It’s time someone stood up for the most marginalized minority group in America. The US-Americans of which I speak are, in fact, so despised and lacking in representation that they are forced to gather, once a year, just to prove their collective worth to a nation and society who, to be frank, could not care less.

I speak, of course, of beauty queens.

Apparently a new Miss America/USA was crowned last weekend. Who knew? I had no idea they were even holding the Miss America pageant anymore. I mean I’m just as much a red-blooded American male as the next guy, known for my strong affinity for women with low IQ’s and high chest-to-waste ratios, and a big fan of world peace to boot! But it slipped by even me. Nowhere else on the planet can you tune in and see such a bevy of attractive women with such well-developed… ahem… assets and few brain cells. And apparently no one aside from the contestant themselves would have given a tinker’s-damn about any of it but for a politically loaded, hot-potato-of-a-question that took out Miss California and handed the crown to Miss North Carolina.

The question came from “Perez Hilton,” the flamboyantly gay force behind one of the most popular Hollywood gossip sites on the planet, PerezHilton.com. This self-anointed “gossip queen” who’s moniker pays homage to the ultimate Hollywood tabloid harlot, Paris Hilton, makes Liberace look like Mr. Rogers, and has apparently risen in stardom to the point that he was brought in as one of the judges for this year’s festivities. (Shame to waste all those bikinis on a gay man, but at least he got some ideas for swim-suit season! Haaaay!)

During the always-stimulating Q&A portion of the show, Hilton leveled this question at Miss Prop-8-State, Carrie Prejean,

“Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”

Hear her answer here.

(Whoops, wrong clip, sorry…) Prejean answered,

“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and in, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman,” Carrie said to a mix of boos and applause. “No offense to anybody 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.”

Despite the fact that it was delivered about as well as your ex-brother-in-law’s wedding toast, the answer, for a beauty queen, is legitimate and about as coherent as one can expect. But it was not the poor delivery that cost Prejean the tiara, according to Hilton and the audience, but the answer itself.

“The way miss California answered her question lost her the crown, without a doubt!” Perez told Access Hollywood after the pageant. “Never before that I’m aware of has a contestant been booed at Miss USA,” Hilton said.

Keith Lewis, Co-Executive Director of the Miss California USA and Miss California Teen USA said this is a statement to Access Hollywood,

“I am proud of Carrie Prejean’s beauty and placement at the 2009 Miss USA pageant. I support Carrie’s right to express her personal beliefs even if they do not coincide with my own,” Keith told Access. “I believe the subject of gay marriage deserves a great deal more conversation in order to heal the divide it has created.”

So, it really wouldn’t have mattered if Prejean had have answered the question with the eloquence of William F. Buckley Jr. or Obama’s Teleprompter, her views on gay marriage (views that 52.24% of the California voting-public agree with) are so repulsive that they cost the statuesque blond a title with as little relevance to the general public as Janeane Garofalo’s career. Wow!

Strike another blow against free-speech and free minds.

Of course, Miss Prejean’s mistake wasn’t her answer, but that she didn’t have the common sense to realize the political volatility of the question and the fact that it was delivered by a celebrated homosexual lightening rod. Hilton often uses his website as a pro-gay rights platform and was incredibly active in opposing and rallying support against Proposition 8, an amendment to the CA Constitution that threatened to tear the state in half just a few short months ago.

Obviously, the pageant and appointed judges can run and rule the way they feel, but it’s a shame to see the content of Miss Prejean’s answer (and her personal beliefs) judged, instead of the quality of her answer. (The quality of her answer would have sealed her fate had I been a judge, but instead of focusing on her apparent lack of eloquence and inability to communicate her own ideals, Hilton & Co. chose to punish her for holding a politically incorrect opinion on a politically volatile issue, an opinion that, incidentally, a majority of the American people support. But what does that matter? Wherever a fashionably-dressed vocal minority are in charge, you traditionalists had better watch out! (Or they might throw a pump at you!)

So, Miss Prejean, I’m sure you are in need of some comfort and should you be interested in opposing homosexuality through the exploration of a strictly heterosexual interaction, look me up.