Operation American Spring. Truckers Ride for the Constitution. Reclaim America Now.
All were right-wing efforts to literally overthrow President Obama. None of them exactly worked.
In 2012, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins similarly warned of an anti-government uprising if the Supreme Court were to strike down bans on same-sex marriage. “I think that could be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said, warning that such a ruling would mean “you could have a revolt, a revolution, I think you can see Americans saying ‘enough of this’ and I think it could explode and just break this nation apart.”
In case you thought that was just a one-time gaffe, Perkins maintained a year later that if the government “goes too far” on marriage equality, it would “create revolution” and “literally split this nation in two and create such political and cultural turmoil that I’m not sure we could recover from it.”
That brings us to a poll released today by the Human Rights Campaign and conducted by Alex Lundry, who served as Mitt Romney’s data director in 2012. Respondents to the poll were read Perkins’ “revolution” remarks verbatim. Unsurprisingly, only a tiny handful agreed with him, and even most opponents of marriage equality didn’t buy into his idea of an anti-gay revolution.
Conducting his poll at the beginning of June, Lundry didn’t find much support for that kind of revolt when the quote was read to respondents, with 59 percent overall disagreeing with Perkins. Of people who said they were opposed to gay marriage, 58 percent said they wouldn’t do anything, despite disagreeing and being disappointed in the decision.
“Only one directly mentions the word ‘revolution,’ five voters threaten to leave the country, and a scant fifteen people (3% of opponents) mention any form of protest,” reads a prepared polling memo. “Clearly, there is no real threat of widespread calamity should we extend the freedom to marry to gays and lesbians.”
Support for gay marriage is at 56 percent, with 37 percent opposed, squaring with public polls. Asked to rate the degree of their support, 44 percent said they “strongly” support legalization, with only 28 percent opposed.
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Those feelings are reflected in some of the other answers to the survey: 74 percent of people said their lives wouldn’t change with legalized gay marriage, and among those who did foresee a change, many rated it as one that would be for the better.
But we don’t expect Perkins to be deterred. The only poll on the topic that the Family Research Council president appears to believe was sponsored by his organization and only surveyed Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
