Gari McDonald is a pretty teen with a bright smile – it’s no wonder she won the Miss Teen Bahamas pageant. \uffa0But now McDonald says pageant organizers are trying to strip her of her title because she’s a lesbian.
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\nShe says that after coming out her prizes were frozen and she was not allowed to participate in the international pageant that was held in July, in Chicago.<\/P><\/p>\n
At a news conference at the Rainbow Alliance – the Bahamas LGBT rights organization – McDonald said she may file a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the Miss Teen Bahamas Committee. <\/P><\/p>\n
“It has placed my back against the wall and now I am at a point of making a decision,” she said.<\/P><\/p>\n
McDonald said she turned to the Alliance after she was given the option of “either gracefully stepping down as the reigning queen or deal with the embarrassment of being stripped of her crown” because she is gay.<\/P><\/p>\n
The committee denies that that it put an ultimatum to McDonald but has refused to say why she was frozen out of the international contest and denied her prizes. <\/P><\/p>\n
Evangelical Christians on the island are supporting removing McDonald’s crown. They have been involved in a lengthy war against gays in the Bahamas. <\/P><\/p>\n
Last year, more than 100 members of a conservative Christian group staged a noisy protest when a gay cruise ship tour led by Rosie O’Donnell docked. In 1998 a similar demonstration was held when a gay tour tried to visit the island. <\/P><\/p>\n
Source: 365Gay.com<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evangelical Christians on the island are supporting removing McDonald’s crown. They have been involved in a lengthy war against gays in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}