Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is defending himself after coming under fire for remarks he made about transgender people, calling the media reports on his comments “blatant mischaracterizations.”
In an agencywide email late Friday afternoon, Carson admitted he expressed concern about “big, hairy men” trying to use women’s restrooms but added that his comments were taken out of context.
“During a recent meeting with local staff in San Francisco, I made reference to the fact that I had heard from many women’s groups about the difficulty they were having with women’s shelters because sometimes men would claim to be women,” he wrote. “This made many of the women feel unsafe, and one of the groups described a situation to me in which ‘big hairy men’ would come in and have to be accepted into the women’s shelter even though it made the women in the facility very uncomfortable.”
He continued, “My point was that we have to permit policies that take into consideration the rights of everybody, including those women.”
Carson has been facing calls from Democrats for his resignation and outrage from LGBT activist groups since his remarks surfaced on Thursday. According to people present at a Tuesday meeting in San Francisco, Carson’s comments shocked many of the 50 HUD staffers in attendance and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest.
At the time, a spokesperson for Carson denied the reports, saying, “The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals. Any reporting to the contrary is false.”
In May, HUD proposed a rule that would require transgender people to use the bathrooms and sleeping quarters that correspond with their biological sex. The rule would also offer federally funded shelters the option to turn away transgender individuals on religious grounds.
