You may have heard that rumor that Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's considering Mitt Romney as his running.

While many people think the duo would do well together, with Mormon Mitt balancing McCain's alleged liberal leanings, thus wooing worried social conservatives, evangelical voters aren't having it.

And now they're telling McCain to look elsewhere…

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"It's confusing!" That's basically what the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has to sex about human sexuality in a report released yesterday. The Church, the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, has been busy tackling the ins and outs of intercourse in an effort to reconcile various viewpoints on - you guessed it - the gays.

While the new statement doesn't admonish homos, it stops short of offering approval:

…Despite years of study, [the church has] yet to reach consensus on same-sex unions. The draft, which did not condemn such unions, also expressed regret that historical Lutheran teachings on homosexuality had sometimes been used to hurt gays and lesbians.

The report also describes sexuality as "wondrous and wounding, delightful and destructive, satisfying and confusing…sometimes at the same time."

The Democratic front runners took to a stage in South Carolina last night.

While health care and black politics dominated the CNN/Black Caucus-sponsored debate, we gays did pop up, albeit very briefly, during Barack Obama's diatribe on how the Democrats have failed to reach religious-minded voters:

Obama: I think there have been times — there have been times where our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to evangelicals, for example, because the assumption was, well, they don't agree with us on choice, or they don't agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn't show up. And when you don't show up, if you're not going to church, then you're not talking to church folk. And that means that people have a very right-wing perspective in terms of what faith means and of defining our faith.

Wolf Blitzer: All right.

Obama: And as somebody who believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ, particularly treating the least of these in a way that he would, that it is important for us to not concede that ground. Because I think we can go after those folks and get them.

Obama's been making many a homo headline recently. The Senator from Illinois included gays in his Sunday speech at MLK's Ebenezer Church. All the attention hasn't been so positive, however - ex-gay advocate Kirbyjon Caldwell recently threw his weight behind Obama. Obama has yet to make a statement on the endorsement, but some are hoping he'll refuse the minister's electoral love.

There's a holy war happening around Mike Huckabee. While Michigan's Evangelicals promote the Republican's candidacy, there appear to be generational rumbles spreading across the nation. While the old guard reject his seemingly populist approach, younger Bible-thumpers are hoping for a Huckabee administration. And the division threatens the entire movement:

Mr. Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist minister before serving as governor of Arkansas, is the only candidate in the presidential race who identifies himself as an evangelical. But instead of uniting conservative Christians, his candidacy is threatening to drive a wedge into the movement, potentially dividing its best-known national leaders from part of their base and upending assumptions that have held the right wing together for the last 30 years.
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If Mr. Huckabee can continue to galvanize evangelicals around his novel message while attracting other Republicans and perhaps independents, he will do more than advance his own campaign. He will also challenge the establishment of the Christian conservative political movement.

Will Huckabee become a political heretic or a hero? It depends on who you ask, we suppose. We know which way we're leaning…

Mitt Romney's master plan failed. The former Massachusetts governor hoped to revamp his image for the right wing, but an overwhelming amount of Evangelicals prefer Iowa winner Mike Huckabee

More than eight in 10 Huckabee supporters said they are born again or evangelical Christians, compared to less than half of Romney's. Nearly two-thirds of Huckabee backers also said it was very important that their candidate share their religious beliefs, compared to about one in five of Romney's.

Surprisingly, only half of Huckabee's supporters consider themselves "conservative", as do half of Romney lovers.

Meanwhile, 60% of Huckabee caucusers say "values" are important in picking a president. They do not, however, have much faith in Huckabee's White House odds: "…Fewer than one in 20 said they thought he had the best chance of wining [sic] in November."

• Australian athletes get naked for a cause: fighting breast cancer. And, of course, they help our testicles, too.

• Hillary Clinton talks AIDS with the Evangelicals. Peter LaBarbera hopes she talks about gay bathhouses.

• Uganda's clergy blast gay rights. This is news?

• Queer cartoon breaks gay ground:

Us2 LLC, headquartered in Omaha, NE has announced that it has developed the first children's animated cartoon series starring a character with two parents of the same gender. Buddy G - My Two Moms and Me, featuring sate of the art 3-D animation, will premiere with the release of a DVD just in time for a holiday delivery this year.

So will social conservative backlash, we're sure.

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Focus on the Family founder James Dobson made clear that he will not be supporting Republican Fred Thompson's bid for the White House. It seems Thompson's simply a little too gay friendly for old Jimmy's taste.

The evangelical leader wrote in a "private" email:

Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?
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He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!

That's fine by us. The more division in the Republican ranks, the better.

Mike Huckabee must be thrilled.

America hardly has a monopoly on crazy Evangelicals.

Jamaica's Bishop Herro Blair used Sunday's services to warn politicians - including PM Portia Simpson Miller and unabashedly homophobic opposition leader Bruce Golding, who were both in attendance - that he and his brethren will be watching their move as general election campaigns resume after a month break, "Our cameras are on zoom lens and we are going to listen to the speeches as of Tuesday."

Watching and listening? That's some serious shit.

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Despite promises of the proverbial and mythical “American Dream,” America’s pluralistic voting system stymies progressive politics. Not only does our “first past the post” mechanism negate majority rules, America’s plurality voting scheme tends toward a two party rule, which can lead to some pretty queer politics.

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In that last post we floated the idea of home schooling our imaginary - and exceedingly unlikely - children. If we did have children, however, and decided that we wanted to home school them, we certainly wouldn't register them in the Spalding Area Christian Homeschoolers, a so-called "Conservative Evangelical Christian Homeschool Support Group". Why are all the words capitalized? Because the organizers were homeschooled.

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