APn  10/05  1656 ELN--Quayle-Religion By EILEEN PUTMAN Associated
Press Writer

   OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Sen.  Dan Quayle was "very proud"  of  his
wife  Marilyn's  defense  Wednesday of her father's interest in a
fundamentalist  preacher,  an  aide  to   the   Republican   vice
presidential candidate said.

   Mrs.   Quayle said in television interviews earlier in the day
that  she  and  her  husband  attend  Presbyterian  churches  but
acknowledged  that her father, Warren Tucker, and her late mother
had listened for years to tapes by Col.  Robert Thieme.

   The Texas-based preacher  is  known  for  unorthodox  biblical
interpretations  and  for  verbal  attacks  on  liberals, welfare
recipients, homosexuals and others.

   Meanwhile, a spokesman for George Bush's presidential campaign
said publicity about the issue was "extremely  inappropriate  and
offensive."

   "It's more esoterica that people focus on when nothing else is
going  on,"  said  the  spokesman,  Mark  Goodin,  in a telephone
interview from Washington.

   Mrs.  Quayle said that when she  and  her  husband  visit  her
father  they  occasionally  have  listened to tapes from Thieme's
ministry.  The minister sends out 30,000 taped  sermons  a  month
with  such titles as "Scar Tissue of the Soul," "Satanic Plot No.
1" and "Slave Market of Sin."

   "I have a father who is a very gentle 76-year-old man,  and  I
really  resent the fact that he is being brought into this," Mrs.
Quayle said when asked about her family's  religious  beliefs  on
ABC-TV's "Good  Morning America."  She said her father lives in a
small town "and is not used to being bombarded by reporters,  and
I  really  resent  what is happening to him and what the national
media is doing to him."

   Asked if she and members  of  her  family  were  followers  of
Thieme's Houston-based  ministry,  Mrs.   Quayle said they attend
Presbyterian churches, "hardly the thing of  controversy."    The
McLean Presbyterian Church they attend in Virginia is part of the
Presbyterian  Church  in  America, which has broken away from the
mainline denomination.

   Quayle watched his wife tape network shows  Wednesday  morning
for  ABC  and  for NBC-TV's "Today" program, said David Prosperi,
Quayle's spokesman.

   "He was very proud of  her,"  Prosperi  said.  "They've  heard
those questions before."

   Quayle  and his aides have said that the Thieme tapes have not
been played in the candidate's household.

   Thieme, a World War II  veteran,  is  a  Baptist  minister  in
Houston who  sometimes  wears  his uniform in the pulpit.  He has
written at length about how the United States  is  a  "mobocracy"
imperiled by "satanic propaganda" and creeping socialism.

   Mrs.   Quayle  said  Thieme interprets the Bible from original
Greek, Hebrew and Latin versions. "I  don't  see  anything  wrong
with that," she said.

   She  noted  that  the  late  President  John  F.  Kennedy  was
questioned about his Catholicism  during  his  1960  presidential
campaign.   She  said  she  believes the only legitimate question
about a candidate's religious beliefs is whether he  believes  in
the separation of church and state, "and Dan Quayle and I do."

   "I  grew  up with my mother listening to (Thieme's) tapes. ...
I have never listened to him on social issues.    I  didn't  even
know that he espoused any," she said on NBC.

   She  said  her  husband  has told the nation what he believes.
"That's what's important," she said. "It's  not  what  my  father
believes in.  He is not running for anything."