Ben Carson likened someone changing their gender to changing their race while speaking to Florida delegates Tuesday at the Republican National Convention.
“[W]e look at this whole transgender thing. I got to tell you, for thousands of years, mankind has known what a man is and what a woman is,” the retired neurosurgeon and Florida resident said to applause.
According to Carson, suddenly “we don’t know anymore” when it comes to someone being transgender. This, he said “is the height of absurdity.”
“Because today you feel like a woman, even though everything about you genetically says that you’re a man, or vice versa,” Carson continued. “Wouldn’t that be the same as if you woke up tomorrow morning after seeing a movie about Afghanistan or reading some book and said, ‘You know what? I’m from Afghanistan.’ ”
“But I really am [from Afghanistan]. And if you say I’m not, [then] you’re racist,” Carson said to laughs.
This is “how absurd we’ve become,” Carson said to applause.
Carson, who has since become a surrogate for Donald Trump since suspending his own presidential campaign, is slated to speak at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.
He has commented on transgender people before. In November, while still a presidential candidate, Carson proposed separate bathrooms for transgender people.
“How about we have a transgender bathroom?” Carson told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos. “It’s not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable.”
