<p>When using <code>before_filter :login_required</code> to protect a particular page, the <code>link_to_unless_current</code> method in the application layout template renders the "Login" link for the login page as a hyperlink instead of just text.</p>

<p>The "Login" text/link problem only occurs when redirected to the Login Page via the <code>before_filter</code> machinery, otherwise, the <code>link_to_unless_current</code> method operates as expected.</p>

<p>It seems that <code>link_to_unless_current</code> is using the old page data as the "current" instead of the login page (when redirecting).</p>

Appreciate the responses and you can tell by the nature of the question that we're new to rails. By the way, we posted the same question on this site:
http://railsforum.com
(not sure if it's the official rails forum) with no response yet. StackOverflow so far seems to be creating a great community of helpers willing to reach out to the programmatically challenged.
I think part of the problem is that we were mixing restful urls with standard routes. The login page is mapped to the restful route "/login" but the page redirection was using "/sessions/new" (Rick Olson's restful authentication module)
In application.rb, we forced the filter to "/login" and that solved the problem:
```
before_filter :login_required

protected

def login_required
  return true if logged_in?
  session[:return_to] = request.request_uri
  flash[:error] = "Please log in first"
  redirect_to "/login" and return false
end
```
Comments on the technical merits of this approach appreciated as it may be helpful to other newbs.
Thanks,
Joe