Is It a Boy? Teenage Father Drops Hint on Palin's First Grandchild

It's a boy - at least according to powerful hints from the teenage father of Sarah Palin's first grandchild.

In his first interview since his romance and pregnancy with Palin's daughter, Bristol, 17, almost overnight made him a topic in the presidential campaign, Levi Johnston, 18, yesterday held forth on fatherhood and relationships.

"I'm looking forward to having him," Johnston told the Associated Press in an interview conducted outside his home in Wasilla, Alaska.

"I'm going to take him hunting and fishing. He'll be everywhere with me," Johnston said.

Johnson, an avid hunter who spoke to the AP from a front yard strewn with caribou and elk antlers, did not discuss baby names.

He also said he liked Barack Obama, although he hoped his future mother-in-law's campaign was successful. However Johnston will not be called upon to put his loyalties to the test in this election. He apparently did not register in time to vote, according to the local elections office.

The Palin-Johnson baby is due on December 18, the most high profile teenage pregnancy in America.

Its disclosure, after Palin emerged as the surprising pick for the vice-presidential nomination and on the eve of the Republican convention in September, briefly turned Johnston from a hockey playing local heart throb and high school drop out into a minor celebrity.

Given Palin's sudden celebrity and her well-known evangelical leanings, including opposition to sex education and abortion, the pregnancy became immediate tabloid fodder.

Johnston was caught up in the swirl. He was on the tarmac to welcome John McCain when the Republican presidential nominee arrived at the convention in St Paul. McCain made a point of lingering with the couple, and Johnston was hauled out in front of tens of thousands of Republican activists when Palin delivered her speech.

Johnston's Facebook page, in which he claimed to be a redneck who never wanted children, was dissected. So was his high school hockey career, and his decision to leave school with graduating to get a job as an apprentice electrician on Alaska's oil fields.

There were reports that he was being forced into marriage.

"None of that's true," he said yesterday. "We both love each other. We both want to marry each other. And that's what we are going to do."

He said the couple had been dating for three years. "We were planning on getting married a long time ago with or without the kid," he said. "That was the plan from the start."

The wedding will now take place next summer.