Poll cuts

Quel surprise. The web poll by the American Family Association on the nassty nasstiness of gay marriage will not get presented to Congress after all, as originally promised.

Seems it turns out that the poll didn’t show that the vast majority of red-blooded Americans disapproved of gay marriage, but just the opposite.

But the AFA never counted on the power of the Internet. And once the URL to the poll escaped its intended audience, everything went haywire. As of Jan. 19, 60 percent of respondents — more than 508,000 voters — said, “I favor legalization of homosexual marriage.” With an additional 7.89 percent — or 66,732 voters — replying, “I favor a ‘civil union’ with the full benefits of marriage except for the name,” the AFA’s chosen position, “I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and ‘civil unions,'” was being defeated by a 2-1 ratio.

Of course, a web poll is inherently meaningless, since it only reflects the opinions of those who (a) find it, and (b) feel like filling it out. That doesn’t stop folks from posting them up there, since it lets them wave around convincing-sounding percentages that, 99.99% of the time, support exactly the position that they want supported.

After all, you put a web poll up on the page of a conservative religious organization, you figure the folks who see it and take it will be conservative and religious, and probably in agreement with your position on the matter (since otherwise, why would they be at your web site?).

That falls apart, though, when the word gets out and people decide to skew the data some other way. As apparently happened here.

It’s all, of course, a big conspiracy by the nassssty gay activists and their nasssty God-hating liberal Commie-symp atheistic allies.

“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.”

You have to give them credit. They’re honest enough to admit that they had in mind what they wanted the poll to “represent” when they gave it to Congres.

Now, Smith says, his organization has had to abandon its goal of taking the poll to Capitol Hill. “We made the decision early on not to do that,” Smith admitted, “because of how, as I say, the homosexual activists around the country have done their number on it.

As opposed to the anti-homosexual activists they’d expected to do a number on it.

Feh. And, heh.

(via DGDD)