The latest poll show that 54 percent of likely voters in California plan to vote "no" on Proposition 8, which would reinstate the ban on same-sex marriage in California.

The poll, by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that in just eight years attitudes about same-sex marriage in the state have changed significantly. "In 2000, 55 percent of likely voters opposed same-sex marriage and 38 percent favored it; this year, 47 percent of voters oppose same-sex marriage and 47 percent favor it," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

With Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi on the cover of People magazine in their double-bridal splendor, it's not hard to believe that public attitudes are really changing that quickly. It's only too bad that Del Martin, the pioneering lesbian activist and newlywed, who died Wednesday at age 87, did not live to hear the heartening news about this poll.

However, it's way too early for proponents of marriage equality in California to break out the champagne. Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a gay and lesbian rights organization, cautioned: "We know the other side is about to launch a major campaign against same-sex marriage, so we still have a lot of work to do."

There is a profound philosophy of courtship that is taught by many dating gurus and goes by many different names -- personally, I like to call it the "assholes get laid" theory -- and its latest iteration comes in the form of Dante Moore's "The Re-Education of the Female." The cover of the book features a man writing at the blackboard and two women sitting attentively in school chairs: one -- wearing glasses, a crew neck T-shirt and jeans -- takes copious notes, while the other exposes a valley of cleavage and a mile of leg, and looks like she's fantasizing about blowing the teacher. (Someone's acing that class!)

Moore is the teacher and we females are his students, ready to soak up his every ounce of knowledge. Pencils to paper, ladies, here is Moore's illuminating advice: Do what men say, because otherwise they will leave you for a girl who will -- and, deep down, girls like assholes, so don't think there won't be another willing girl.

See, Moore's mother raised him to treat girls well, but one day, he had a revelation: His mother didn't know the first thing about how women want to be treated. Moore realized that women want to be kept in their place, and men want to keep them in their place. What a beautiful, symbiotic relationship! Moore believes that, for women, securing a happy relationship is as simple as becoming a domestic goddess, fighting off weight gain, dressing like a sex kitten and following each and every one of your man's orders.

He says many women "are miseducated, misinformed, and ill-prepared about their responsibilities in getting and maintaining a relationship with a man of quality." But if you follow Moore's advice, you can land a quality man just like him. Then, if you're lucky, you just might find yourself in a similar position to Moore's current girlfriend: She had to explain to reporter Laura Yao -- who profiles Moore in today's Washington Post -- why, exactly, he admitted in an interview to going on a date with another woman just two months ago, when they have been dating for two years (and have been "exclusive" in the past several months).

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When I was a teenager, my mother had an irritating habit of identifying my zits and then aggressively pointing them out to me. "What's that on your chin?" she would ask, gesturing at the incriminating spot as if, despite the half-hour I had just spent staring at my face in the bathroom, I might have somehow missed it. "It looks like you've got a pimple there. Did you know you have a pimple there?"

"Yes, Mom. I know I've got a pimple there."

"Put some toothpaste on it," she'd say. "Just a dab. It'll clear it right up."

"I already put some other stuff on it."

"Put some toothpaste on it," she'd repeat. "It's amazing."

This routine continued for about four years, and despite many mornings of waking up with blue, peppermint-scented goo on my pillow, I can't really tell you if it worked. (I can, however, assure you that in a pinch, toothpaste makes an excellent silver polish.)

My teenage self would be shocked to learn that when it comes to bizarre pimple treatments, my mother's got nothing on Cambodia. According to Agence France-Presse, there's a new treatment in town: condom lubricant.

Apparently Number One Plus, a water-based lubricant designed for sex workers and gay men, does a great job of clearing up your skin. "It is very effective," said one happy user. "Some people don't believe in it but people who do get a very good result. My younger sister and my aunt use it, too."

Says another: "My friends ... advised me to apply the lubricant from Number One Plus condoms to my face every night. And just within three to four nights, the acne on my face gradually and then totally disappeared."

Someone should sign this woman up for an infomercial. And in countries where there's political opposition to distributing condoms, maybe someone else should play a little fast and loose with labels and switch the terms around, marketing the lubricant as acne cream instead. That way there'd be less controversy around its distribution, teenagers wouldn't have to go to bed with toothpaste on their faces, and eventually people would figure out that the pimple cream was good for smoothing more than just their skin. (Note: The above statement does not apply to Noxema.) Any takers?

