Of course it’s a gimmick, but it got our attention. If you’re divorced, and headed for marriage No. 2, you probably don’t want to go through the whole formal wedding deal a second time, nor do you want to pay for it.

Now comes “Elope for Obama.”

For all weddings in October, the Brooks Hill Historic Church in Portland, Oregon, will donate the entire rental fee to the Obama presidential campaign. In fact, you’re told to make a check out to Obama for Change.

You can have up to 50 guests. The nondenominational church is on a hillside 20 minutes from downtown Portland. You can choose from any wedding on their website, with rentals from $395 for an intimate two-hour wedding to $695 for a four-hour wedding. Use of the baby grand is included. Local ministers, usually $200 to $300, will pronounce the vows (religious or secular), also at no charge, in support of Barack Obama. Or you can bring your own minister. Everything, of course is subject to availability. And you need to be in Oregon four business days in advance to get your license. Other than that, party on!

What can we say... Portland is that liberal a place. Cindy Lou Banks, the owner of the church, feels that Obama, if elected, would bring a new beginning to the country, and said, “What better way is there for couples to support his election than eloping in October and forging their own new beginnings?"

How does Banks make money from this? Volume!

Oh, and if you reserve the chapel ($150 deposit) and don’t show up for the wedding, they keep your deposit.

We will now give equal time to any lawyer offering a free divorce in honor of John McCain.

For the first time in American history, the two candidates for President have both been affected by divorce. Barack Obama’s mother, Ann, was divorced twice and had a child from each marriage. John McCain divorced his first wife, Carol, to marry his current wife, Cindy.

Of course, we have had a divorced President before: Jane Wyman divorced Ronald Reagan in 1949 on the grounds of “extreme mental cruelty.” (He married the devoted Nancy four years later.) Reagan went on to pioneer no-fault divorce as Governor of California by signing the Family Law Act of 1969.

Perhaps only someone who had been through a divorce would see the wisdom in such divorce reform.

So what might we expect from John McCain?

McCain’s divorce was in 1980, after 14 years of marriage, six of which he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. By all accounts he remains friendly with Carol McCain, their daughter, Sydney, and Carol’s two sons, Doug and Andy, whom he adopted. Carol McCain fully supports his run for President.

As Nicholas Kristoff said in “The New York Times” in 2000, when McCain was first running for President, “No candidate could be luckier in his choice of an ex-wife than Senator McCain, and he must be the only politician around who could cheat on his wife and divorce her and still get her support and her campaign contributions today.”

If an ex-wife says something nice, that’s a hell of an endorsement.

So, end of story? Is it any of our business?

As has been proven in the John Edwards affair, people seem to feel that private behavior, like the lying and deceiving that Edwards did, indicates unworthiness to be President.