Pollster fraudster
I'm still scratching my head wondering what the heck the outgoing House of Representatives was intending to accomplish when it conducted its online poll on same-sex marriage.
A couple of frantic texts from activist-friends alerted me as to the ongoing poll, and curious, I logged into the (creaky) Congressional website. After several failed attempts, I finally got through, and there laid my eyes on the popularity contest spawned by our honorable representatives.
Perhaps not content with our Congressmen's original duty to make sure that they already have a sense of what their respective constituents want from them even before stepping into the halls of Congress, it seemed that now, these Congressmen wanted to be told, via this other venue, as to what Filipinos think. One wonders why a poll, an informal avenue, was chosen as the mechanism, and what would be done with the results.
Was this going to be the basis of a way forward for the outgoing congressmen and women? Or if not a way forward, the basis of a convenient excuse? An escape hatch? I ask because the online poll launched without fanfare or news advisories, and by default, targeted respondents who were awake between 10:00 in the morning and midnight. So, if those poor souls who somehow found about the poll happened to be dead-set against same-sex marriage, and therefore the numbers end up in favor of killing the bill, Congress ends this current session with no concrete action because, anyway, Filipinos don't like it? But I get ahead of myself.
The question was simple. In favor of the pending bill that legalizes same-sex marriage? The answers, however, were not. Aside from the expected "yes" or "no," each of these answers came with what I term "excess baggage".
The first choice (yes) gave a pre-determined reason, which was, yes for the bill "because this will give equal civil rights to same-sex couples. The bill provides such couples with legal partnership status that will govern their property rights, custodial rights over children and adoption rights".
The second choice of "no" posited this as the reason for the choice: "because the underlying intention is to legalize marriage between members of the same sex and I personally believe this is wrong".
How binary. Like, male or female. Couldn't the pollsters have given the respondents some more room to maneuver? There can be many reasons to support or oppose gay marriage, and none of that was captured by our Congress, who is supposed to be there listening to us.
A respondent could be supporting gay marriage, but only up to the romantic ceremony but without necessarily granting citizenship to a spouse. Or a respondent could be opposing marriage, not because she doesn't want gay couples to have the same civil rights, but on the principled stand that marriage is an archaic institution that should be abolished altogether. Or, a respondent could want gay marriage, but not gay adoption, and so could therefore end up opposing the bill not because of the mere ceremony, but because of fears of molestation or child-trafficking.
There was very little flexibility to the entire gamut of reasons for support or opposition, so it was unfortunate that respondents were boxed in. How then could Congress be appropriately informed?
In the end, when the polls closed (or last I checked), after 170,000 participants, the nays were at 51% while the yeas were 49%. About 938 respondents or 1% were undecided. Which for me was a good sign, because there could have been so many reasons behind the nays, and not just because, for all of them, they "personally believe (gay marriage) to be wrong".
But is that how our representatives will absorb and analyze and deploy this info? Or, in the dying days of their term before they relinquish their seats to the incoming congresspersons, they will just shrug and in their best, most rueful tone, confess to their failure to pass the marriage bill because, anyway, "half the Filipinos don't want it"?
What a cop-out that would be. But, oh yeah, I forgot. These are politicians we are talking about.