On December 18, 2003 I linked to and commented on the now infamous gay marriage poll conducted by the anti-gay American Family Association. I became part of the Internet movement that ultimately showed the AFA what the American people really think — and that if they want to conduct a poll like this, they’d better open it up to everyone, not just their supporters.
At first, the organization touted that it was going to present the results of the poll to Congress. Now that the numbers have overwhelmingly shown that Americans who were fairly exposed to the poll favor gay marriage, they’ve changed their minds, claiming that the poll was hijacked by “homosexual activists.”
A week ago today I was contacted by a writer for Wired News on the topic. The story was published on Wired’s site at 2am this morning:
Wired News: Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled
An excerpt:
- Against the wishes of the AFA and its members, the poll leaked to the outside. And soon, people like Gabe began posting it to blogs, social-networking sites such as Friendster and sundry e-mail lists. When A_nderson posted it to his blog on Dec. 18, 2003, the anti-gay-marriage position was leading, with 51.45 percent of respondents opposing gay marriage or civil unions.
It’s pretty exciting to be quoted in and linked by a publication as reputable as Wired News. This is a first for my blog and I’m really excited about it. Already I’ve noticed tons of referrals to my site from Wired. Rock on.
And more power to my fellow homosexual activists.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Reed // Jan 22, 2004 at 1:25 pm
I’d still love to hear a half-convincing theory as to how homosexual marriage threatens anything at all. Well, besides the comforts of those bigots.
I remarked in the comments section of your initial post on this that I accidentally voted against marriage, moving to a new address to vote against it and nullify my initial braindead vote. I found it funny, because the AFA sent a notice to those of us who voted in their favor to send word to Bush about their stance on homosexual marriage. Needless to say, I did not receive such an e-mail to the address I used to vote for homosexual marriage.
I wrote an e-mail to them, thanking them for the opportunity for America to vote and show that the ignorant viewpoints of the 80s are slowly dying out. I told them I’d have to read what other stuff they had on their site (one must know one’s enemy in order to combat them). They sent me a nice e-mail with links to assorted documents, ranging from a Biblical rationale for their stance and resources to “understand the homosexual agenda.”
Highly laughable. I’ll have to write more about this on my blog sometime soon. Congrats, Gabe, for the note on Wired!
2 Jordan // Jan 22, 2004 at 1:36 pm
Please award yourself 2d8-2 geek points
3 George // Jan 22, 2004 at 2:23 pm
I just added another vote to the “poll”. I am a straight married male with a beautiful little baby daughter, let’s not forget a hefty tax payer. One would think that The America Family Association would find me a perfect demographic. I think that Homosexuals should not be spared from marriage, you are, after all, our brothers and sisters, often fathers and mothers, our daughers and sons. I hope that one day all of this puritan crap will be nothing but a memory…so, please go out and vote our present dictator out of the office and keep on fighting!
4 FourSixteen.net // Jan 22, 2004 at 4:06 pm
Marriage Poll Follow Up
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 figured out, this was an attempt by the
5 Tanner // Jan 22, 2004 at 4:10 pm
I think it is great that the posted this poll and the results actually stunned them. What do you expect when a poll on the Internet gets out on the wild? Especially one that is so politically charged! I took great pleasure it posting the URL in December and emailling it to my friends. Congrats on the free press from Wired and keep up the good work!
6 Bubba // Jan 28, 2004 at 2:54 pm
“I became part of the Internet movement that ultimately showed the AFA what the American people really think ”
How naive of you *and* the AFA … do we *really* think we can learn from the internet what the full American population thinks? It would be akin to having an internet poll to determine literacy rates — in the latter case, the medium is biased against one entire segment of the population. In the former case, advocacy for “traditional, puritan” heterosexual relationships hasn’t reached the fervor that homosexual advocates have. And whom do we see the mass media and the internet rags watching?
Your mileage may vary,
Bubba
7 Magnum Serpentine // Mar 1, 2004 at 12:16 pm
I see that AFA has now changed how it does its polls. For its anti-MTV poll, there is only one place to vote and only one vote you can cast, which is yes. The other, they claim they have over a million people who have signed their petition. One wonders how many pets, imaginary people etc are on that petition since they refuse to give out names.
As to the origional poll… It is gone along with its parent website. I just love Christian Censureship
Now, do this. Every time you have a talk with christians and they are of the level or class as Pat Robertson or James Dobson, every time you call in to talk to these people on Larry King or what ever show, do this: Remind them that they were not elected to represent the people, they only represent their company (Robertson) Or their Organization(Dobson) and that they do not represent the rest of us, and how dare they minupliate(SP) law makers and attempt to pass laws only favorable to their little special interest groups.