The issue of gay marriage is always good for controversy and lots and lots of rancorous lobbying on both sides of the issue. These days, of course, that includes a battle of online videos.

A few weeks ago, a group called the National Organization for Marriage put out a striking video commercial called “A Gathering Storm.”

In it, with a backdrop of menacing clouds, a clutch of people talk about their fears about allowing gay marriage.

It has garnered 576,319 views so far.

Now, a passel of celebrities on the Funny or Die comedy Web site has released a spoof version of the NOM commercial, called “A Gaythering Storm.”

It features a “gay rain army” and a giant gay repellent umbrella. Oh, snap.

It has 440,616 views, although it just went up yesterday.

Here are both of them, so you can vote with your click. But watch both, whatever you think–and that includes you, Miss California!

NOM:

Funny or Die:

Please see this disclosure related to gay marriage and me.

Look, BoomTown will admit it: I am riveted to the trials and tribulations of one former child actor moppet gone wild upon growing up.

I mean to say Lindsay Lohan, of course–or LiLo or La Loca Lohan or Lindsanity, as online gossip blogger Perez Hilton has dubbed her.

Whatever her personal turmoil, the troubled actress has been the patron saint of the Web’s gossip sites, as well as magazines and more, most recently for the spectacular and restraining-orders-all-around breakup she has had with DJ Samantha Ronson.

So where did Lohan go to get some control of the crazed situation back?

Why the Internet, of course, with a pretty funny video of a spoof of an eHarmony online dating ad that is now posted on the Web’s celebrity-comedy central, Funny or Die.

The video has had 1.6 million views there already, after just being posted yesterday. In it, Lohan references her Internet infamy.

“I’m an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur and I have single-handedly kept 90 percent of all gossip Web sites in business,” she says in the video at one point, doing a very good job, considering the topic, which only reminds us that she was once a very promising actress.

Then Lohan sums it up with a flourish:

“So, if you think you can handle a redhead with a little bit of sass, and by that I mean a redhead that’s crazy… I mean don’t pretend like you don’t know me, we’ve all read about it! We’ll crash a few parties, a car or two, but at the end of the day, I promise you, I never lose my Google hits–just my underwear.”

Google (GOOG) must be completely relieved by that news.

Here’s the video:

The video has a star-studded cast, all singing Marc Shaiman’s “Prop 8–The Musical,” including Jack Black (as, um, Jesus), Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Margaret Cho, Allison Janney and others.

It’s set as a musical being presented by the Sacramento Community College Players.

Prop 8, a ballot initiative passed in the November election in California, eliminated the right of gay and lesbian people to marry by overriding a state Supreme court decision and changing the state Constitution.

It is currently undergoing legal challenge.

In any case, this video is very funny, especially the part about shrimp cocktail:

Please see this disclosure related to me and gay marriage.

Famous-for-being-famous celebrity Paris Hilton continues her comic run for “fake” President of the United States, with a new online video for the Funny or Die comedy site.

She is pictured here in a photo from a current spread in Harper’s Bazaar, part of her ongoing “Paris for President” campaign.

In that article, Hilton said of her foreign policy platform: “I will carry out a foreign policy platform that will transform America’s role in the world to that of a proactive, not reactive, superpower that will use diplomacy and incentives to head off trouble in unstable regions before they unravel out of control. I will also be wearing platform shoes when I meet with foreign dignitaries to accentuate my well-toned calves.”

Somehow, given the current mess we are in, this blather actually makes some sense.

Hilton did her first online spoof video in August after Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain used her image in an ad attacking Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

In it, she referred to McCain as the “white-haired dude” and laid out–literally, Hilton is seen in the video lounging by the pool in a bikini–her policies.

In the latest, Hilton consults the most famous of fake Presidents, actor Martin Sheen, who played President Jed Bartlett for many seasons on the NBC hit “The West Wing.”

In the video, the pair kibitz over how to be the best fake President, which has been getting too close to the real thing these days.

The video includes a cameo by real Martin Sheen son, Charlie Sheen.

