Wednesday, January 07, 2004
AFA poll redux - from Planetout.com News
In anti-gay poll, same-sex marriage gains
Eric Johnston, Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network
SUMMARY: An Internet poll conducted by the anti-gay American Family Association showed on Tuesday more than two-thirds of respondents favor legalizing gay marriage or civil unions.
Here's some choice quotes from the article (the full article is at the URL on this entry).
With more than 700,000 votes cast, "America's Poll on Homosexual Marriage" showed 59.55 percent of respondents voting in favor of legalization of gay marriage, with 32.51 percent opposing it. Another 7.94 percent voted to favor civil unions with the full benefits of marriage.
Great, great numbers, folks. Lopsided, yes, but I don't think the AFA realized that they would get this kind of response. Sources tell me that only the anti-gay marriage votes get spam mail, at least so far, and that the mail has been interesting to say the least. With a two-to-one majority against them, you can bet that they're scrambling for any support they can get at this point.
The survey is conducted by an organization whose mission is to "expose the misrepresentation of the radical homosexual agenda and stop its spread though our culture."
Well, with this poll being in the national news, showing its skewed and biased methodology, I think that they've shown how they misrepresent the gay population of this country... and if they wanted to stop the misrepresentation from spreading, this will do a pretty good job of it.
Tim Wildmon, president of the AFA, did not respond to interview requests from the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network.
Of course Wildmon didn't respond to a request for an interview. He's running scared. He can't believe that his pet poll which was supposed to show how nasty and ickybad gay people really are backfired and was broadcast to the world without his particular spin on the results. Even a retarded monkey can see that the wording of the poll is inherently skewed and biased -- and now everyone knows how his "results" were supposed to lean. Bad move, Tim, very bad. You've shot yourself in the foot (and incidentally destroyed your credibility to boot).
They're trying to spin this for themselves, too. A person on the AFA mailing list recently reported receiving a letter from the AFA saying, essentially, "It's so wonderful that so many people voted against us because they came to our site and so they will have taken the time to be exposed to the gospel of blahdyblah etc. and so forth." Sounds like overcompensation to me. I looked at their site and all it did was reinforce my disdain for idiots who use their religion as a weapon.
In November, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that prohibiting same-sex couples the right to marry violated the state's Constitution. The court gave the Massachusetts Legislature six months to rewrite the law to allow same-sex marriage. Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts may have to be honored in other states.
No, dears. It's not "may have to." It's WILL have to. The FFCC doesn't allow for exceptions based on judgmental idiocy. This is why the religious right is pushing so hard for an anti-gay marriage amendment, because then that pesky old FFCC would stop being so pesky.
"The lopsided nature of the vote shows we're a community that can mobilize and make its point of view known," said Witeck, who is also CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications in Washington, D.C. "Now what has to happen is we have to translate these votes on the American Family Association's Web site into political commitment, by registering to vote and going out and voting."
Yes. Absolutely. Get out there, get registered, and vote. Get politically active. Run for city council or school board positions. Start getting known. Start getting into local politics as well as national.
The AFA operates a Christian radio news service from its home base in Tupelo, Miss. According to its Web site, the organization "represents and stands for traditional family values" and takes credit for pressuring ABC to cancel the "pro-homosexual show 'Ellen.'"
I have to laugh at this. The AFA thinks that their protests were what caused "Ellen" to be removed from the airwaves? No, dears. It was that after Ellen came out, her show ceased to be all that funny. I know. I watched it. It became preachy. Nobody watches a comedy show to get preached at. I love Ellen, don't get me wrong, but I'm glad that her new show is a talk show, where it's okay to get a little preachy.
The AFA is an ostrich. Ostriches stick their heads in the sand when there's danger. They are like children who think "If I can't see you, you can't see me." What Wildmon and his associates are failing to realize is that their shenanigans are now on national display for everyone to see, and boys, you've been caught with your pants down and your hands in the cookie jar, all at once. Naughty, naughty.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who claim to follow a man who taught that "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the right way to live still continue to follow a program of hate, lies, indifference and violence against us and our rights. It looks like someone got the translation garbled somewhere along the line -- the AFA and other fundamentalists seem to follow the rule of "do unto others before they do unto you, and make sure they can't do anything back to you afterwards."
This is not a Christian attitude by any stretch of the imagination.
I often wonder what motivates people to hate, and more so, what motivates them to hate without even looking into all the facts about a person or a group or an idea they hate. People hate blindly, it seems, and resent anyone trying to help them see.
Socrates' vision of the cave was right. We laugh at those who see sunlight and call them crazy, because we're so convinced that the shadows we're seeing are the only real things.
So, where do we go from here? Keep on keepin' on, folks. Do what you've been doing. Stay active. Stay alert. Stay aware.
