May I have some cheese with my whine, please?

I'm ticked.

I covered the Mrs. Alaska United States Pageant and had a blast doing it. I used to make fun of pageants but after I did one on a lark when I was pregnant with Starshine, I got hooked. Pageants represent the present culture and the women who maintain those norms. Writing this, I see exactly how what has upset me represents this idea.

The winner was someone who really had her stuff together and who told me that her platform was instilling confidence in young women, starting with the mothers. Her real agenda is marriage as a one man, one woman thing and denying rights to others who are biologically inclined to their own sex. Never mind that gays have families and are like the rest of the population, good or bad, but not because of their orientation.

Forty-six hours after her win, she was on TV getting press, leading children and protesting the municipal ordinance that would grant equal rights to everyone.

The pageant organizer told me that "I was there to make sure that she represented her position without taking an anti-gay position. She was clear that her position was neither for or against homosexuals, but was against her right to vote on this issue." News footage suggests other things. This woman is a member of Prevo's church and what she had said her platform was is quite different from what she is saying now.

This is probably under the carpet now-- but I am not happy that a pageant winner would be so openly against equal rights and be wearing a tiara and sash to get press on it. Gays are huge in pageants. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. I regret that this may have temporarily sullied the Mrs. Alaska Pageant, which is not like this.

I'd publish her picture, but it would probably just inflate her ego. She had seemed so nice!