In the meantime, though, a question for you all: What are some of the most bizarre beauty treatments family members have recommended to you? Did anyone else out there get the toothpaste thing? Are there American girls who are being urged to smear K-Y jelly on their faces? And have any of these treatments actually worked?

Here's your daily WTF: According to the Telegraph, an 8-year-old Saudi girl is seeking a divorce ... from a man in his 50s.

What's more, the girl does not even know she's married (at least that may mean that she hasn't been forced to have sex). Her father arranged the union in secret, and it is the girl's mother who is actually working to have it annulled. Several of the girl's relatives have also contacted human rights groups in Saudi Arabia to try to get legal help to have the marriage scratched, but the father is refusing to comply, saying, reports the Telegraph, that he has done nothing wrong. And she's not the only 8-year-old bride to be in the news recently -- in April, another 8-year-old girl was granted a divorce from her 28-year-old husband after she ran away from him and went to the main court in Sana'a.

Like many of you all, I try to keep an open mind about other cultures -- like, for instance, an arranged marriage certainly wouldn't work for me, but when it happens between two consenting adults, I figure it's not my business to argue. But when we're talking about a preadolescent girl being "married" to a man old enough to be her grandfather, I'm sorry. No matter how you slice it, that's just messed up.

Of all the joyful hoopla of the same-sex marriage revolution in California this June, there was no sight more tear-jerking than brides Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, celebrating their nuptials in San Francisco's City Hall. (Here's the don't-miss video.)

"We were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed"

Wednesday came the sad news that Martin and Lyon, who had been together for 55 years, got to be newlyweds for only a few months. Martin died Wednesday morning at UCSF Hospice, with Lyon by her side, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Martin, who had been in declining health for years, suffered a broken arm two weeks ago.

On June 16, the two octogenarian lesbian activists became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in San Francisco. They'd been among the plaintiffs in the California Supreme Court case who won same-sex couples the right to marry in California.

The brides had been activists together for decades, including helping found the United States' first lesbian rights organization, Daughters of Bilitis, in 1953. "They spoke the unspeakable, wrote the unthinkable, and lived their lives as few before them ever had: open and proud lesbians in 1950s America," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in a statement. You can read a full obituary for Martin from the National Center for Lesbian Rights here.

The newly widowed Lyon said in a statement: "Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn't be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her and been her partner in all things.

"I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married," Lyon said. "I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed."

Here's hoping California voters will hear Lyon and be moved by her elegiac words to vote "No" this November on Proposition 8, which will attempt to ban same-sex marriage in the state once again.

Wednesday was a tough day for women on Fox News.

"Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularized by the TV series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'"

It started when, as Media Matters pointed out, reporter Megyn Kelly attacked Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, helpfully pointing out (about Obama's quote from Monday night, "The world as it is just won't do"), "If you replace 'world' with 'country', you are back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about the country." How to follow up that misogyny? Why, with a double scoop of female bashing.

First up, the tantalizingly titled "'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Inspires Women to Leave Churches." According to Fox, the iconic WB show received a tough rap from "Religion and Women in the West," a British academic study released this past June. The book claims that women are fleeing church en masse thanks to ... positive female role models? Fox reported that Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Denby, sees a direct correlation between dropping church numbers and strong female characters: "Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularized by the TV series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'" "Wicca," you say? As one who was prohibited from watching Buffy as a child, I assumed it had to do with what my mother deemed to be the "sexually scandalous" nature of the show -- maybe it was really her concern for my potential future involvement in witchcraft, scorn for traditional values and shunning of patriarchal religion!

Though the U.K.'s Telegraph offers a, shall we say, more complex presentation of the study, going so far as to suggest that rather than belittle empowered females, Aune is actually lobbying for the church to adapt to the needs of modern women, Fox's take on the situation is just so much more, well, provocative.

And speaking of provocative, Fox keeps the female wrecking ball rolling with its announcement that Donald Trump's rehab darling, Miss USA Tara Connor, is set to host a new MTV reality show, as yet untitled, based on the British rags-to-riches makeover show, "Ladette to Lady." (Also the inspiration for MTV's current "From G's to Gents.") The show will attempt to transform a gaggle of slumming girls into proper young ladies, with Connor at the helm. Though Fox seems skeptical of the former drug-and-alcohol abuser's ability to cultivate a group of young ladies, I'm sure that ... OK, fine, Fox, you win this one.

But really: Buffy as church wrecker? If you replace the word absurd with Fox News ...

