Under fire for his anti-gay comments on the Hannity show the other night, Fox’s GOP savior, Dr. Ben Carson, forgot all about how he dislikes divisiveness and playing the victim. Instead of taking the personal responsibility he advocates for others, Carson blamed those who were offended for “misconstruing” his remarks that equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. And then he doubled down on them by saying he can’t think of other “examples of variations on marriage and relationships.” Right before delivering an Easter message for the Fox & Friends viewers this morning.
It was telling that while Carson and host Clayton Morris whined about those “politically correct” meanies taking offense, they never re-played those “innocent” remarks that got Carson in so much hot water to begin with. Specifically, he said:
No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality - doesn't matter what they are - they don't get to change the definition.
Jon Stewart nailed it in a scathing takedown: "It's not, you know, whether you're having sex with another consenting adult, or a horse, or a doughnut, it's all the same."
But Morris neatly mischaracterized the outcry by saying Carson is “under fire for some comments he made about marriage this week.”
By the way, much of the protest has come from medical students at Johns Hopkins University, where Carson is a professor of neurosurgery, who feel that he should withdraw as commencement speaker. But it’s not only for his comments about gays. They also feel that Carson has used his platform as a famous neurosurgeon to promote the rejection of evolution and used his platform at the National Prayer Breakfast as a partisan vehicle. They don’t want that kind of partisanship at their commencement.
Predictably, Morris didn’t go into any of that. He was too busy casting Carson as a media victim. “The media seemed to have jumped down your throat pretty quickly. ...Do you think you’ve gotten a fair shake in the media?” Morris prompted asked.
Carson didn’t quite jump through the hoop the way Morris was leading him. But he was more than willing to play the victim, point the finger at others, and then pretend that they were the ones doing the dividing:
It’s the very thing that I was talking about at the National Prayer Breakfast when I talked about political correctness and how it puts a muzzle over the ability to have open discussion, which is the only way that we can really make progress.
…I don’t want to be the focal point of a war on campus but what I would like to encourage people to do is tone down the rhetoric a little bit and let’s sit down and discuss things like intelligent human beings rather than getting into corners and casting aspersions at people.
Right. It’s because he wants to “tone down the rhetoric” that he keeps getting in bed with the likes of Sean Hannity. And as for those comments likening gay marriage to bestiality? Well, it’s not his fault if people took him the wrong way. Even if just a few days ago, he and Megyn Kelly discussed the value in looking within and not blaming others when things go awry.
You know, as far as my comments on gay marriage, I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. I’m not gonna change that. But the fact that some people misinterpreted what I said when I tried to come up with examples of variations on marriage and relationships – and I don’t know of a whole lot of different ones even now – but the fact of the matter is it doesn’t mean that they’re all equal. It simply means that there’s nobody who gets to change the definition of marriage. It’s been the same a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, five thousand years ago.
If Carson can’t think of “different” “variations on marriage and relationships” then he’s pretty much sticking to the suggestion that homosexuality is a perversion. Having sex with another consenting adult? A horse? A child? Evil and wrong, just not equally so.
Not that Morris noticed. He asked Carson, "as a man of faith," for his thoughts "on this very special day and what it means to you."
Carson said:
I would say that anybody who knows me and has worked with me, including gay people, knows that I treat everybody the same, very nice. And I think your life speaks much more than any words that someone wants to misinterpret. However, you know, Jesus is my role model, and what he did is he preached love. He preached acceptance. But he also was a man of values and principles. And he wound up being crucified for it. But he rose again to advocate Godly principles of loving your fellow man, of caring about your neighbor and developing your God-given talents to the utmost so that you become valuable to the people around you for having values and principles that guide your life. And I would just conclude with the words of Second Chronicles, 7:14. If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.
I know almost nothing about the Bible but this sounds to me like Carson was doubling down again by saying, “I may hate their morals and say so publicly but because I'm a Christian, I’m very nice to gays in person.” Just like Jesus would.