Stay with it.
¶ 1/07/2004 11:55:00 AM
Eric Johnston, Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network
SUMMARY: An Internet poll conducted by the anti-gay American Family Association showed on Tuesday more than two-thirds of respondents favor legalizing gay marriage or civil unions.
Here's some choice quotes from the article (the full article is at the URL on this entry).
With more than 700,000 votes cast, "America's Poll on Homosexual Marriage" showed 59.55 percent of respondents voting in favor of legalization of gay marriage, with 32.51 percent opposing it. Another 7.94 percent voted to favor civil unions with the full benefits of marriage.
Great, great numbers, folks. Lopsided, yes, but I don't think the AFA realized that they would get this kind of response. Sources tell me that only the anti-gay marriage votes get spam mail, at least so far, and that the mail has been interesting to say the least. With a two-to-one majority against them, you can bet that they're scrambling for any support they can get at this point.
The survey is conducted by an organization whose mission is to "expose the misrepresentation of the radical homosexual agenda and stop its spread though our culture."
Well, with this poll being in the national news, showing its skewed and biased methodology, I think that they've shown how they misrepresent the gay population of this country... and if they wanted to stop the misrepresentation from spreading, this will do a pretty good job of it.
Tim Wildmon, president of the AFA, did not respond to interview requests from the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network.
Of course Wildmon didn't respond to a request for an interview. He's running scared. He can't believe that his pet poll which was supposed to show how nasty and ickybad gay people really are backfired and was broadcast to the world without his particular spin on the results. Even a retarded monkey can see that the wording of the poll is inherently skewed and biased -- and now everyone knows how his "results" were supposed to lean. Bad move, Tim, very bad. You've shot yourself in the foot (and incidentally destroyed your credibility to boot).
They're trying to spin this for themselves, too. A person on the AFA mailing list recently reported receiving a letter from the AFA saying, essentially, "It's so wonderful that so many people voted against us because they came to our site and so they will have taken the time to be exposed to the gospel of blahdyblah etc. and so forth." Sounds like overcompensation to me. I looked at their site and all it did was reinforce my disdain for idiots who use their religion as a weapon.
In November, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that prohibiting same-sex couples the right to marry violated the state's Constitution. The court gave the Massachusetts Legislature six months to rewrite the law to allow same-sex marriage. Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts may have to be honored in other states.
No, dears. It's not "may have to." It's WILL have to. The FFCC doesn't allow for exceptions based on judgmental idiocy. This is why the religious right is pushing so hard for an anti-gay marriage amendment, because then that pesky old FFCC would stop being so pesky.
"The lopsided nature of the vote shows we're a community that can mobilize and make its point of view known," said Witeck, who is also CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications in Washington, D.C. "Now what has to happen is we have to translate these votes on the American Family Association's Web site into political commitment, by registering to vote and going out and voting."
Yes. Absolutely. Get out there, get registered, and vote. Get politically active. Run for city council or school board positions. Start getting known. Start getting into local politics as well as national.
The AFA operates a Christian radio news service from its home base in Tupelo, Miss. According to its Web site, the organization "represents and stands for traditional family values" and takes credit for pressuring ABC to cancel the "pro-homosexual show 'Ellen.'"
I have to laugh at this. The AFA thinks that their protests were what caused "Ellen" to be removed from the airwaves? No, dears. It was that after Ellen came out, her show ceased to be all that funny. I know. I watched it. It became preachy. Nobody watches a comedy show to get preached at. I love Ellen, don't get me wrong, but I'm glad that her new show is a talk show, where it's okay to get a little preachy.
The AFA is an ostrich. Ostriches stick their heads in the sand when there's danger. They are like children who think "If I can't see you, you can't see me." What Wildmon and his associates are failing to realize is that their shenanigans are now on national display for everyone to see, and boys, you've been caught with your pants down and your hands in the cookie jar, all at once. Naughty, naughty.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who claim to follow a man who taught that "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the right way to live still continue to follow a program of hate, lies, indifference and violence against us and our rights. It looks like someone got the translation garbled somewhere along the line -- the AFA and other fundamentalists seem to follow the rule of "do unto others before they do unto you, and make sure they can't do anything back to you afterwards."
This is not a Christian attitude by any stretch of the imagination.
I often wonder what motivates people to hate, and more so, what motivates them to hate without even looking into all the facts about a person or a group or an idea they hate. People hate blindly, it seems, and resent anyone trying to help them see.
Socrates' vision of the cave was right. We laugh at those who see sunlight and call them crazy, because we're so convinced that the shadows we're seeing are the only real things.
So, where do we go from here? Keep on keepin' on, folks. Do what you've been doing. Stay active. Stay alert. Stay aware.
Stay with it.
¶ 1/07/2004 11:55:00 AM
