Did you hear the unsettlingly news that Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas announced his official bid for the Republican presidential nomination? Yeah, we puked a little, too.

Though not as widely recognized as his hopeful comrades, John McCain and Mitt Romney, Brownback's background reads like a conservative wet dream. San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Brownback, an evangelical Protestant turned Roman Catholic and a former Kansas agriculture secretary, said he would focus on reviving faith and families in America; combating abortion, poverty and wasteful government spending; opposing same-sex marriage; and revamping Social Security and the federal tax system.

[Read On ...]

• Police identified 18-year-old Lyon Tatum as the second suspect in the San Diego gay pride parade attack. He was originally thought to be a minor, though prosecutors were expected to charge him as an adult. He joins James Carroll and an unidentified 16-year-old boy as the trio of suspects. [SDUT]

• The United States Tennis Association will christen the Billie Jean King Stadium at the National Tennis Center during a cermony at the U.S. Open, which comes as a surprise to even the tennis great, who didn't know she was being honored. [NYT]

• In the UK, anti-abortion group Operation Christian Vote is receiving some of its funding from an unlikely source: royalties on gay anthem "So Macho." [Gay.com UK]

• Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is calling for the gay community to support the Iranian Ahwazi community following the executions of two gay Ahwazi teens. [Pink News]

It's no surprise to see correlations between a state's legislation concerning abortion and its laws concerning gay rights. New analysis from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and two other advocacy groups that looked at 25 different laws – ranging from recognition of same-sex unions to accessibility to emergency contraception – put New Mexico and New York on the top of the list, while Ohio and South Dakota shared the bottom spot.

Not surprisingly, the conservative legislator Sen. Lee Schoenbeck (R-, S.D.), congratulated himself, calling the results as “a badge of honor.”

Rankings look at gay rights, abortion rights [AP]

&bull The Moroccan government sentenced thirteen men to prison for "producing gay pornographic films" and "inciting prostitution" on the internet. In a country filled with architecture shaped like penises, we find this a bit surprising.

Three of the men received sentectes of six years each; one of the men is a French citizen, who received a one year sentence. (The group's total prison sentences total thirty years.)

The majority of the defendants (the models)...aged between 18 and 20, these impoverished Moroccans found themselves involved in a very dirty adventure, risking their reputation for a very insignificant sum of money and a promise of immigration to France.

The name of the site has not been released, and the Moroccan government blocked access to the site. We can't imagine that life in a Moroccan prison is anything like what we see in those prison-porn movies, either. Yuck.

&bull Speaking of politics you'd find in a Third World country: unbeknownst to most gay people, abortion is NOW ILLEGAL in South Dakota, and legislators are pushing to pass similar bans in several other states, including Mississippi. The goal is to bring a case to the Supreme Court, which will most likely overturn Roe vs. Wade. Although now that sodomy is legal again, it was only a matter of time before people got itchy for another sex law to fight.

Make a porno, go to prison [Moroccan Times]