This just in: The beauty competition for nuns announced earlier this week by an Italian priest has been canceled. I guess that means it's time to retire the jokes about nuns participating in a bathing suit competition in hopes of being crowned with a diamond-encrusted wimple. (Wait, just one more: The convent's answer to the burqini? The habitini!)

Father Antonio Rungi, who came up with the idea, said he was forced to cancel the event after the public "deliberately misinterpreted" his "innocent initiative." Rungi said he received a number of fiery e-mails in response to his pageant plan, including one that told him he was going to hell. The outrage didn't stop there: "My superiors were not happy ... they did not understand me either." Uh-oh, one hopes the superior understood him.

Rungi spoke to Reuters Tuesday in an attempt to clarify his intentions to his critics. Yes, he originally emphasized that "external beauty" is a "gift from God," and, yes, he sang the praises of "really very, very pretty" nuns from all over the world ("the Brazilian girls above all") -- but Rungi said he wasn't going to put nuns on a catwalk. He added that his pageant would have taken a "complete" look at contestants and evaluated inner beauty as well -- you know, just as in almost every major beauty pageant across the globe.

By the time they reach adulthood, most people have at least one good sex story. But far more entertaining than those are the tales we carry from our days as virgins, those awkward accounts of how we got "this close" to having sex and then, somehow, blew it. That's the contention of How Not to Get Laid, a blog that invites readers to submit their own failed sexual experiences for public consumption. Readers rate posts on a scale of one to five stars.

Some stories are quite funny, from narratives of nerdiness and rejection to missteps resulting in minor injury. But while Nerve seems to find the site hilarious through and through, I have to admit that many of the posts got to me. Men constitute the vast majority of storytellers, and several of their tales are subtly or glaringly misogynist. A 17-year-old writer boasts of kissing a girl in front of her angry father and then calling her a bitch when she doesn't kiss him back, while a traveler in his late 20s throws cold water on a potential conquest, just for kicks.

Creepiest of all is one of How Not to Get Laid's few posts by a woman. Here's an excerpt:

Then he started having sex ... I'd say with me, but he didn't look at me, talk to me, pretty much ignored I was there. I started to have a panic attack, so I asked him to stop for a moment. He did. Then he started again. I asked again, for him to stop. He did, then immediately started again. I finally pushed him away, rather freaked out and feeling like a sex doll rather than a person, and told him I was done for the night. He shrugged, and started finishing himself off, on my breasts, while I was crying.

Call me a humorless feminist if you will, but that isn't funny so much as completely horrifying, as far as I'm concerned. The blog's readers give the post four stars.

Just when I couldn't stomach anything more about failed sexual encounters, I came across Feministing's delightful post on "Sense and Sexuality: The College Girl's Guide to Real Protection in a Hooked-Up World." The new pamphlet, distributed by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a conservative women's think tank, and written by Dr. Miriam Grossman, of "Unprotected" fame, is a farcical romp through the world of right-wing disinformation. Had more than five oral sex partners? Prepare to have throat cancer! And beware of the sluts in role models' clothing who show up on "Grey's Anatomy" and "Sex and the City": "In real life, Meredith and Carrie would have warts or herpes. They'd likely be on Prozac or Zoloft." And whatever you do, don't have sex! Unless, of course, you're ready to get married and have children. In that case, hurry up! Most women wait too long to have kids!

But the real money shot, as Feministing points out, is the title of "Sense and Sexuality's" sixth chapter: "The Rectum Is an Exit, Not an Entrance." Words to live by, ladies.

We can talk until we're blue, or red or whatever in the face about the future of Roe v. Wade, but that -- "that" being "the on-paper right to abortion" -- doesn't mean much to the women who cannot get legal abortions. Not the women who cannot get legal abortions if Cain-Mcay ecomes-bay esident-pray; the women who cannot get legal abortions now. (Reasons are both real and underinformed: "I'll be fired for leaving work," "I'll have to tell my parents," "No one around here will do it after 12 weeks," "With what money, exactly?" -- and so on.) And as others here and there have reported, more and more women seem to be self-inducing abortion, or at least attempting to. Now ABCNews.com has added itself to the mix, with a heavier-on-anecdote-than-analysis, but still telling, story revealing, for one thing, that the women using Cytotec (one-half of the drugs doctors use to administer legal nonsurgical abortion) are apparently not geographically confined to states where the "little white pill" is available over the counter, just over the border.

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Actually, one of oh so many.

"My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for president." -- Hillary Clinton