Carrie Prejean, the recently dethroned Miss California whose anti-gay marriage comments at the April 19 Miss Universe Pageant stoked the national debate, filed suit yesterday against Miss California Pageant officials, citing religious discrimination amongst a litany of other charges.
TMZ.com reports that “Prejean claims the Miss Cali people ‘conspired to get rid of her’ beginning on April 21st — when she said on the ‘Today’ show that she would rather be ‘biblically correct than politically correct,’ when it came to the subject of gay marriage.
Pageant officials are standing by their story that Prejean was dismissed due to missed scheduled appearances and not getting permission to do outside appearances for organizations, such as the National Organization for Marriage, that came courting her post-broadcast.
When the Queen of all Media, gossip blogger and Miss Universe Pageant judge Perez Hilton, began haranguing the beauty queen over the response to his question using some very unsavory language, I defended her. But this, I can’t defend.
I find it irksome, almost offensive, that she’s claiming religious discrimination, on top of the usual “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” when the newly-crowned Miss California, one-time runner-up Tami Farrell, has also stated that she personally believes marriage should be between a man and woman. Farrell told Fox New’s Neil Cavuto that while she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, she doesn’t feel that “anybody has a right to tell somebody who they can or can’t love” and that it’s a civil rights issue to be decided by the voters.
For Prejean to claim religious discrimination when the pageant clearly hasn’t taken any action against the also Christian and similarly minded Farrell belittles the oftentimes horrific suffering of those who are religiously persecuted, both here and abroad.

Prejean certainly has the right to believe whatever she will, but it seems like this is a publicity stunt aimed at shoring up her reputation with conservative groups and building buzz for her upcoming memoir. Moaklar, notorious for carrying on MySpace and Twitter cyber-fights, had moved on from Prejean and back to name-calling with her ex-husband, Blink 182’s Travis Barker. Now the spotlight is back on the Prejean imbroglio.
Everyone deserves their day in court. But, if she, as pageant officials claim, missed scheduled appearances and breached other aspects of her contract, then they have every right to dismiss her and it should be fairly easy to prove. And don’t tell me that the incident has hurt her future earning potential: would anyone have been interested in the memoir of a Miss USA runner-up without this controversy? I don’t think so.
What do you think? Is Prejean’s suit genuine or a publicity stunt?