President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Carson, who grew up poor in Detroit and went on to become a renowned neurosurgeon, dropped out of the Republican race for the presidential nomination in March after disappointing results on Super Tuesday.

“Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities,” Trump said in a statement.

“We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up,” he added.

In 2013, Carson was pressured to apologize for comparing same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia. Despite the apology, he continued to make outrageous claims against the LGBT community, possibly in hopes of winning over Christian conservatives during the presidential primaries.

Carson returned to the headlines for a homophobic remark in January of 2015, when he warned gay couples against pushing bakers opposed to marriage equality, saying that the bakers might “poison” their cake.

Two months later, Carson argued that being gay is a choice, “because a lot of people go into prison straight and when they come out they're gay.”

(Related: Dan Savage invites Ben Carson to suck his dick to see if it turns him gay.)

But late last year, it was revealed that while serving on the boards of retailer Costco Wholesale and food manufacturer Kellogg, Carson supported several gay rights initiatives, including domestic partner benefits, diversity training and barring discrimination based on gender identity.

When asked to explain the discrepancy, Carson answered that despite his opposition to marriage equality “there is no reason you can't be perfectly fair to the gay community.”

During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where he endorsed Trump for president, Carson called changing gender the “height of absurdity.”