Nevertheless, Wurzelbacher said the decision about whether to allow same-sex couples to marry should be left to states.

“People don’t understand the dictionary – it’s called queer,” Wurzelbacher told Christianity Today in an interview published this week. “Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do – what man and woman are for.”

He added, “I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.”

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization based in Washington, dismissed Wurzelbacher’s comments.

“It would matter if Joe the Plumber mattered,” Solmonese said. “One thing among many things we learned in the 2008 campaign is that he doesn’t.”

Wurzelbacher, regarded as a folk hero to many conservatives after challenging then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama about his tax policies, said neither political party was sufficiently Christian.

“They use God as a punch line,” Wurzelbacher said of Republicans. “They use God to invoke sympathy or invoke righteousness, but they don’t stay the course.”

Wurzelbacher said he considered McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, one of the GOP’s emerging stars. But he said the party would have a difficult time recasting its image to appeal to younger voters.

“You got the RNC talking about repackaging principles and values to make them hip and cool to the younger generation,” Wurzelbacher said. “You can’t repackage them. They are what they are. You can’t make what they are.”

Since the election, Wurzelbacher has spoken at conservative rallies around the country and traveled to Israel as a rookie reporter to cover the Gaza conflict.

Wurzelbacher told the magazine he might consider running for office someday.

“Not right now,” Wurzelbacher said. “God hasn’t said, ‘Joe, I want you to run.’ I feel (it’s) more important to just encourage people to get involved, one way or another. If I can inspire some leaders, that would be great.”

This is slightly old but who doesn’t love a gay Republican tale? Looks like many of you are going to have to dust off the “self-hating” epithet and throw it a new gay conservative organization.

Called GOProud, the new tax-exempt 527 will offer another home for gay and  lesbian conservatives outside of the Log Cabin Republicans (where are they?). The organization’s take-off will happen tomorrow and its focus will be elections and federal issues.

“There hasn’t been a voice for … gay conservatives for the last five months, really, in Washington,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, GoProud’s executive director and a former Log Cabin policy director. “And so as that time has lapsed, that was when we made the assessment and determined the need for an organization in Washington and put the pieces in place to make that happen.”

I’ve been writing here long enough (for some  that is a problem) to know the responses. A hardy few will say this is a good thing. They will point out that wanting to wake up next to a cute lad or gal (or both!) doesn’t have much to do with ideology. The majority though, will throw out the word traitor. Make some historical connection with Jews for Hitler and question the mental stability of any gay person who says the word Republican minus a curse.

GoProud  deserves a fair hearing. No matter how much we gnash our teeth, there are a number of our gay brothers and sisters who are right of center. Here are some numbers presented by LaSalvia. In last year’s election approximately 5 percent of voters identified as gay. Of those 27 percent gave their votes to John McCain. Don’t they deserve a political organization that represents and advocates their interests?

PS: RIP Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

Schmidt says in the interview that his views on gay rights were influenced by his knowledge of a gay person– his lesbian sister– and his understanding of the difficulties and discrimination she faces.

In a perverse moment, Schmidt quotes former Vice President Dick Cheney to make his argument.

“I think one of the most tragic things in the world [is] when people are closeted and are denied their sexuality and this incredibly important part of their lives and the destructive potential of that action,” he said. “And I’ve come to believe over time that, as Dick Cheney said, freedom for everybody means freedom for everybody.”

The interview is wide-ranging, and provides interesting insight into the man behind the McCain Presidential campaign.

The K.E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School fifth grader is a budding journalist; he and his fellow students have created a video asking the president elect for an interview during inauguration week. Mr. Weaver is getting so much buzz he is on NPR and has Miami Heat basketball players saying on video Obama should step up to the plate and sit down with the young man.

This is easy pr, President-elect. Answer Mr. Weaver’s questions! It will be much more exciting than any other interview you do that week.

Protest, however, is part of Impact-Florida’s plan on Dec. 12, when the once-divorced governor of Florida marries Carole Rome.

When Crist won the gubernatorial election in 2006, surviving a brutal primary with an opponent who resorted to gay-baiting, I wouldn’t have imagined gay rights demonstrators picketing his wedding. He was a moderate Republican seeking to succeed Jeb Bush in Tallahassee.

But Crist seemed the moderate in 2006 not because of his positions on gay rights or choice or a host of other social issues, but because his opposition in the primary seemed so far to the right.

And now the governor — a potential presidential candidate in 2012 — is facing gay rights demonstrators, who will “respectfully” picket outside his wedding ceremony at the First United Methodist Church and the black-tie optional reception at the elegant Renaissance Vinoy Resort in St. Petersburg.

Crist will say “I do” inside First United. He’ll exit the church, where he will find demonstrators in pink T-shirts. “After the positive congratulatory observance, there will be a candlelight vigil close to the [Vinoy] in downtown St. Pete to mourn the loss of gays’ right to get married,” read a statement from Impact-Florida, the group organizing the protest.

Why the demonstrators?

Because Crist endorsed Amendment 2, which changed the Florida Constitution to state, “Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”

Amendment 2 passed with 62 percent of the vote on Nov. 4.

Charlie Crist, with all his Sunshine Start charm, didn’t work the crowds on Amendment 2. He didn’t stump for the measure — in fact, during a question-and-answer session with the press as recently as early August he needed an explanation of the proposal before he said, “I support it.”

But Crist did endorse Amendment 2, and I don’t think it simply coincidence that at the same time he was scoring points on the right he was getting mentions as a potential running mate for John McCain.

Crist, as any regular viewer of “Saturday Night Live” knows, didn’t get chosen as a political mate in 2008. But he did find a domestic partner and is about to enter a relationship that legally entitles him to 1,000-plus rights and benefits withheld from those who are not married, including gays and lesbians who cannot marry.

Crist is about to enter a relationship that provides him security and stability that Amendment 2’s passage withholds or takes away from many other Floridians. An estimated 400,000 Floridians who are gay or straight are in domestic partnership relationships. And with the broadly written language of Amendment 2, those in same-sex or opposite-sex relationships may lose partnership benefits or find it increasingly more difficult to secure them.

Today, Dec. 8, were Crist to seek domestic partner coverage of some kind for his significant other, Amendment 2’s existence might be used to turn him down. After Dec. 12 and his wedding, no question, no problem.

Florida law severely curtails gift-giving to a politician, even on his wedding day. Crist’s wedding invitations went out with an enclosed card that read, “No gifts please, due to Florida law.”

But even without the law, I don’t think the governor would be getting Tiffany’s from his gay constituents. He’ll be getting what he deserves on Dec. 12 — demonstrators.