Rick Perry threatens to secede from heterosexuality

As the subject of ongoing, and recently increasing, speculation that he's gay, you'd think Rick Perry wouldn't open the door to trafficking in unsubstantiated rumors about other presidential candidates. But you'd be wrong.

Rick Perry is now questioning whether Barack Obama loves America.

What's really going on is three-fold.

1. Perry is being as sensationalist as he can in order to break through the 2012 chatter and get press, so that he's marked as a real candidate.

2. Perry is throwing racist red-meat to the GOP base that decides GOP primaries.  The best thing you can throw them is something that isn't true, and is as bigoted as possible, as they're not the brightest most-evolved bunch (cf., Obama is a Muslim, and let's cut the budget in the middle of an economic crisis).

3. Perry is trying to butch things up in order to deflect speculation that he's a closet gay.

Of course, the best way to get people to stop talking about whether you had an affair with another senior state official is not to start spreading rumors about other candidates in the race.  At the very least it opens you to charges of hypocrisy, and at worst, it may make some reporters start re-investigating those persistent rumors.