Last night, Jeff and I attended a pumpking carving party hosted by my officemate.  In the 8 years we’ve been together, I don’t believe Jeff and I have ever carved pumpkins.  The last time I tried was in college.  Neither of us has even tried to get much fancier than your typical eyes/nose/toothy-mouth pumpkin.  But this year we decided to have a crack at doing the more three-dimensional kind of pumpkin, where you carve into the flesh but not all the way through (at least, not everywhere) for a textured, “fancy” look.

Except mine ended up looking kind of like, oh, NOTHING, and so I hacked out most of the pieces in the end after all.

Here is my pumpkin:

Is it:

a) A tiki mask?
b) A skeleton with acne?
c) a screaming SCUBA diver?

Jeff brought a printout of the shark “Bruce” from Finding Nemo, and declared he was going to sculpt a Bruce pumpkin.  I fully expected his pumpkin to just be a hacked-up blob.

Turns out I’m married to the Pumpkin Whisperer:

Luckily, mine looks somewhat better when placed next to Jeff’s for context:

In case you don’t believe that’s actually a pumpkin, here’s how it looks in normal lighting:

One of our friends brought her 4-year old son.  He instantly recognized “Bruce,” and then completely cracked me up by saying - in a tone of genuine wonder - “I’ve never seen an actual shark before!”   You still haven’t, kid.  But I can’t blame you for being fooled.

I know it’s been a while since I posted, and I promise to start regaling you with more diving adventures soon.

But first, I need to talk about Proposition 8.

Here in California, voters can get initiatives put straight on the ballot for the public to vote on, rather than going through the normal legislative procedure.  Prop 8 was a predictable reaction to the legalization of gay marriage this past June.  It’s the shortest proposition on the ballot; it states simply that the state constitution should be amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

This is, put simply, horseshit.

If you know me, you already know I dream of a day when we look back and laugh that we ever thought gay marriage should be illegal in the first place.  A few decades from now, I hope we find it just as silly as old laws that prevented interracial marriage.

In April, when the state supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent gay marriage, I couldn’t have been prouder of my state.  Friends of mine who’d already had “commitment ceremonies” and were married in all senses other than legal went out and took advantage of the new law.  Some had enormous weddings that would have been the envy of any straight couple; others just went before a judge and signed a piece of paper.

They all reported that they were surprised just how much of a difference it made to be able to say “we’re married.”  No, “domestic partnerships” or “civil unions” do NOT cut it - they’re not even “separate but equal,” since they do NOT come with an identical set of rights as marriage.

Frankly, the only reason I can see to be against gay marriage is based on religious arguments, or on some vague idea that gay marriage will somehow make straight marriage less meaningful.  Again, I call horseshit.  Gays have been getting married in California for 5 months now, and my marriage seems to be doing just fine.

But what really gets my goat is this: the prop 8 folks are PULLING AHEAD in polls.  They have an insane amount of funding pouring in for advertising, mostly from Utah-based Mormon groups.  They’re putting out commercials which are misleading at the best, and outright lies at the worst.  For instance, the “Yes on 8″ folks claim that:

If gay marriage is legal, schools will have to teach it to your children. 

FALSE.  Schools cannot teach any health/sexuality/family issues without parental consent.  There’s no curriculum requirement to discuss marriage AT ALL, at least not on a state-wide level.  Local school boards make some of these decisions.  Of course, maybe one day social studies classes will teach about the legalization of gay marriage as an example of a civil rights issue.  (My own opinion is that it would be just great if schools would teach about it, but it seems like a lot of Californians are afraid of having awkward conversations with their children on this subject).

Churches that refuse to wed gay couples will lose their tax-exempt status.

Not only FALSE, but so obviously ridiculous I’m amazed this argument is working.  Churches regularly refuse to marry people for all kinds of reasons: Mormon churches won’t wed non-Mormons, Catholic churches (usually) won’t wed non-Catholics, etc.  California state law PREVENTS the state from withdrawing tax-exempt status for these reasons.  If your church doesn’t want to wed gay couples, that’s fine - odds are, gay couples would rather find a better church anyway.

These two arguments are getting a lot of traction, and the latest polls show that prop 8 is going to pass.  Not by much, though - there’s still time to turn it around.

So please, if you live in California, vote no on 8.  And pester all your friends to do the same.

And wherever you live, consider making a donation to one of the “no on 8″ agencies.  I’ve been donating to Equality California, a pre-existing group promoting equal rights in California.  There’s also a group specific to defeating this proposition: NoOnProp8.com.  Both these sites have more news and information, and clearer arguments than I can make on why it’s important to defeat this proposition.

I’m going to be on pins and needles election night, hoping that my friends’ marriages are still intact the next morning.

Thanks for listening.

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