I think that the way that I answered it, you know, might have been offensive to people, and I said in no offense to anybody, I did not want to offend anybody. But I think with that question specifically, it’s not about being politically correct. For me it was being biblically correct.
LAUER: He says he hopes this doesn’t usher in an era where contestants are subjectively judged on religious or moral or political beliefs.
Ms. PREJEAN: And I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of pageant girls, you know, they have the pressure. Like Claudia Jordan said—she was one of the judges, she was great. She said that, you know, I should have been more in the middle, I shouldn’t have given a specific answer. But that goes against what I stand for. And when I’m asked a specific question, I’m going to give a specific answer. I’m not going to stand in the middle. I’m going to take one side or the other.
LAUER: Carrie, you came so close.
Ms. PREJEAN: And I am—I am so proud of myself and I have so many people that are so proud of me. And it wasn’t what God wanted for my life that night.
— Miss California Carrie Prejean, interviewed by Matt Lauer,after losing the Miss USA pageant because she voiced her opposition to gay marriage.
UPDATE: Evidently, one of the judges has now received death threats, as a result of something she wrote on her blog about this controversy. All this, over a beauty pageant??