My No on Prop 8 Heroes

“I don’t see why anyone on the planet would want to deny you a marriage.”
— Norma Watson to her daughter Moya

I'm not 100% sure how two months went by without a blog post. True, I was incredibly busy at work before, during and after the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), which had me on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and the GHC blog and, there you go, two months just like that. Today I finally broke down and moved the Twitter feed to the top of my blog in recognition of the fact that I'm more likely to post there than here.

Before GHC I started volunteering for the No on Prop 8 campaign by making calls at phone banks. After GHC I took another leap and started training and coaching and running phone banks. Working the phone banks is something I'd never done before, never wanted to do, and never ever imagined myself doing. But this is too important to sit by the sidelines and just donate money. So I held my nose and jumped in.

What's truly wonderful about the phone banks is the volunteers who come to make the calls, every type of wonderful fair-minded person. Gay and straight, young and old, they volunteer because they know it’s wrong to single out one group of people and exclude them from having the same rights as other citizens. They come with their parents, their children, their spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends. Like me, most of them have never done anything like this before. They are my heroes.

My family, too, are my heroes. With my birthday coming in a few days, they knew that there's nothing I want more than to defeat proposition 8. So everyone in the family sent contributions, the perfect gift!

The next couple of weeks will also blow by quickly. There is still so much to do both at work and on the No on Prop 8 campaign. I'm sure you're busy too. But this election is really important, and it's going to be really close. If you are not registered to vote, don't delay! Here in California the deadline is this coming Monday, October 20. Then vote, and don't stop with the presidential race. Every vote will be important. Make yours a vote for fundamental fairness, and vote No on Prop 8.