Ben Carson doubles down: LGBT don’t get ‘extra rights’
Dr. Ben Carson reiterated at his confirmation
hearing Thursday that individuals identifying as LGBT shouldn’t get special
rights.
All Americans deserve protection under the
law, Carson said, but no one is entitled to “extra rights.”
Trump has appointed Carson
as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary.
Questioned during the hearing by Ohio Democrat
Senator Sherrod Brown on whether he would enforce protections for LGBT
Americans in public housing, Carson reconfirmed his previously stated belief.
“Of course, I would enforce all the laws of
the land,” Carson said. “Of course, I think all Americans should be protected
by the law.”
He then added, “What I have said before is I
don’t think anyone should get ‘extra rights.’”
Carson made the same point in a 2014 speech at
CPAC, a major conservative conference, earning the ire of LGBT and gay
“marriage” advocates the year before the June 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme
Court ruling legalizing homosexual “marriage.”
“Of course gay people should have the same
rights as everyone else,” he said at the time. “But they don't get extra
rights. They
don't get to redefine marriage.”
The retired neurosurgeon and former GOP
presidential candidate has spoken frankly about homosexuality and other issues
in the past.
He faced backlash in 2015 for saying homosexuality
was a choice. Later the same year when asked
by a journalist if transgender individuals should be allowed access to the
restroom of the opposite sex, he replied, "It is not
fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable."
“I think everybody has equal rights, but I’m
not sure that anybody should have extra rights, extra rights when it comes to
redefining everything for everybody else and imposing your view on everybody
else,” Carson said.
At July’s Republican National Convention
Carson said the idea of gender fluidity was absurd.
“For thousands of years, mankind has known
what a man is and what a woman is, and now, all of a sudden we don’t know
anymore,” he stated.
“Now, is that the height of absurdity?”
Carson
first came to political prominence in
2013 when he criticized
Obamacare while
giving the National Prayer Breakfast keynote address with Obama on the stage
beside him.
That same year the longtime
director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital stepped
down as commencement speaker for
the university’s School of Medicine and School of Education graduation after
anger from homosexual activists over comments he’d made defending marriage.
“Marriage is between a man and a woman,”
Carson told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It’s a well-established, fundamental
pillar of society and no group — be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people
who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are — they don’t get to
change the definition.”
A former GOP presidential rival to Trump,
Carson was one of
the first to support the president-elect as
the presumptive Republican nominee after dropping out of the race in March.
