A CNN host tried Thursday to hold 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson’s feet to the fire after he suggested that the gay rights movement is not at all analogous to the civil rights movement.
Carson said in a Fox News interview Wednesday that comparisons between the fight for same-sex marriage and the civil rights movement of the 1960s are inaccurate because he doesn’t recall a time when there were “straight only” water fountains, a reference to the era of segregation in the United States.
The next day, CNN’s Brianna Keilar tried to get the 2016 candidate to answer whether he thinks discrimination against gay people is a real thing in the United States. “Do you think that gay Americans are discriminated against, that they face discrimination?” she asked more than once, reiterating her point several times.
Carson avoided answering the question directly, opting instead to press on to matters that he considered more important.
The candidate said, “What position can a person take who has no animosity toward gay people, but believes in the traditional definition of marriage that would be acceptable?”
Keilar kept at it, but Carson continued to avoid the question, saying only that the U.S. Constitution “protects every single American” and that, “everybody has equal rights, nobody has extra rights.”
He eventually asked, “Can we move on to something more important? Is there anything more important to talk about?”
The closest that Carson came to answering the question was to say that, “every group faces some type of discrimination.”
“I wish we would talk more about that,” he said.
Unsatisfied, Keilar said, “I think you gave me part of an answer, but not a complete one.”
Carson’s reluctance to answer the anchor’s question in full may have something to do with the furor he caused in March when he suggested that being gay is a choice and that prison can turn a straight man into a homosexual.
“Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay,” the former head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”
His remarks eclipsed his announcement that he had filed paperwork to run for president in 2016. He later walked back his gay prison sex remarks, saying in a statement that he regretted his word choice.
“I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation,” he said. “I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”
He added, “I’m a doctor trained in multiple fields of medicine, who was blessed to work at perhaps the finest institution of medical knowledge in the world. Some of our brightest minds have looked at this debate, and up until this point there have been no definitive studies that people are born into a specific sexuality.”
“We do know, however, that we are always born male and female. And I know that we are all made in God’s Image, which means we are all deserving of respect and dignity,” he said.
