At his Senate confirmation hearing on
Thursday, Ben Carson said that he's opposed to “extra rights” for
LGBT people.
Carson is President-elect Donald
Trump's nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown
questioned Carson about statements he had made against LGBT rights.
“You have in the past raised
questions about whether LGBTQ people should enjoy the same rights as
everyone else. Do you believe that HUD has a duty to take actions
that promote equal access to housing opportunities for LGBTQ people?”
Brown asked.
“Of course I would enforce all the
laws of the land,” Carson replied. “And I believe that all
Americans, regardless of any of the things you mentioned, should be
protected by the law. What I have mentioned in the past is that no
one gets extra rights. Extra rights means you get to redefine
everything for everybody else.”
Carson, a retired pediatric
neurosurgeon and failed presidential candidate, has used similar
language in the past in discussing his opposition to LGBT rights.
“Of course, gay people should have
the same rights as everyone else. But they don't get extra rights,
they don't get to redefine marriage,” Carson
told a crowd at CPAC in 2014.
In an interview with Fusion, Carson
defended his idea of creating separate bathrooms for transgender
people by suggesting that they were asking for extra rights.
“How about we have a transgender
bathroom?” Carson
rhetorically asked. “It is not fair for them to make everybody
else uncomfortable. It’s one of the things that I don’t
particularly like about the [LGBT] movement. I think everybody has
equal rights, but I’m not sure that anybody should have extra
rights.”
HUD rules currently protect LGBT people
from housing discrimination.