Jim Stelling, the Seminole County Republican Party chairman, had hoped to be the state GOP chairman a few years ago. But his campaign was derailed by a last-minute attack from a party rival who mailed a letter pointing out that Stelling had been married six times.

Not true. He had been married only five times.

Naturally, Stelling sued for libel.

"I believe in family values," he said on the witness stand this week.

A person unfamiliar with the strict moral code of righteous family-values conservative Republicans might quibble with his indignation.

Five? Six? Does it matter? Or to paraphrase a bread analogy: Nobody's going to miss another slice taken from a cut loaf.

But Stelling is on firm historical ground here. There's ample evidence that conservative Republicans who have been married five times still get to lord their family values over the rest of us.

It seems that their personal sanctity-of-marriage boundaries aren't breached until the sixth trip down the aisle.

Following the Greenwood standard

This standard was set during the 1992 Republican National Convention when "Family Values Night" was started by a performance from Lee Greenwood, who talked about "a future of strong families and communities" in what was then the fourth month of his fifth marriage.

So it should come as no surprise that conservative Jim Harnsberger, the founder of the San Diego Center for Family Values, ran his outfit as a five-marriage veteran with about $18,000 in unpaid child support.

If he had been married six times, that would have made him a hypocrite.

With only five marriages you can still be considered an expert on developing long-term, loving relationships. Barbara DeAngelis, the self-help author of several relationship books, including Are You the One for Me? — subtitled Knowing Who's Right and Avoiding Who's Wrong — is a five-time I-doer herself.

So there's some magic in that number five, and no reason for five-timers to shy away from pointing fingers at the real culprits tearing apart the moral fabric of our country.

One gay marriage is too many

Like those feisty gays, who keep wanting to be married once.

One of Arizona's staunchest supporters of family values is Republican state Sen. Karen Johnson.

"Gays have a choice to marry someone of the opposite sex, if they want to," Johnson said in a recently published interview. "If they choose to be together, they can be, but without the benefit of marriage."

Johnson is, of course, a woman who has availed herself of that benefit five times. And that hasn't stopped her from also promoting legislation to make it harder for heterosexual couples to get divorced.

With five marriages as the permissible limit for family-values harping, a guy like Rush Limbaugh — who only has three failed lifetime commitments under his belt so far — is just rounding the backstretch in his ability to pontificate about the licentious, liberal culture.

So, let the record be clear. Seminole County Republican Party Chairman Stelling has only been married five times, still making him eligible to be a legitimate combatant in the Culture War.

In other news, there's a new Family Values specialty license plate in Florida this year. I'm not kidding. It shows a man and woman with two children.

I guess there wasn't enough room on the plate to draw in all the ex-wives.