For all you husbands out there, which of these constitutes the greater threat to your traditional, heterosexual marriage?
A) Gay people getting married.
B) Your wife asking you, "Honey, does this dress make me look fat?"
If your answer is not "B," you have not been married very long and are highly likely to be part of the 40 to 50 percent of straight marriages that end in divorce.
Wisdom on this whole gay marriage thing is hard to come by, but comic Joan Rivers came close the other night on CNN's Larry King show.
"Gay marriage," she said. "I am so against it because all my gay friends are out. And if they get married, it will cost me a fortune in gifts."
Caught up in the whole maelstrom of emotions over the issue is poor Carrie Prejean.
Prejean was minding her own business representing California in the recent Miss USA contest when she was asked by pageant judge Perez Hilton about her views on gay marriage.
Prejean said that while she didn't want to offend anybody, she feels that marriage should be reserved for the union between a man and a woman.
Truth be known, her answer wasn't terribly different than that given by Barack Obama when asked the same question in the beauty contest that elected him president.
She finished second in the Miss USA pageant, and that's when things started getting weird for Miss Prejean.
Blond, beautiful Miss California was all over cable television and the Internet, and operatives on the far sides of the political spectrum were more than happy to use her for their own purposes.
Liberals rather unfairly made her a piñata. I say "unfairly" because even though I disagree with her answer, it had the virtue of being honest. The USA should expect nothing less from someone vying to be its official "Miss."
I'm also not certain that being in a Miss USA pageant that drew far fewer TV viewers than "60 Minutes" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" in the same time slot makes someone a public figure whose life deserves to be scrutinized like a presidential candidate's.
First, it was revealed that after capturing the state title, Prejean requested and received from the Miss California committee ... an all-expense-paid boob job.
Apparently, any means necessary to achieve the proper "proportion" demanded by the judges isn't all that unusual in the cutthroat world of beauty pageants.
Consider this exchange between CBS "Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez and Keith Lewis, co-director of the Miss California Pageant after he defended arranging and paying for Prejean's breast implants.
RODRIGUEZ: "... if you have a flat chest, what are you supposed to do?"
LEWIS: "You use chicken cutlets. You use tape. You use anything that you can to enhance the line. There's lots of tricks of the trade."
Chicken cutlets?
Well, that just put me off of watching the Miss Universe Pageant when it comes on in August. The last thing a fellow wants to think about during the swimsuit competition is Colonel Sanders.
Soon after the surgery revelation came naughty photos of Prejean on an Internet website. She first said there was only one picture, except there were a lot more. She also said they were taken when she was 17, except they weren't. Most were shot last year.
Actually, they weren't all that risque. I looked at them (purely out of journalistic curiosity, of course), and they were nothing you couldn't find in any number of fashion magazine advertisements.
Meanwhile, Prejean had become an instant celebrity with conservative Republicans for standing up for traditional marriage.
Even though Miss USA Pageant officials said her answer couldn't mathematically have cost her the title, she said she was convinced it had.
That was fine, but then she got a little scary.
Appearing on Dr. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" show, she apparently mistook pesky celebrity blogger and contest judge Perez Hilton for the devil, which, come to think of it, might not be all that much of a stretch.
"I felt as though Satan was trying to tempt me in asking me this question," she said. "And then God was in my head and in my heart saying, Do not compromise this. ...'"
Uhhh ... right.
Miss Prejean received absolution for the racy photos this week _ not from a member of the clergy, but from Donald Trump, the multimillionaire owner of the pageant who said she can keep her Miss California crown.
So, Carrie Prejean is happy.
The Democrats are happy because they could point out what they feel is right-wing hypocrisy.
The Republicans are happy because they haven't had a beauty queen who talks about traditional values since ... well ... Sarah Palin.
So, unless I miss my guess, that leaves everyone happy and _ dare I say it _ gay.
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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.
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