After GOP presidential hopeful and pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson commented on homosexuality last Wednesday on CNN, talk show host Glenn Beck slammed Carson, calling his comments the “dumbest thing I ever heard.” Beck also said that Carson’s campaign for president was “over.”
On Wednesday, Carson told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he doesn’t think gay marriage is protected by the Constitution. But he then courted controversy by saying he feels that homosexuality can be a conscious choice.
“Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight–and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question,” Cason said.
After Carson’s Wednesday appearance, Glenn Beck slammed the likely candidate for president and in no uncertain terms.
Beck called Carson, the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins joined at the head, a “lunatic” and said his campaign for president was “over.”
“Goodbye to his presidential career,” Beck said on his Friday radio show. “It’s over. It’s over. There is no way to recover from that. That just sounds like a lunatic… That is just a ridiculous statement on a million fronts. A ridiculous statement.”
“It’s not just that he didn’t see [the question about gays] coming,” Beck added. “It’s that he just thought that was a good answer. That was good enough for him. Just [imagine] I’m at a cocktail party and I’m talking to a friend and they say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, you go to prison and you’re straight, you get out and you’re gay,’ don’t you look at your friend — I don’t care if he’s the guy who works at the 7-Eleven and he’s not running for president ever — don’t you go, ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’?”
In an exclusive comment to Breitbart, Carson’s spokesman said that the attacks won’t deter Carson from being his own man.
Dr. Carson has a very deep well of support across this country, and he’s in the process of gauging its strength and potential. We recognize there are many challenges, and one comment cannot and will not derail Ben Carson from answering the many American voices desperate for real leadership. His position on gay marriage is nearly identical to all the possible candidates. He just did something very un-Washington; he told a reporter the truth about the right of states to determine their own laws reflecting the wishes of their own citizens. He apologized for his prison analogy but not for his position on gay marriage.
Carson was a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics and the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. At age 33, he became the director of pediatric neurosurgery making him the youngest major division director in the hospital’s history. He was also a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center.
Carson attracted national attention after challenging President Obama at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, where he called political correctness a danger to the country.
The doctor recently was voted in fourth place in this year’s straw poll of presidential candidates at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held a at the end of February in National Harbor, Maryland.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter: @warnerthuston. Email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.