Bill Donohue, the virulently homophobic head of the Catholic League who has blamed that church's sexual abuse scandals on the presence of gays among the clergy and criticized the “gay death style,” is the latest right-wing figure to come to the aid of Dr. Ben Carson in the wake of Carson's anti-gay comments.

Carson, a recent favorite of the right-wing media, has been at the center of a firestorm since he compared gay supporters of marriage equality to supporters of pedophilia and bestiality during a Fox News interview. Conservatives including Rush Limbaugh, Fox's Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity have come to his support.

Donohue joined that chorus, saying Carson's comments were a “perfectly legitimate line of inquiry” and calling him “a good man who was framed” in an April 2 press release:

Princeton professor Peter Singer wants us to keep an open mind about Fred having sex with Fido. He says, “sex with animals does not always involve cruelty,” and that “mutually satisfying activities” of a sexual nature should be respected. Last month, Yale hosted a “sensitivity training” exercise where Dr. Jill McDevitt touted the merits of bestiality. Her goal is to “increase compassion for people who may engage in activities that are not what you would personally consider normal.”

Dr. Carson is a good man who was framed. It's the sexologists and the Ivy Leaguers who need to explain themselves.

It's unsurprising that Donohue would speak out in support of anti-gay comments; he has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric, particularly concerning the LGBT community.

In a March 2010 Catholic League ad, Donohue described the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal as a “homosexual crisis.” He added: “Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.” At the time, a criminologist who worked on the study Donohue cited told Media Matters that Donohue was misinterpreting its results.

Donohue has also criticized the publishing world for their refusal to “tell the truth about the gay death style”; claimed that "[t]he gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done," said that allowing adoption of children by same-sex parents is “against nature”; criticized “radical gay activists” for what he termed their effort to “pervert society by acting out on their perversions”; and attackedThe New York Times as a “gay-friendly newspaper.”

The Catholic League president has also claimed that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular,” said that "[p]eople don't trust the Muslims when it comes to liberty," and referred to “gook jokes.”