Dr. Ben Carson has officially decided he will decline Johns Hopkins’ invitation to be this year’s commencement speaker after his offensive comments became a major distraction for the nation’s top-rated teaching hospital.
“Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would be in the best interest of the students for me to voluntarily withdraw as your commencement speaker this year,” Carson wrote in an email to the Maryland medical school’s Dean, the Baltimore Sun reports.
But Carson’s “belief in traditional marriage” is not the issue, and is not what caused the 61-year old to become the subject of nationwide anger.
“No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition [of marriage],†Carson had said on Fox News to Sean Hannity.
Carson later offered a weak apology, stating “if” anyone had been offended he was sorry, but he remained adamant in his anti-gay beliefs.
Then, just days after his NAMBLA rant, Carson, who, by the way, is about to retire as a neurosurgeon and the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins — yes, he’s literally a brain surgeon — told conservative pundit and radio talk show host Mark Levin that white liberals are “the most racist people there are.â€
There has not been an apology for that comment.
And if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Carson is now reportedly scheduled to speak at the fall banquet of an anti-gay hate group.
Of course, the Tea Party and religious conservatives are already outraged — at the left.
“I think it was unfortunate that he was encouraged to step down because he was expressing his First Amendment rights on this issue,” said David A. Ferguson, head of the Maryland Republican Party, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Of course, Ferguson is one hundred percent wrong. The First Amendment applies to government censorship, not several thousand graduating medical students who signed a petition asking Carson to forgo delivering the commencement address — but why would we expect a top-level Republican Party official to have read the Constitution?
“I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t think it’s in the spirit of the university environment where you’re supposed to respect diversity of opinions,” Ferguson continued, according to the Sun:
Derek McCoy, whose group Maryland Family Alliance opposes same-sex marriage, said Carson should not have stepped down and that liberals’ tolerance of views is one-sided when it comes to gay issues.
“Here you have a doctor who has had an incredible, impeccable medical career, but yet because he makes a fundamental stance about what he believes about marriage, he is suddenly ostracized,” McCoy said.
Again, conservatives and Tea Party types love to twist truth.
See above.