The rumors about anti-gay Michele Bachmann’s probably-gay husband Marcus just keep getting stronger.

From The Daily Beast:

Bachmann Rumor Grows Louder

If you aren’t yet familiar with the growing whispers about Michele Bachmann’s campaign—the uncorroborated speculation that the candidate’s profoundly antigay hubby, Marcus, is a closeted gay man—you will be. The chatter has already made its way from the blogs and Twitter (Cher tweeted that Marcus has tripped her exquisitely tuned gaydar) to the alternative press to The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld left each other in stitches this week taking shots at Marcus Bachmann’s effeminate manner and “center-square gay” voice. (Anyone out there old enough to remember Paul Lynde?) As Stewart joked, the guy is “an Izod shirt away from being the gay character on Modern Family.” Clips of the comedians’ faux “comedy repression” session promptly popped up on the websites of such stodgy outlets as The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

Now comes the New York Times, which nibbled around the edges in this Sunday piece by Sheryl Gay (!) Stolberg:

Mrs. Bachmann’s strong stance on homosexuality — she once likened it to “personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement” — and her anti-abortion views have appeal for some Republican primary voters. In Iowa this month, she delighted conservatives by signing a pledge opposing “any redefinition of marriage.” (Her fellow Minnesotan and presidential rival, Tim Pawlenty, a former governor, was left explaining why he did not.)

Yet her position has also become a distraction for her campaign, drawing critics and subjecting her family to the kind of scrutiny once reserved for the relatives of nominees. It has exposed a longstanding rift between the congresswoman and her stepsister, who is a lesbian. It has also raised questions about whether her husband, Marcus, who runs two Christian counseling centers, practices “reparative therapy,” or gay-to-straight counseling, derided by critics as an effort to “pray away the gay.”

For the Bachmanns, the issue is entwined with faith. Until recently, they were members of Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater, part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which holds that “a believing member” cannot “remain a practicing homosexual in defiance of God’s word.” Friends say they now attend services at another evangelical church, Eagle Brook, closer to their new home in another Stillwater neighborhood.

Got that? Sure sounds like Michele and Marcus can no longer be “believing members.”

The Times so far doesn’t have anything new today, but the Gaydar Patrol is on the case.

It’s just a matter of Times.