Why not just say, "My girlfriend is of one major political party, and my grandmother is of the other..." ?
That only works if you realize that the filter bleeps out political parties. I usually catch the filter substitutions when I proof-read my posts, but if you're not using any formatting, it would be quite possible to proof-read your message in the input pane without realizing that the filter was changing words. I know of a lot of the common words that the filter changes, but I still get surprised on occasion--it might never occur to a new poster that the names of political parties would be changed beyond recognition.
A quick review of the forum rules (which I would hope a new member would check out before posting anyway) would shed some light on why those words are filtered.
IMO, the way they (Ehelldame/Mods) have it set up seems to work pretty well.
If someone has a question that involves politics in a way that *can* be discussed here, I think using Cathy's suggestion is the perfect way to go.
The fact that we're talking about how to "get around" the issue of not being able to name political parties shows that posters who know the rules find it necessary to mention them sometimes, even if we don't need to specify
which party. Therefore, I assume that a new poster might try to talk about an issue that involves people being of different political parties (without being a political discussion) and not realize that the party names will be filtered in that way. As I said, it's easy to catch during proof-reading, if you always proof-read in the preview pane rather than just proof-reading in the input pane.
I'm not saying a change is needed for this instance, I'm just pointing out that Cathy's solution only works for someone who realizes that the names are being censored. (And personally, if I were a new poster and saw that the names were asterisked out entirely, I would be very hesitant to try to "get around" the issue at all; having the filter change both to "a particular political party" would make it clear that it's discussing particular parties that is not allowed, but referring to the fact that someone is part of a political party is ok as long as you stay away from specifics.)
ETA: Many of the other filters already tend to indicate what was problematic about the original test. Words that are ok but produce undesirable ads stay readable, but are changed to avoid the ads. Curse words either get changed to silly stuff (clearly implying that you're not allowed to use "serious" curses here) or to phrases like "Ooh! I used a bad word!" (even more clearly stating that such language is not acceptable here). The political parties and sexual orientations just get asterisked out without any indication of whether it's just the specific words (i.e. specific parties/orientations) which cannot be mentioned, or whether referring to the subject at all is banned.
