Nate Knows Nada

So the American Family Association put up a web poll yesterday on
whether people support gay marriage or not (you can find the poll here). 
Purportedly, the results will be given to Congress to show that
Americans don’t support gay marriage and thus we need to “defend”
marriage from the ravaging homosexuals who will destroy it.  The
poll was designed in such as way as to guarantee the “results” that it
will purportedly demonstrate.

First problem: any Internet poll is an inherently biased sample, as
those who answer the questions are not representative of the population
that one is trying to gain information upon.  Perhaps these are
people who just like to answer questions, or are particularly motivated
on this issue.  And it only includes those people who have
computer access.  In this case, it initially only included those
people who received the poll announcement from the “American Family
Association” (whose efforts have probably ended up estranging more
families from their gay children [since its sole advocacy issue right
now seems to be about gay stuff] than saving other families). 
That group (who subscribes to AFA announcements) is pretty pre-disposed
to deny gays their civil rights.

Second: if it exists on the Internet, it WILL get to the wider public
eventually, and although the measuring instrument will still bear much
bias, the originator will not longer have the element of control that
they would have had with a mail poll of their members.  Not to
sound too Tom Friedman here, but the Internet roars along on its own
logic, and it’s uncontrollable in its eventual effects, at least in
this regard.

But thanks be to God, for the poll has gotten out into the wider
Internet.  Now the pro-gay marriage and civil union categories are
eight points ahead of the anti-marriage category.  (You can find the most current results here.)  AFA will
probably pull the poll later today (as the American Anglican Council
did at one point in a poll over the Gene Robinson consecration that wasn’t going the “right”way [pun intended]), saying
that the wrong people had gotten to it and messed up the integrity of
the results.  But such a statement belies itself — if the “wrong
people” get to a poll that’s supposed to be reflective of some larger
group, then the poll was badly designed and presupposed its own
results.  But they won’t tell you that they designed the “poll” in
exactly that way so as to cook it to get the results they wanted —
they’ll just claim that someone else spoiled the party.

But if you try to cook things in your direction in such an obvious way,
you can’t cry “unfair” when the Internet foils your stupidly laid plans.