[UPDATE: I’ve made no changes to the text below. I’m just adding a personal thought here. On the rare occasion that I write about social issues, even knowing that my audience on these pages is more socially conservative than I am, I’m struck by the sharpness of the comments. People are so sure that being gay is a choice even though I bet they wouldn’t say that their being heterosexual is a choice. People use words like “deviant” and compare homosexuality to pedophilia. I know I’m not going to change the minds of people who believe and say such things, but for the record I find those comments reprehensible and ignorant.]
I’m a big fan of Dr. Ben Carson as a spokesman for conservative principles. I’m not such a fan of his running for president.
But whatever he does, if he intends to be in the public’s consciousness and to try to influence public opinion, he needs to be credible.
And for those conservatives who want to really make a difference in American politics, they need to be especially credible with moderates, independents, and Millennials.
So it was particularly disappointing to hear Dr. Carson say on CNN that being gay is a choice.
I suppose there can be honest disagreement over the question, though frankly I think Carson’s view is, in the case of most gays, utterly ridiculous. As several gay friends have told me, “Who would choose this?” Furthermore, if it were a choice, I wonder if more people would choose it — the hypothetical is somewhat hard for me to even contemplate given my lifelong attraction to women.
Dr. Carson bases his claim on the idea that “a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight and when they come out they’re gay.”
Frankly I don’t want to get into the details of Carson’s claim. I don’t know where his data comes from and personally I think it’s nearly insane, though perhaps some of it depends on your definition of gay (i.e. true attraction to the same sex or sexual behavior with someone of the same sex for reasons unrelated to attraction.)
The dubious nature of Carson’s statement is not the point. The point is that by saying such a thing he’s just alienated so many people whose vote he would need to win the presidency and whose ear he would need to change politics in the United States.
In 2010, now-Congressman Ken Buck lost a winnable US Senate race in Colorado by answering the same question (whether being gay is a choice) on Meet the Press. At the time, some thought that the Colorado race could be critical in determining control of the Senate; it turned out that several other GOP candidates imploded as well, such as Nevada’s Sharron Angle, and Colorado’s race wasn’t pivotal that year. Still, another Republican in the Senate would have been nice.
Again, the point isn’t whether a politician thinks being gay is a choice. The point is whether you have to be an idiot (in a political sense, at least) — especially nearly five years after Ken Buck showed what happens when you answer that question that way, and during a period of rapid change in public opinion on issues of gay marriage — to answer the question the way Ben Carson did.
That one answer showed the good doctor to be “not ready for prime time” and not the right choice to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016 (not that I ever thought he was the right choice because in this environment you need someone with political experience.) Indeed, if someone who’s willing to give that sort of answer ends up atop the GOP ticket, he will hurt other Republican candidates all the way down the ticket in a year that will already be challenging for Republicans (especially in the US Senate.)
Sorry, Ben, but it’s time for you to take a break and drop your presidential aspirations. I hate to say that after just one major gaffe, but I see the gaffe as representative of the man’s inexperience which is just too much of a political liability in the current environment.
With so much at risk if the nation were to elect a Democrat as president in 2016, the last thing the party can afford is someone who unnecessarily turns off the very swing voters that a Republican must have to win — and can still win with conservative, but not ridiculous, positions on social issues.
