iowa state education association

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in a largely Muslim country.

Jeanne White-Ginder, the mother of Ryan White -- who attracted nationwide attention after contracting HIV from a tainted blood treatment in 1984 and died at the age of 18 in 1990 -- said she welcomed the opportunity to speak with Republican Mike Huckabee to discuss his comments about AIDS. "I think if we meet I'm going to give him one of Ryan's books," she told The Advocate, referring to the book her son authored about his battle against AIDS. Ginder-White requested the meeting after Huckabee, a former minister whose presidential candidacy has recently caught fire, defended his 1992 statement that the federal government needed "to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.'' Speaking on Fox News Sunday last weekend, Huckabee declined to retract the comment but said he was not suggesting that AIDS patients should have been quarantined. He did not offer an alternative explanation for how people living with AIDS at the time could have been isolated.