Another California Belle Rips Gay Marriage

You'd think the backlash against Carrie Prejean would have served as a cautionary tale for California beauty queens with controversial stances on gay rights. But Lauren Ashley, holder of the Miss Beverly Hills 2010 crown, one-upped Prejean with a blunt denunciation of homosexuality complete with excerpts from Leviticus.

During an interview with Fox News for a running feature entitled 'Pop Tarts'--yes, really--Ashley offered a Bible-inspired rant against gay people:

The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, 'If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.' The Bible is pretty black and white ... If [God] says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that's a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life.

The reaction from the left has been swift and fierce, with liberal bloggers racing to denounce the latest beauty-queen bigot. Only this time, a note of exasperation has crept into many posts.

• We Shouldn't Care, but We Do  "There really is no legitimate reason to care what some spoiled pageant brat thinks about gay people," sighs New York Magazine's Dan Amira. But in the wake of Prejean's fall from grace, Amira can't help but be fascinated by Ashley, who he says is "either too stupid to realize that she has blown any chance at winning the Miss California competition, or, if she didn't really care about that, savvy enough to realize that her outspoken anti-gay opinions could make her a fleeting mini-celebrity in ultrareligious circles."

• Just Another Blonde Beauty-Queen Bigot  After deriding her as Prejean with a "porn star name," True/Slant's Sara Libby voices her disgust at Ashley's half-baked justification for her screed. "Of course, she used the time-honored justification of bigots everywhere, telling Fox News (where else) that she has a lot of friends who are gay. I'm guessing they're not close friends, though, since she's apparently just waiting out the minutes until God offs them."

• The Next Budding GOP Star? Echoing his True/Slant colleague's contempt for Ashley, John Knefel predicts her future with a heavy layer of snark.
  

Expect National Review to declare Lauren Ashley the "future of the GOP" and its new intellectual heavyweight. They will be correct, and she will someday rule us all, hotly. Or maybe we can just send her to Uganda. Her politics -- we can probably kill gays, right, for god, yes? -- are the mainstream there.