The Sam Brownback interview in Rolling Stone is creating quite a stir.It was reportedly all the talk during Kansas Days this last weekend, but national focus on the “God’s Senator” article has been about an apparent misunderstanding.The Associated Press reports:_Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a potential presidential candidate, said Monday he meant no offense to homosexuals when he used the word “fruits” in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine.__In a lengthy profile titled “God’s Senator,” the magazine quotes the Kansas Republican as criticizing countries like Sweden that allow civil unions between same-sex couples.__”You’ll know them by their fruits,” Brownback said, quoting a biblical passage from Matthew 7:19.__Rolling Stone writer Jeff Sharlet said in the story, appearing in the magazine’s current issue, that Brownback appeared to be calling gay Swedes “fruits,” a derogatory term for homosexuals.__After gay and lesbian advocacy groups denounced the comments last week, Brownback issued a statement Monday saying his quote “was in no way referring to sexual orientation.”_The misunderstanding is unfortunate, because it’s drawing attention away from what is perhaps the most comprehensive portrait of Brownback, the Kansas senator who is poised to run for president in 2008 – albeit a portrait drawn in a notably liberal magazine.It focuses heavily on his religious beliefs.Some highlights from the article:¢ “Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years — schools, Social Security, welfare — will be privatized or simply done away with.”¢ “He tells a story about a chaplain who challenged a group of senators to reconsider their conception of democracy. ‘How many constituents do you have?’ the chaplain asked. The senators answered: 4 million, 9 million, 12 million. ‘May I suggest,’ the chaplain replied, ‘that you have only one constituent?'”Brownback pauses. That moment, he declares, changed his life. ‘This’ — being senator, running for president, waving the flag of a Christian nation — ‘is about serving one constituent.’ He raises a hand and points above him.”¢ “Now he has become a Catholic. He was baptized not in a church but in a chapel tucked between lobbyists’ offices on K Street that is run by Opus Dei, the secretive lay order founded by a Catholic priest who advocated ‘holy coercion’ and considered Spanish dictator Francisco Franco an ideal of worldly power. Brownback also studies Torah with an orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn. ‘Deep,’ says the rabbi, Nosson Scherman. Lately, Brownback has been reading the Koran, but he doesn’t like what he’s finding”¢ “Brownback is unlikely to receive the Republican presidential nomination — but as the candidate of the Christian right, he may well be in a position to determine who does, and what they include in their platform.”¢ “The most bluntly theocratic effort, however, is the Constitution Restoration Act, which Brownback co-sponsored with Jim DeMint, another former C Streeter who was then a congressman from South Carolina. If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. “¢ After his spiritual transformation, Brownback began traveling to some of the most blighted regions in the world. At times his motivation appeared strictly economic. He toured the dictatorships of Central Asia, trading U.S. support for access to oil — but he insists that he wanted to prevent their wealth from falling into “Islamic hands.” Oil may have spurred his interest in Africa, too — the U.S. competes with China for access to African oil fields — but the welfare of the world’s most afflicted continent has since become a genuine obsession for Brownback. It’s a long article. There’s a lot more there.For more on reaction to the Rolling Stone article can be found here.How to contact As always, you can find information to contact members of the Kansas congressional delegation here.