Here is the video (and, below it, is her first one for Funny or Die):

Last week, BoomTown posted just some of the many, many online video spoofs of Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Gov. Palin, one of the more colorful political figures to pop up in years, is like the gift that keeps on giving to the Web comedy world, which seems to be churning out video after video of impersonations of her.

Here’s the best I have seen so far, by well-known actress Gina Gershon–who actually looks like her–on the most excellent Funny or Die comedy Web site.

And there will doubtless be more to come–apparently, “30 Rock” star Tina Fey (who is Palin’s true doppelgänger) will be doing her own version of Palin at her old stomping grounds of “Saturday Night Live” this week.

Until then, here’s the Funny or Die video (warning–as you can see below, there is a rifle and a bikini, but it actually works):

It was tasteless and also offensive to Hilton and Spears, which seems an almost impossible task–way to go!

Now, wasting no time in taking advantage of the brouhaha and drawing attention just where it should be–to herself, of course–Hilton did this clever video spoof for the Funny or Die comedy Web site.

Wearing a killer swimsuit, she does manage to make a good suggestion about a sensible energy policy and an even better one to have Rihanna as VP.

Also, Hilton calls McCain “white-haired dude.” That’s hot. Well, warm.

In any case, here’s the Hilton video and the original humorless McCain ad just below it:

The smoky-eyed singer-songwriter and guitarist, who also has yet to meet a Hollywood actress he doesn’t date (current date: Jennifer Aniston!), just released this spoof video on the songwriting process for Funny or Die comedy video site.

It’s worth a watch:

Today, it is this gem from online video comedy site Funny or Die, in which Jerry O’Connell (who knew he was so hilarious?) does a mean and spot-on imitation of the recent wacky video and Web phenomena of Tom Cruise espousing the virtues and power of Scientology.

Along with the maniacal laughing, the best line: “For me, it’s all about KFC. It’s just good chicken. Poof.”

This is exactly the kind of content the Web is perfect for.

Here’s the spoof:

Also, here is a link to an interview that I recently did with Funny or Die investor Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital.

The intersection–or perhaps collision is a better word–of the entertainment and technology industries continues at an ever more frantic pace.

And it’s clear the strike is putting into fast-forward efforts by writers and other “talent” to do an end run around the traditional studio system of funding and distribution.

There has been, no surprise, a lot of noise recently about writers looking for funding coming up to meet with venture firms in Silicon Valley, the results of which I remain wary still.

Nonetheless, such marriages are inevitable, as the entire content distribution system shifts to new paradigms in a likely-to-be painful transformation whose end result is decidedly unclear.

To get some clarity, I decided to pay a visit to Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital to talk about his nascent efforts in the arena with his investment in the online comedy video site, Funny or Die, which was launched last April.

Starting with a small $17,000 seed round, Sequoia and others have recently sunk a more serious $15 million in the effort. The site has yielded a few Web hits, mostly done by Kvamme’s partners and the site’s co-owners–actor Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Chris Henchy is the third leg of the entertainment stool, although the trio has wrangled in a plethora of Hollywood’s hipper comedy elite to contribute to Funny or Die).

Mixing professional content with user-generated material makes for a pretty lively site, where videos are voted up (funny) or down (die).

Results for Funny or Die are still mixed, with big success for one with Ferrell and McKay’s daughter, called “The Landlord,” which has garnered more than 50 million views. Its follow-up, “Good Cop, Baby Cop” (see here), is also popular.

But those are the exception, of course, with several million monthly unique visitors engaged for about five minutes a visit.

But Funny or Die is definitely doing a lot better than some other failed efforts in the genre, such as NBC’s DotComedy.com, Time Warner’s This Just In and Time Inc.’s Office Pirates. Current competitors include sites like CollegeHumor and the Onion, although each one has a taken approach.

Funny or Die’s will be to expand to new areas, such as a recent site on skateboarding and other extreme sports fronted by Tony Hawk called Shred or Die and another one called MyBlueCollar, focused on redneck comedy. Eat or Die–using famous chefs–is next.

But who knows what tomorrow will bring–as the song kind of goes–in a world where few online video sites survive?

Here’s Kvamme to talk about it:

And here is the post and video of FOD investor Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital talking about the online video space.