The ardent anti-gay American Family Association has, for the past few days, been building up a petition against gay marriage. It does not make entirely clear whether it is a poll or a petition, though–its URL says “petition” and it takes email addresses as well as state and ZIP code information, but the label they gave it calls it an “online poll.” This could be seen as any one of many possible ways they might eventually weasel out of, as they have promised, presenting the results to Congress.

The AFA is a Christian fundamentalist “pro-family” organization; one look at their main page clearly demonstrates their biases (“Help Save Marriage!” “Stop Democratic Filibusters of Pres. Bush’s Judicial Nominees!”). They put up the poll obviously in hopes of getting their own faithful to tilt the results of the poll–initial results ran over 80% against gay marriage. This was their vision as they promised that “results of this poll will be presented to Congress.” They even set up the poll to split the pro-gay-marriage vote–you have three answers to choose from, (1) against gay marriage, (2) for gay marriage, or (3) for civil unions. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the intent of that is to make the anti- vote look the largest they can make it.

But word has gotten out, and from early yesterday, the general public started voting. The stats went from 83-14-3, to 74-22-4, to 61-33-6… As of last night, the results were 46-46-8, but when my dad voted just a few minutes ago, the results were 44-48-8, now clearly in favor of gay marriage even if you count out the civil union votes, as the AFA likely intended to do. 146,000 votes had been cast against, 162,000 for, and civil unions got 26,000.

So the question is, what will the AFA do? The initial expectation would have been for AFA members and friends only to vote, or for the vote to be close enough so they could skew the numbers in their favor without looking too ridiculous. But now that’s not an option–the numbers can’t be in any way spun in their direction, and they made the promise to bring the results to D.C. Well, we can hardly expect a fundie group to go to Congress and say, most Americans want gay marriage legalized. Will they simply ignore the poll? Try to claim it was hijacked? They can’t just keep it up and wait for numbers to go their way, it’s heading in the opposite direction. In fact, the numbers are visibly changing–I renewed the results page and found that in five minutes, the “for” vote advanced by 0.05%, while the “against” vote decreased by 0.06%. At that rate, the “for” votes will increase by a whole percentage point every one hour and forty minutes, as the “against” votes will fall at the same rate. By midnight tonight, the numbers could even be 36-56-8, which makes you wonder how long the AFA will hold the door open.

In any case, if you read this on the 19th of December or within a few days, the poll may still be open–go ahead and cast your vote. I would advise you to use a real email account and submit your real name and location, but make the email address an alternate account you don’t use much–they claim you won’t be spammed, but in the same disclaimer they say you will be sent “updates on matters of importance,” a.k.a. “spam.”