GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said he’d be open to re-implementing the bans on gay soldiers serving openly and women serving in combat if elected the next commander in chief.
Carson said he would listen to the advice of military advisers and make a decision based on evidence, not on ideology or the desire for a social experiment.
“Yes, I would be willing to sit down with people from both sides and examine the evidence and make decisions based on what the evidence shows,” Carson said on Monday during an interview on CNN.
The law prohibiting gays from serving openly, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was repealed in 2011. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2013 announced that he would lift the ban on women serving in combat roles, kicking off almost three years of studies that wrapped up late last year when Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced he would open all positions, including special operations and infantry, with no exceptions.
When asked about women serving in combat, retired Maj. Gen. Robert Dees, Carson’s campaign chairman, said that while some women may be able to meet the high standards to serve in combat positions, the average woman cannot.
“Most women, when you’re talking thousands, cannot properly carry a 230-pound soldier with a ruck sack and combat vest on, off of the battlefield to safe his life,” Dees said during the same CNN interview. “So there are just certain realities where men can do certain things better, women can do certain things better.”
Three women successfully completed the elite Ranger School last year, earning the right to wear the Ranger tab. Men who completed the grueling training alongside the women said they would feel comfortable going to war with their female counterparts and that the women often stepped up to carry their extra weight when the men couldn’t.
Second Lt. Michael Janowski told reporters ahead of their graduation in August that he would not have made it through Ranger School without 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, his “Ranger buddy” and one of the first females to finish the course.
“I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now if it wasn’t for Shaye,” he said.
