Perez has come across as the intolerant one…
I’m sure many people have heard about the controversy at the Miss USA pageant. While I usually completely ignore these pageants — I actually didn’t know it was going on until the news story broke — there is an aspect of this that is truly bothering me.
Those who know me know that I’m a pretty “secular” person. It’s not that I don’t have faith, I just have an inherent suspicion of organized religion, and I believe in a strict separation of church & state. Unfortunately, what I ideally believe and what is reality are two different things, and I’ve come to terms with the system we have.
However, as suspicious as I am of organized religion and as annoyed as I get at they hypocrisy of a lot of religious beliefs that breed intolerance, many very religious people are suspicious of secular people like me and get annoyed at what I believe.
Let me go at it this way: a popular attack of seculars on the religious is their intolerance for the ideas of others. However, just as often, seculars are intolerant of the ideas of the highly religious. Case and point: the Miss USA pageant.
Miss California (who may or may not have deserved to win, I don’t really care) was asked about the legalization of same-sex marriage in Vermont and Iowa. She responded (and I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to get the direct quote) that it was great that we have a system where the people can decide about marriage, but to her, marriage is between a man and a woman.
Perez Hilton flipped out, stated that she would have won if not for that answer, called her some names, and attacked her for being a bigot. Tell me, where in that answer is bigotry? She didn’t say that it was bad that Vermont and Iowa had legalized it, she didn’t say she was against it being legal. She said that, according to her beliefs and how she was raised, marriage is between a man and woman.
She was respectful of the opposite viewpoint. Perez was not respectful of her viewpoint (which, by the way, is also the view of our current President).
There are many, many people who have very traditional views of marriage — that doesn’t mean their bigots. I personally disagree with Miss California, I think that marriage is between two people who love each other and are devoted. I disagree, but I respect her view, and her opinion.
So, while we should always be on guard against religious intolerance, we also should be on guard against secular intolerance. There is nothing wrong with being religious or secular — the problem comes when you completely exclude the other’s views and opinions simply because they’re “religious” or “secular.”
You raise an excellent point, intolerance cuts both ways, and furthers no-one’s interests. Mr. Hilton hurts his cause through his mean-spiritedness. He could have stopped by noting that Miss Prejean’s comments cost her the crown, but he had to go on and assuage his wounded pride and desire for publicity by adding invective and bile into the mix. Now he appears petty and cruel, where before he may have just have been seen as political.