Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (October 17, 2008)

CONSERVATIVE GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE?
Earlier this week gay website The Sword reported on the fact that gay-run magazine RADAR's website had apparently been hacked by conservatives behind Proposition 8, the bill that seeks to change California's constitution to redefine marriage as being between a man and a woman:

It turns out that while it's not quite as insidious as hacking, the conservatives are being pretty crafty in their targeted marketing. It seems that via AdSense, the online ad company that sells ad space for RADAR, Towleroad, Queerty, and other gay sites based in New York, the Yes on 8 people are running the ads only in California (where the proposal is on the November ballot). Being that these sites are based in New York, their proprietors might never even know that the ads are running if keen readers didn't tip them off to it.

Problematic, to say the least ... kind of like when "intuitive" advertising programs place ads for baby clothes in a news report on crib deaths, and so forth. But given that the Yes on Prop 8 folks didn't even bother to customize their ads for gay sites, it looks to be a simple oversight due to the advertiser's allocation system, not a targeted attack. After all, why would Yes on 8 actually advertise on a gay site to begin with ... aren't the visitors mostly gay or gay-friendly? If anything, Towleroad and Queerty are pocketing Yes on 8's ad budget, which is actually kind of funny.

We haven't seen any conservative ads pop up on AfterElton.com yet (although we did have a run-in with some syndicated Mitt Romney campaign ads a while back that we had to put the kibosh on rather quickly). And if you happen to see any, do let us know!

And for those of you who feel that your monitors have been violated by unwanted conservative imagery or dogma, I have a solution for you:

MyMonitorPet

Yes, for the low price of only $4.99, you can buy a full-size screensaver of an adorable kitten or puppy licking your monitor from the inside out, washing away all those icky right-wing straw men and falsities. (You know, they do say their mouths are cleaner than ours are...)

And if that doesn't exorcise the conservative demons from your 'puter, well ... um ...

Here!

Brandon Staughton from Britney's "Womanizer" video

Next page: We have friends in heterosexual places.