Pew’s latest study finds that “Americans in most religious categories want laws to define marriage as between a man and a woman,” though Jews, “‘modernist'” Catholics, non-Christians and respondents with no religious affiliation all gave majority backing to same-sex marriage. A 57 percent majority of respondents answered yes to a more general question of whether homosexuals should “‘have the same rights as other Americans.'”

In a campaign speech to the predominantly black National Baptist Convention in New Orleans, John Kerry quoted verse against President Bush, the AP reports. “Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing,” Kerry said, and argued that Bush had failed the biblical test set by the Good Samaritan. “‘Four years ago, George Bush came to office calling himself a compassionate conservative. Well, in the story of the Good Samaritan we are told of two men who pass by or cross to the other side of the street when they come upon a robbed and a beaten man…It is clear: For four years, George W. Bush may have talked about compassion, but he’s walked right by.'”