Utah Senators Howard Stephenson (R) and Dennis Stowell (R) admitted on a conservative radio show Saturday that fellow Senator Chris Buttars was not stripped of his committee posts for anti-gay comments made during an interview, but because he broke a previous agreement not talk about gay issues.

As reported in the Deseret News…

“I have to tell you publicly that most of what Sen. Buttars said — I agree with,” Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said on the weekly radio program “Inside Utah Politics” on KTKK-AM. “However, my concern is that we, as a Senate caucus, had an agreement that because Senator Buttars has become such a lightning rod on this issue, that he would not be the spokesperson on the issue.”

Buttars violated that agreement, Stephenson said, adding that the comments undermined “everything we’ve done” in the last three weeks of the legislative session.

“I think the bulk of people in Utah agree with 90 percent of what he said,” Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, chimed in on the radio program. “He is a lightning rod, and I’m afraid the gay community’s using him a little bit to get more publicity.”‘

Audio clip of the radio show below, relevant segment 38:20 minutes in — be sure to listen to the end of that segment — particularly the caller. The entire clip may be worth a listen as well… just to get a sense of how clueless these folks really are…

[audio:http://inlookout.com/site/wp-content/media/audio/buttars.mp3]