Wired has posted an article related to my post back in December about MarriagePoll.com (as an aside check out the random anti-gay comment that someone made). As both myself and many others such as Gabe Anderson figured out, this was an attempt by the AFA (American Family Association) to ask only its constituents their position on gay marriage. They were then going to take these results to Congress, which they assumed would defend their position against gay marriage, to help with their movement to establish a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Well, with the help of tons of blog entries and others sites, the results of this poll turned out to be quite contrary to what the AFA was hoping. Almost 68% of voters (508,000 voters overall) either favor gay marriage or a civil union. The best part is that according to AFA rep Buddy Smith, I am now a member of a homosexual activist group.
"We're very concerned that the traditional state of marriage is under threat in our country by homosexual activists," said AFA representative Buddy Smith. "It just so happens that homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll -- it was forwarded to them -- and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (onto) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that."
The end result of all this is the AFA has had to abandon any hope of submitting these poll results to Congress. The bottom line is that the AFA has no concept of the power of email, blogs, and the Internet in general. They should never have expected to post a public poll and have no one find out. The poll results should also tell the AFA and Congress something else…perhaps a lot of Americans actually do approve of some sort of gay union.
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