On the July 26th edition of The John Carlson Show, the host spent considerable time lambasting the four Washington State Supreme Court justices who dissented in the decision to uphold a ban on gay marriage. Carlson was particularly incensed by Justice Mary Fairhurst's conclusion that in the absence of a proven state interest, the only reason to ban gay marriage would be a general desire to hate on the gays.

Carlson couldn't believe that the justices could overlook all of the clear, specific evidence of the otherwise happily married hetero couples who have been driven to divorce due to gay couples they've never even met. Or all of the children of traditional marriage who are put at risk when the gays move in next door and start a neighborhood arms race of remodeling and fashionable dinner parties. Informed wingers know that happens all the time.

But lucky for us, we didn't have to wait long for callers to prove him wrong. After all, there's nothing like gay talk to get your average right-wing radio listener into a frothing lather. For example, take caller "Tom in Seattle":

Uh, Hi. I sure am glad that these Satan worshipping savages didn't overthrow two thousand years of Christian civilization with the stroke of a pen.

Of course! Who could doubt the state's interest in preventing a Satanic takeover initiated by a few men getting hitched. There's obviously no hatred or lack of logic there. But things got even better when Val Stevens, one of the leaders of the Republican delegation in the state senate, called in to share her carefully researched reasoning:

CARLSON: I want to ask you about something in Mary Fairhurst's Dissent.
STEVENS: I haven't read the decision so help me out.
CARLSON: OK, this is her dissent. 'Having determined that there is no rational basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry, I conclude that the Defense of Marriage Act was motivated solely by animus towards homosexuals.'
STEVENS: Well I voted for it before I voted against it? Would that be fair here?
CARLSON: No, what she's saying is, as a justice, she is saying that she doesn't see any rational reason to deny homosexuals the right to marry. So I believe that anyone who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act was simply motivated only by their hatred towards homosexuals.
STEVENS: OK, I would go back, and my history on this subject goes back I think farther than her's does. I have been fighting this for twenty years. This was an attempt to legitimize a perverted lifestyle, that's all it is. Homosexual has a specific definition, and they are acting out to legitimize that definition of two people and what they do in their bedroom.
CARLSON: Not to legitimize, but equate. Equate homosexual conduct with heterosexual conduct.

I think we have a winner. This is a state senator who was closely involved in the passage of the gay marriage ban, and the first thing she can come up with to refute the notion of "animus towards homosexuals" is that the gays are just a big bunch of perverted scum. I'm sure that's the clear, convincing state interest that Carlson was looking for.