President Romney, anyone?

It was last fall. I was driving along in my car when I first heard that efforts were afoot to get what ultimately became Prop 5 placed on the Anchorage ballot this spring.

My first reaction was “OMG, what are they thinking???”

Historically, this is the kind of stuff the Republicans will put on the ballot at election time to screw with Democrats, not the other way round. Take, for example, the 1998 Marriage Amendment in Alaska, the only time language has been enshrined into the Alaska Constitution that says what you can’t do, that takes rights away from people rather than bestowing them. Marriage will be between one man and one woman.

The concept that a local initiative to grant legal protection from discrimination to gays and lesbians could possibly do anything but hurt the prospects of the left was inconceivable to me. But as we went through toward April, I started to wonder. I did my first poll on the issue in December and the results on Prop 5 were great: 60-35 in favor.

Other poll results I saw at the time showed similar results. I wrote in this column that I really was very hopeful that maybe Anchorage was changing for the good.

Of course, in the end, it all went horribly wrong. For three reasons that I could put my finger on:

1. There was some considerable attrition of support in the three months before the election, caused largely by misleading ads from the No side;

2. It’s easy to say you’ll vote yes in a poll, then once you’re behind the curtain, vote your real conscience instead, free from the shame of actually admitting your opinion to another person; and

3. The churches and the Alaska Family Council brought their people out en masse, in droves.

The bottom line lesson is this: No matter how much you imagine pro-gay rights voters might be compelled to go to the polls to vote in favor of something like Prop 5, it pales into insignificance with the compulsion that the religious right feels to stop what they see as the granting of special rights to perverts. The perverts must be stopped at all costs.

“Pervert” too strong a word? I don’t think so.

Someone wrote to me right after the election and said this: “You aren’t born that way. There’s no inner voice that tells you you must have perverted sexual relations with someone of the same sex. After all, if gays were born that way, with sexual perversion, then the same would have to apply to child molesters and therefore they shouldn’t be punished because they couldn’t help themselves either.”

This is the stuff I have to read, the price I pay for writing this column. So I figured I should share, and make you all read it, too, because it sums up exactly what motivates many on the right to vote against gay rights issues, and in large numbers, too.

So, last week, President Obama finally signaled his support for gay marriage. Well, maybe not finally, because back in 1994, when he was running for the Illinois State Senate, he filled out a questionnaire where he unequivocally expressed his support for the rights of gays to marry. Somehow he got from there to a later point where suddenly his views were still “evolving” Uhuh.

When I heard the news and as the reality sank in, I thought a few things, in fairly close succession: The first was “Well it’s about bloody time.” The second was “OMG, what is he thinking?” Closely followed by a third, “He’s toast.”

A Gallup poll done just a few days ago asked two questions related to this issue:

“Do you think gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?” Note here there’s no mention of marriage. This is just do you think that relations between same sex couples should be legal or not.

Thirty-one percent of the population of the United States said no. Nearly one in every three adults thinks, presumably, that Storm Troopers should just bust into gay bedrooms and arrest the lot of them. Cart them off. For a good stoning, perhaps?

The second question was about marriage. “Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?” Fifty percent said they should, 48 percent said they should not.

The good news is, the result to this same question was nine points worse just three years ago, 40-57, and has steadily been shifting toward the yes side. The bad news is, it ain’t no landslide even now. Just under half of the population disagrees with the President on this issue, and believe me, it is going to fire them up.

In letting the cat out of the bag, Obama has served up on a silver platter the one thing that could motivate the political right in this country to overlook Mitt Romney’s innate un-likeability, overlook his coldness, his flip-flopping, his gaffes and his liberal tendencies. It’s the one thing that could persuade them to vote for him with anything resembling enthusiasm.

“Yep, not too keen on him, but at least he doesn’t think perverts should be able to marry.”

The race between the two is still close, but this is now. Wait until the churches release the hounds closer to election time. Wait until ministers across the country, including the black ones, start preaching loudly about perversion and sin and whipping their followers into a froth. Wait until Election Day comes and the religious right goes streaming to the polls in record numbers. Just wait.

President Romney, anyone?

Ivan Moore is a public opinion pollster who lives in Anchorage and works for a variety of clients — political, corporate, public sector, or just plain curious — around Alaska. He can be reached at ivan@ivanmooreresearch.com.