Clint Bowyer, shares eastern washington eagles football third in eastern washington baseball fells in the playoff standings, finished ninth Sunday and dropped 115 points behind leader Gordon. Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart, fourth in the standings, finished 13th and fell 249 points behind Gordon. So Bowyer is now the only non-Hendrick driver with any realistic shot at winning the title. "Those guys are tough," Newman said of the Hendrick team. "At one point they were the top three [in Sunday's race, including teammate Kyle Busch, who wound up fourth]. You think, 'Man, I'm going to run fourth today at best. ' So it's nice to be able to bounce back and do a little hard racing and come in second. "--Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers. --(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)The ChaseNextel Cup standings through 32 of 36 races:*--* Pl Driver Points Behind 1 Jeff Gordon 6,055 -- 2 Jimmie Johnson 6,002 -53 3 Clint Bowyer 5,940 -115 4 Tony Stewart 5,806 -249 5 Carl Edwards 5,770 -285 6 Kyle Busch 5,765 -290 7 Kevin Harvick 5,686 -369 8 Denny Hamlin 5,681 -374 9 Jeff Burton 5,646 -409 10.

Kurt Busch 5,635 -420 *--*REMAINING RACESSunday: Georgia 500, Hampton, Ga. Nov 4: Dickies 500, Fort Worth. Nov 11: Checker Auto Parts 500, Avondale, Ariz. Nov 18: Ford 400, Homestead, Fla. Associated Press Eastern Washington Eagles . GAY MARRIAGE in the United States is on the ropes and fighting for its legal and political life In the last year alone, Gov eastern washington basketball . Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a same-sex marriage bill in California; the supreme courts of New York, Washington and Georgia upheld marriage bans; and at least a dozen states have passed, or are working on, anti-gay-marriage laws. True, gay and lesbian couples residing in Massachusetts can get hitched, but gone are the heady days of 2004 when scores of male and female couples dashed up the steps of San Francisco's City Hall to say their respective "I do's. "But take heart eastern washington cheerleaders . Lance Bass, a singer with the now-defunct boy band N'Sync, has come out of the closet, disclosing to People magazine two weeks ago that he's in a "very stable relationship" with actor/model and reality television star Reichen Lehmkuhl eastern washington football . Upon hearing this news, the first word that popped into my head was "even!""Seinfeld" fans doubtless recall the 1994 episode when Jerry, in contrast to the ever-roiling fortunes of George, Elaine and Kramer, finds that everything works out "even" for him If he loses one job, he's sure to get another.

If he breaks up with a girlfriend, he'll quickly find a replacement So it is with gay marriage in the U. S eastern washington eagles football . -- even as we lose ground politically, cultural acceptance continues to accelerate. Same-sexuality, once marginalized, is now part of the mainstream eastern washington jobs Eastern Washington Eagles Eastern Washington Eagles - go . And it's this mainstreamizing that the radical right longs to reverse -- hoping against hope that a federal gay-marriage ban will be a "They Shall Not Pass," leading to a complete socio-sexual 180 eastern washington soccer . The trouble for them is not only that a gay-marriage ban would be shutting the barn door long after the horse has fled -- but that the horse in fact has won the Kentucky Derby eastern washington sports . When Ian McKellen can blithely bring a boy toy with him to the Oscars, Rosie O'Donnell be afforded a place of honor on "The View," and Anne Heche lose cred for re-embracing heterosexuality, it's pretty clear that, in the immortal words of Judy Garland, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. "The turning point was the AIDS epidemic. As people were dying, closet doors flew open, and the straight world quickly learned that the gay one wasn't as alien as they imagined. In Hollywood, this had a particular effect via the Disney cartoon blockbusters "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin. " Because many of the leading Disney animators were gay, rival studios lured talent with the promise of same-sex spousal benefits.

Faster than Aladdin's genie, this practice went industrywide, with a once-reluctant Disney falling right in line, much to the chagrin of Focus on the Family This year, as the L. A . Times' Patrick Goldstein has noted, three of the four most profitable movies have been animated features; the fourth stars a sexually ambiguous pirate. Just as telling, a recent New York Daily News item noted that "Sean William Scott turned heads when he showed up at Los Angeles gay bar Heat on the arm of David Geffen. " In the past, no newspaper column made mention of gay bars, and had they done so, the stars in question would have fought tooth and nail to scotch the item Not now eastern washington university . And the reason can be found in a Pew Research Center poll released last week. "On the subject of gay unions, 56% opposed giving gays the right to marry, but 53% favored allowing gays to enter into legal agreements that provide many of the same rights as married couples," a Reuters summary reported "There has been an increase . . Eastern Washington Eagles tickets eastern washington volleyball Eastern Washington Eagles - goeags . in the proportion of Americans who believe homosexuality is innate -- 36%, up from 30% in 2003 . Similarly, 49% believed homosexuals cannot be changed to heterosexual, compared to 42% in 2003. "The tide has clearly turned.