Miss California USA title winner Carrie Prejean lost the Miss USA 2009 tiara to Miss North Carolina USA title winner Kristen Dalton after her unfortunate response to a question about gay marriage.

If you want to win a beauty pageant, you shouldn’t give such an impolitic answer to a question. To win a beauty pageant, you mainly just need to be pretty and *get through* the question section. If you really are smart and/or well educated, here’s your chance to prove it! If not, all you need to do is wish peace, harmony, unicorns and glitter for everyone all around the world, especially those without maps or education, as like in the Iraq, and such as…

I edited this story to erase any direct references to PH because this story is really about the consequences of this woman’s response to a question about marriage equality in a public forum. Her response caused her to lose.

Perhaps public figures and politicians (and those aspiring to the same) will take note that publicly speaking out against gay marriage is fast becoming a high risk / low reward political move. Perhaps, as Meghan McCain suggests, “Republican resistance to gay marriage goes against our own conservative values–and our own self-interest.”