According to the Associated Press, San Diego businessman Doug Manchester "gave $125,000 to a group backing a California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage". When threatened with a boycott, Manchester said "that he welcomes gay guests at his properties but as a Catholic believes marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman".

I applaud Manchester for living by his principles and expect him to soon initiate efforts to:

• ban marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics.
• ban remarriage by anyone whose divorced spouse is still living.

Doubters who accuse him of prejudice against homosexuals, instead of being a man of consistent religious beliefs, will then have to apologize for criticizing such a principled saintly man.

On a personal note, such an amendment would dissolve my ten-year marriage to my dear husband Keith (who, unlike me, was baptized), but it is vital in a democracy that couples' freedom and happiness be subordinated to others' religious beliefs.

In an earlier post, I reported how words like "clbuttic" were created by censors using search-and-replace to change "ass" to "butt". According to Right Wing Watch, the American Family Association's OneNewsNow site automatically replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual", leading to the above story about athlete Tyson Gay.

The July 21 New Yorker features the above cover, satirizing the racist coverage of the Obamas mentioned in my previous post. According to the BBC, the Obama campaign called the cartoon "tasteless and offensive", and the McCain campaign also criticized the cartoon.

In a statement, The New Yorker magazine said the cartoon "combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are."

The New Yorker said the cover, called "The Politics of Fear", was a critique of unfounded allegations that have tried to portray Mr Obama, a Christian, as a closet radical Muslim.

"The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover," the statement said....

The New Yorker said that this week's edition carried two "very serious" articles about Mr Obama.

But Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the cartoon, saying: "The New Yorker may think... that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create, but most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Fox News has earned a place in Beyond Satire's Hall of Fame with its coverage of Barack and Michelle Obama, including:

• Displaying a graphic referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama". (For those of you who don't know the term, it indicates a lower-class unwed mother.)
• Calling the couple's fist bump a "terrorist fist jab".
• Fox pundit laughingly wishing for Obama's assassination (after mixing his name up with Osama).

See also the below compilation video from Fox Attacks.

The July 9 Onion has an Infographic entitled "Fox News Racism: Intentional?", listing satirical incidents, such as:

• Estimated the amount of time Obama has spent on front porches during the course of his life
• Repeatedly called Obama by one of his middle names, "Hussein," while omitting the other, "Christopher Horowitz"
• Scored footage of Obama visiting a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility with the theme from Shaft
• Generally biased news reporting

Even The Onion seems to have realized that Fox News is beyond satire.

Rather than spoil the jokes or violate copyright, I'll just link to my favorite single cartoons on racism:

• Tom the Dancing Bug
• The K Chronicles

If you have favorites, add links in the comment section.