A reader adds a new wrinkle to this phenomenon:

The big news in the past couple weeks is the two powerhouses of the comics industry, Marvel and DC, trying to outdo each other in jumping on the President's "evolution" coattails on marriage. After Marvel announced that Northstar, the first openly gay superhero (and Canadian!) would propose to his longtime boyfriend in Astonishing X-Men #50, followed by mainstream comics' first same-sex marriage in #51, DC announced that they would be reintroducing an as-yet unidentified "iconic" character to the New 52 continuity as a gay man. Naturally, these positive developments prompted outrage from the American Family Association's most likely inaccurately named One Million Moms, claiming that these comics would confront children with "homosexual topics that are too complicated for them to understand."

Which leads us to the part where it gets cool.