Miss California Controversy

After Prop 8 was passed, there has been a storm of riots and angry voices amongst many Americans who adamantly proposed an appeal to such a proposition of banning same-sex marriages. Some states are hearing the minority cries and in seeing the injustice have legalize same-sex marriages within their own jurisdiction- like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and shortly Iowa and Vermont will be on the road map to progress.

It's unbelievable to me that we can perceive such great and innovative things and come so far technologically, yet our perception of humankind and its institutions can sometimes still be so archaic in values. We think back to the days where we had to fight against racism and the war for interracial marriages, and we still cannot learn our lessons and continue to let history repeat itself until some sort of revolution blows up for people to finally see things in perspective as they should be. We ha ve been socialized to differentiate between physical sexes with this notion of gender (being male or female), and between people in different countries with the idea of nationalities. In striving to make sense of the already complicated world we inhabit by differentiating and categorizing everything, we've only made it all the more difficult to reside in. What is the difference being black, white, or yellow and being male, female or transgendered but mere variations of shapes and colors of the human body? We have only fought against racism and sexism because we have a clear concept of the taboo our society has embedded in those words. So is it thus harder for us to see the immoral offense in homophobia or anti-LGBT because society has not yet created a taboo word for it? What if we labeled it genderism and had that defined as being prejudice against the roles of how a male or female should act or be between each other? Would more and more people come to understand then? I am sure that in a few years the rest of the world will come to see how inhumane this all is.

Digressing a bit, this brings me to the Miss California controversy during the Miss USA pageant. When she was asked how she felt about the legalization of gay marriages, she responded:

"I think it's great that Americans are able to chose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what? In my country and in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there; but that's how I was raised and that's how I think, that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you."

Politically incorrect? Yes. Socially unaccepatable? Yes. Wrong answer? No. It was obvious that this answer lost her the crown, hands down. She was booed by many for being so narrow-minded and applauded by some for being so honest with her own beliefs which may have mirrored their own. This puts things in a whole different arena, because even though we hold the idea of speaking our minds freely, a lot of people become silenced with their ideas and beliefs because of the mass majority. This is not to say that I agree with Miss California or that I felt that she deserved to win (because I don't) but this is about the controversy that has been sparked causing judgment against who she is or may be as a person because she did not go with the majority. This actually creates a paradoxical situation. We believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but we shoot them down when they voice something that goes against the main stream or our own opinions. But in this case, the opinion was a tyrannical one that encouraged the retrogradation of a particular group. So in reverse, because we believe that each individual should have their own opinions and so each state should come to their own conclusions based on a majority vote, sometimes the minority cries are the ones that deserve to be heard. Those cries are anything that may prohibit particular groups from enjoying the same freedoms everyone is entitled to; in which cases, the cries of the "No on Prop 8" was silenced by the "Yes on Prop 8."

Nat