I think there were better candidates this year.
Posted on 10/09/2002 11:22:00 AM PDT by tuckrdout
Miss Harold said abstinence education is an important component of youth-violence prevention because violence is directly related to sexual permissiveness and promiscuity.
"I think that if a young person is engaged in a promiscuous lifestyle, it makes them vulnerable to other risk factors, so I definitely see a tie-in there," she said."Many victims of sexual harassment believe what is said about them, and they become very promiscuous. When they're called a whore, when they're called a slut, they think, 'That's what I want to be,' and so they engage in a pattern of self-destruction that can be very detrimental to their lives.
"And when I went through that experience, I took the opposite approach, and said I'm going to believe in who I am. I'm not going to be defined by what other people think about me. And so I felt very, very fortunate that I had parents, I had a faith community who reinforced this decision, and I was able to speak about this. I didn't take the route of becoming promiscuous; I took the route of reaffirming what I believed was right and stood for it. And I was very fortunate to be able to speak to thousands of young people about this."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
I think there were better candidates this year.
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Miss America 2003, Erika Harold, yesterday said
pageant officials have ordered her not to talk publicly about
sexual abstinence, a cause she has advocated to teenage girls
in Illinois.
"Quite frankly, and I'm not
going to be specific, there are
pressures from some sides to not
promote [abstinence]," the
22-year-old woman from Urbana,
Ill., told The Washington Times.
In her first visit to Washington
since winning the crown Sept. 21,
Miss Harold resisted efforts by
Miss America officials to silence
her pro-chastity opinions.
"I will not be bullied," Miss
Harold said yesterday at the
National Press Club, as officials
tried to prevent reporters from asking questions about her
abstinence message.
Miss Harold, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University
of Illinois, was "furious" as she arrived for yesterday's press
conference, an acquaintance said.
George Bauer, interim chief executive officer of the Miss
America organization, and other pageant officials had sternly
directed her to talk only about the issue of youth-violence
prevention and to say nothing about sexual abstinence, said
Miss Harold's acquaintance, who asked not to be named.
"They laid it on her coming over here" not to promote teen
chastity, the acquaintance said before the press conference
began. "She's furious about it."
Mr. Bauer did not respond to inquiries made yesterday
through Miss America corporate headquarters in Atlantic
City, N.J. The pageant has traditionally been skittish about
sexual subjects, and at one time forbade Miss America —
and even contestants — to be alone in a room with any man,
even fathers and brothers, without a chaperone.
Miss Harold has advocated premarital chastity through the
years as she traveled about Illinois on behalf of Project
Reality, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has been a pioneer in
the field of abstinence education. By the time she won the
Miss Illinois crown in June, Miss Harold had presented that
message to more than 14,000 young people.
Since 1990, Miss America and affiliated state pageants
have required contestants to adopt an official "platform" issue.
Miss Harold won the Miss Illinois contest with her platform
of "Teenage Sexual Abstinence: Respect Yourself, Protect
Yourself." But state pageant officials instead selected "teen
violence prevention" as her Miss America contest platform
because they deemed it more "pertinent," her father told an
Illinois newspaper.
Yesterday, Miss Harold said, she is "still in the process of
coming up with what it is that I can say," in interweaving her
pro-chastity views with her official platform.
After winning the Miss America crown, Miss Harold said
a young girl from an inner-city Chicago school sent her an
e-mail asking her to continue the abstinence campaign. "She
said, 'You changed my life because of what you said, and
now I made the decision to be abstinent because of what you
said. And I really hope that as Miss America you continue to
share that because it changed my life and I think it can change
lots of others.'"
Said Miss Harold: "And I would hate to think that there
are kids all over the country who now wonder, you know,
'Did I make the right decision in making that commitment, if
this person who inspired me to do it no longer is willing to
share that commitment on the national stage?' And so I would
feel a hypocrite if I did not."
A number of groups, including the World Health
Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the Anti-Defamation League and the National
Center for Victims of Crime, have supported Miss Harold's
anti-violence platform.
Immediately following the Sept. 21 Miss America pageant
in Atlantic City, Miss Harold was escorted to New York
City for meetings with leaders of social and political advocacy
groups, including the Anti-Defamation League.
"I collaborate with groups to work on certain issues" such
as curbing youth violence, she said, "but I rarely endorse a
group because, when you [do], you are saddled with
everything that they believe in, and if you don't support
aspects of what they support then that puts you in a very
difficult position to have to answer for things that you don't
necessarily subscribe to."
Miss Harold said abstinence education is an important
component of youth-violence prevention because violence is
directly related to sexual permissiveness and promiscuity. "I
think that if a young person is engaged in a promiscuous
lifestyle, it makes them vulnerable to other risk factors, so I
definitely see a tie-in there," she said.
"Many victims of sexual harassment believe what is said
about them, and they become very promiscuous. When
they're called a whore, when they're called a slut, they think,
'That's what I want to be,' and so they engage in a pattern of
self-destruction that can be very detrimental to their lives.
"And when I went through that experience, I took the
opposite approach, and said I'm going to believe in who I
am. I'm not going to be defined by what other people think
about me. And so I felt very, very fortunate that I had
parents, I had a faith community who reinforced this decision,
and I was able to speak about this. I didn't take the route of
becoming promiscuous; I took the route of reaffirming what I
believed was right and stood for it. And I was very fortunate
to be able to speak to thousands of young people about this."
The new Miss America had meetings yesterday with
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Surgeon General
Richard Carmona. Today, she meets with Education
Secretary Rod Paige and Deputy Secretary William Hansen.
At the press conference, Miss Harold detailed bullying she
and her family suffered because of her interracial heritage,
when she was a ninth-grader eight years ago in Urbana, Ill.
She is of black and American Indian ancestry.
Yesterday's press conference was sponsored by "Fight
Crime: Invest in Kids," a Washington-based group of more
than 1,500 police chiefs, sheriffs and about 200 victims of
violence, which Miss Harold has joined as national
spokeswoman.
She talked about the violence she and her family
experienced.
In the middle of the night, she said, someone once hurled
a carton of eggs through her bedroom window and smeared
the window with butter and cheese. "Another time, the power
in my house was short-circuited by the bullies. And so my
entire family was forced to live under siege because we had
no notice when these attacks were going to come."
In her math class at school, she said a teacher watched
and did nothing as a student sang "a horribly degrading song
with words that I am not going to repeat today," she said.
"The students retaliated in a very frightening way" and
discussed plans "to pool their lunch money together to buy a
rifle to kill me. And when I went to tell the principal this, his
only remark to me was, 'If you'd only be more submissive
like the other girls, this wouldn't happen to you.'"
Out goes politically incorrect subjects and in come the government approved ones. BTW, "teen violence prevention" is just a code phrase for gun control.
,,, pay attention Hollywood.
Huh? In what universe is this true? No girl becomes a slut because someone calls her a slut. sheesh....
No, they select you on the basis of your wholesome character, and then once you *win* you have to consent to becoming their whore.
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