Was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice considered and later dropped as a possible vice presidential pick by top advisers to GOP presidential nominee John McCain because of persistent rumors that she’s a lesbian?

That’s the opinion of a Republican Party insider who had access to the McCain campaign’s inner circle of advisers, according to investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Ian Halperin.

Halperin published the unidentified Republican insider’s account of the McCain campaign’s deliberation over Rice as a possible vice presidential nominee two weeks ago in his blog, Ianundercover.com.

“According to a prominent member of the Republican National Committee privy to the [vice presidential] search process, many in McCain’s inner circle argued furiously for the selection of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the other top contenders, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty,” Halperin wrote in his blog.

But rumors about Rice’s sexual orientation, fueled by a recent book by Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, which reported that Rice jointly owns a house and shared a line of credit with an unmarried woman in California, made it politically untenable for McCain to select Rice as his running mate, Halperin reported the GOP source as saying.

Further speculation about Rice’s sexual orientation surfaced in recent weeks when a reliable, independent source told the Blade that a business adviser to former tennis star and lesbian activist Martina Navratilova boasted about having dated Rice in a clandestine lesbian relationship in Washington a few years ago.

Read the full story from the Washington Blade.