In a rambling interview with a Catholic news network over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson derided marriage equality and protections for transgender people as “extra rights” for “a few people who perhaps are abnormal,” warning that if the next president’s Supreme Court nominees protect LGBT rights, you can “say goodbye to America.”
Carson made the comments in an interview with the Witherspoon Institute’s Matthew Franck as part of a series of conversations with presidential candidates on the Catholic network EWTN.
When Franck asked Carson about Department of Education efforts to protect the rights of transgender students in schools, Carson launched into a discussion of how “political correctness” and “extra rights” are ruining America.
“You see how silly this is,” he said. “I mean, it’s beyond ridiculous that you take the most abnormal situation and then you make everyone else conform to it. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. That’s one of the very reasons that I have been an outspoken opponent of things like gay marriage. I don’t have any problem with gay people doing anything they want to do. You know, it’s a free country, there’s freedom of association. However, when you now impose your value system on everybody else and change fundamental definitions and principles of society, I have a big problem with that. Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights, but nobody gets extra rights. And when we start trying to impose the extra rights based on a few people who perhaps are abnormal, where does that lead?”
After warning that gay marriage could lead to legalized polygamy and railing against “garbage” arguments for transgender rights, Carson said, “We are absolutely destroying ourselves because we are paying attention to political correctness.”
“Our time is running out,” he added. “If we don’t stand up for principles now and we get a progressive and they get two or three Supreme Court picks, say goodbye to America.”
