Hookup.org

TOM SWANSON, a computer programmer from Missouri, used to have personal ads on Match.com and LavaLife.com, but found he wasn't meeting people who shared his political orientation. "It never felt right to just come out and ask, `What are you?,"' says Swanson.

So he started SingleRepublican.com, a free website dedicated to bringing together "conservative American singles." The site is just one of a number of online services aimed at bringing together singles looking for love on their end of the political spectrum.

Aside from the American-flag graphics on the homepage, there's not much here that's different from the usual online dating site. The thousand-plus members' ads include a listing of their favorite politician ("Ronald Reagan is the most popular by far," says Swanson), but otherwise it's the usual vital stats. They initially had a line for one's astrological sign, but dropped it after a member wrote in to say it wasn't a "Republican thing." Also missing is any way to indicate sexual orientation. But Swanson says this is "unintentional" and that "gays are very welcome to join the site."

At present, SingleRepublican may be the only option for the lonely conservative. RepublicanConnect-ions.com, a paid service ("You get what you pay for, and only liberals expect to get something for nothing," declared the homepage), went bellyup soon after its launch on Valentine's Day.

But lonely bleeding hearts will find a number of left-leaning sites to choose from. LiberalHearts.com, a subdivision of the multimillion-member 2ofakind.com, gained fame this winter for its "Who Wants to be a First Lady" contest held for the unwitting Dennis Kucinich, a bachelor. "Our philosophy is that opposites attract, but two of a kind can live happily ever after," says founder Sal Prano.

The site, founded last year, lets members design their own compatibility scoring system based on up to 150 factors, political and otherwise. In the interest of "equal time," Prano briefly considered launching a conservative division, too, but then decided that "because women are less apt to sign on with dating services than men, and women are more apt to vote Democratic, the matchmaking would be difficult."

For those still harboring a James Carville-Mary Matalin fantasy, there's LoveInWar.com, a site offering "dating for the agitated." The hippest of the political sites, LoveInWar takes no party line, and doesn't even ask for political affiliation. "I don't want a liberal site, I don't want a conservative site, I want a site for cool people," says Bryan Carlin, who founded the site last February. "I want to take a new look at politics through a pop culture lens -- one that's playful, irreverent, funny and sexy."

But a quick look at members' ads reveals a decidedly liberal slant. Under the rubric "A few things in this world you could do without," most members offer variations on a familiar litany: corporate welfare, religious fundamentalists, Wal-Mart, Rush Limbaugh, and so forth. There are also features like "The Useful Voter Guide," which allows players to whack one of two targets (the Bible thumper or the militant lesbian?) in order to determine if they're a Republican or a Democrat, and the "How We're Feelin" Meter, on which members rate their current mood somewhere between "Clinton mellow" and "Dean angry."

Then there's ActforLove.org (their slogan: "take action, get action"), which was founded in May 2003 by John Hlinko, a political consultant and lead volunteer with MoveOn.org. "The two most exciting areas online are politics and dating, so it makes sense that they should come together," says Hlinko, who met his fiancee online at Match.com in November 2002.

Though the site is purportedly open to all political types, its current sponsors include Working Assets, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. And though ActforLove is linked with hundreds of other apolitical services (including Boston.com's personals) through Spring Street Networks, their own subset of 5,000-plus members, many of whom are from the D.C. area, are unabashedly lefty: A quick search reveals one Washington-area woman who's "skeptical of commercially driven mainstream values," a male grad student looking for "someone to teach him about feminism" and another guy in Colorado who "loves dogs and hates George Bush."

Currently, the site isn't functionally much different from a traditional dating site, though links encourage members to "take action" by registering to vote or signing a petition against Donald Rumsfeld's elevation to a sex symbol. One of the site's early initiatives was DraftWesleyClark.com: "It was the first citizen-driven presidential draft campaign, and Clark said that's what got him to run," boasts Hlinko. In the next version of the site, he plans to reward members for taking action. "Maybe you register to vote, and you get rewarded with a free credit that lets you reply to someone's ad that caught your eye," he says.

Political agreement may make for lifelong bedfellows. But some wonder if it always makes for the best sex. As LoveInWar's Bryan Carlin puts it, "Isn't it more fun to sleep with the enemy?"

Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey are the authors of "Sex Etiquette" and "The Big Bang." Their sex and relationships advice column is available at EmandLo.com.