A former Miss Pennsylvania USA, who gave up her state crown shortly after the Miss Universe organization announced its decision to allow transgender participants, has been ordered pay the pageant organization $5 million for defamation.

Sheena Monnin, who quit the pageant in June, told national media that the pageant was "rigged," and that she saw the list of the Top 5 on the morning of the pageant, "before the show ever started."

In his annual Christmas address to Vatican officials -- one of his most high profile speeches of the year -- the Pope said that a person’s gender identity is God-given and unchangeable, and as a result, he sees same-sex marriage as a “manipulation of nature.”

“There is no denying the crisis that threatens it (the family) to its foundations — especially in the Western world,” the Pope said. “When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child — essential elements of the experience of being human are lost.”

Richard Adams, an early pioneer in the fight for marriage equality for gays and lesbians, died Dec. 17 in the Hollywood home he shared with Anthony Sullivan, his partner of 43 years, his attorney said Sunday. Adams was 65.

Adams and Sullivan made history nearly four decades ago when they became one of the first gay couples in the country to be granted a marriage license.