Miss California who is working to be the next Anita Bryant appears in a NOM ad, which was announced in a press conference. The National Organization for Marriage got more attention with their “Gathering Storm” ad for the actor out takes and spoofs. Apparently the 21 year old hired the same PR firm which manages religious celebrities such as James Dobson and Rick Warren and has been going around saying she lost the Miss USA contest because of her beliefs about marriage.
Anyway at the same time state pageant people say they paid for her breast implants, and express their sadness she abandoned her previous causes, she appears in the ‘press conference’ for her NOM ad.
What is interesting about this ad to those who follow the religious right celebrity circuit is the quotes from the two letters at the end of the ad (just before they beg for money) Right Wing Watch:
The NOM ad then flashes the quotes “will create widespread and unnecessary legal conflicts” and “effects would be … devestating” on the screen, but doesn’t say where they came from.
I had to laugh, the video of the ad at RRW has been yanked because of copyright issues. This seems to becoming a habit, and this time the ad was yanked by gossip columnist and Miss USA judge Perez Hilton (Mario Lavendeira). The letters weren’t warning against same sex marraige, they were supporting an exemption for religious organizations. Both letters are on the NOM site, and NOM supports the arguments. Why one message for TV and one for people a) who read and b) use the internet?
The second letter comes from Douglas Laycock, Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, who is a supporter of same-sex marriage and wrote to the Connecticut Legislature to urge them to add such an exemption in order to prevent the Religious Right from playing the victim:
Well, the US religious right played victim anyway, with NOM using their new star.
So NOM posted two letters urging the passage of a religious exemption to the state’s marriage equality law – an exemption that was granted and hailed by NOM – yet is taking quotes from those letters out of context in their new ad to suggest that marriage equality itself will somehow have devastating effects for the nation, when the letters said nothing of the sort.
The context of the letters and the NOM endorsement of them are at Right Wing Watch. Parodies of this ad are already up at YouTube, like the last NOM ad, watch it while you can. NOM appears to be distancing it’s organization from the beauty queen, issuing a statement of ‘clarification.’
Breast enlargement paid for by the pageant organisers and
the woman has a PR firm. Those are two elements that detract
from the pageant and the contestant.
It no longer is about natural appearance and poise and charm.
Now it’s about image via breast enlargements and hiring
a PR firm–one that has religious ties, at that!
The innocence of yesteryear has been corrupted and thrown
out along with the ethos of contestant organisers. These types
of contests have come to resemble modern day evangelism at
its worst. It is not as it seems. A Potemkin village, if that!
It’s a pity what’s happening; America is hollowing out at
the core of its soul and the chief architects of this are
the ones who are fervent evangelicals.
What they’re doing to their religions, the rest of America
is doing to the rest of its society. Truly sad.
She was a junior at a christian college and now that Ms. Prejean seeks her 15 minutes of fames, Liberty University offered her a full scholarship.
It was the PR firm that got me, there was no expectation she was going to be the contest winner, so when she isn’t she parlays her loss into a career. The victim opportunism is hollow stuff.
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