Ben Carson: Being Gay Is ‘Absolutely’ A Choice, Because Prison (Video)

Tea Party hero Dr. Ben Carson says being gay is a choice, because, he claims, straight people who go to prison leave gay.

Retired neurosurgeon, acclaimed author, Tea Party hero, and likely GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson Wednesday morning on CNN said that being gay is “absolutely” a choice.

Carson, who this week formed a presidential exploratory committee, tossed out his decades of scientific study of human biology and reverted to non-scientific presumption to state that men who go to prison straight leave as gay. He claims that is a fact, and claims that “proves” homosexuality is not biological, but a choice, despite major medical associations claiming otherwise.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo brought up the subject of same-sex marriage, and asked Carson if being gay is a choice.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question,” Carson offered.

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Carson is of course wrongly conflating the dire problem of prison rape with homosexuality.

Carson also insisted that just because Americans fixed wrongs in law and the Constitution, like slavery, does not mean that’s what’s happening now with same-sex marriage. And he insisted that same-sex couples do not have the right to marriage, nor should the “definition” of marriage be changed to include them.

“Why do gay people want to get married?,” he asked. “Why do they say they want to get married? Because they want to have various rights — property rights, visitation rights,” Carson said. “Why can’t any two human beings, I don’t care what their sexual orientation is, why can’t they have the legal right to do those things? That does not require changing the definition of marriage.”

That argument is fallacious and false. Same-sex couples need and deserve the rights, responsibilities, and protections marriage provides, as much as different-sex couples. Same-sex couples have often been denied those rights, even with the legal structures Carson suggests. 

More so, why should same-sex couples be treated any differently than different-sex couples? 

 

Image: Screenshot via CNN