Miss California, Carrie Prejean, certainly made ripples a few weeks ago at the Miss USA pageant when she took a stand against gay marriage–whether these were positive or negative ripples she sent outward depends on your politics. And yesterday Donald Trump, the owner of the pageant, decided not to strip Prejean of her crown.
Even so, feminist theologian and scholar Paula Cooey takes Miss CA to town for her “bad theology” in her scathing assessment of Prejean’s hypocrisy–which somehow allows her to be against gay marriage and pro breast augmentation in the same breath. Here’s a snippet of Cooey’s fascinating piece, “Carrie Prejean, God’s Prophet or Porn Star?“:
“Regarding cultural hypocrisy, Carrie Prejean had breast implant surgery just weeks before the pageant, bought and paid for by the California Pageant people at her request. More recently, photos of Prejean bare-breasted have surfaced (and keep surfacing–see left half of story image). She was seventeen at the time they were taken. Apparently unaware that the country is currently debating whether to criminalize “sexting” by minors as the transmission of pornography (a conviction that could label them as sexual predators for the rest of their lives), her response is quite simply that she was a model at the time and that everyone makes mistakes. And, she asserted once again that she is now a Christian. Oblivious to the possibility that theological consistency might lead to a conclusion that a god who prohibits homosexuality and homosexual marriage would not look favorably upon her interventions with her own body, she stands by her claim that God intends heterosexual marriage exclusively.”
Cooey’s writing is not for the theologically faint-hearted, certainly, but I think, worth the wade for sure. Happy reading.