Perez Hilton, Miss USA, Gay Marriage

A(nother) seminal moment in the evolution of Gay Marriage in Popular American Culture

I haven’t read a paper or watched the news in days…and yet, somewhere in the periphery of my awareness Perez Hilton, the fabulously popular, snarky, bitchy, famous internet superstar, has done something with Miss USA, or something.

So it was that after hanging this afternoon with a good pal who just happens to be gay, I rode home to my green-renovated downtown Victorian, Hotelephant, turned on the news, opened up a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and…there was Perez Hilton, on Larry King Live. 

Probably the most interesting interview on Larry King I’ve seen all year. 

Apparently Perez was a judge on the Trump-owned Miss USA finals…and the frontrunner, a conventionally-stunning blond young lady, gave a initially open-minded, finally close-minded answer to his remarkably gutsy, yet pre-approved question re Gay Marriage, Prop 8 in California and the recent landmark decisions in Vermont and Iowa. Subsequently, she lost to an apparently stunning, stunningly talented competitor.

Here’s the video:

Apparently, edited out, there were a ton of boos from the crowd—a Miss USA first.

On Larry King Live, Perez was surprisingly well-spoken, mature, fair (he genuinely invited the finalist to coffee, to get to know him, a gay man, better…and so expand her horizons). He was less a mean-spirited, crass showman than I was led to believe from what little I’d heard of his uberpopular pop culture blog. Guess I’ll start reading PerezHiltonDotCom! I’m already following him on twitter.

Here’s a small section of the interview. I’ll put up more when I find it: