Ethics

David McGowan has raised a very interesting issue about the Prop 8 ads that were popping up for California readers of this blog (and perhaps other readers as well).  When should we try to block certain ads?  In general, we have only modest control over which ads appear, at least using google's ad sense.  And we're certainly not endorsing any products or messages that appear.  But assuming we could prevent certain ads from appearing on the blog, should we have a philosophy about which blog ads to ban?  And if so, what should the principle be? 

To be honest, I haven't thought too deeply about the subject, because it hasn't come up before, but it seems to me to be an interesting and difficult question.  Perhaps the easiest solution is to just stop running ads.  (It's not like we make that much money from them.)  Another possibility is to donate some (or all) of our ad proceeds to organizations that oppose the messages in the ads that we don't like.  Any additional thoughts or ideas?