Republicans have found a new hero in Dr. Ben Carson, whose
current political rise to fame is almost entirely based on a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that really told President Obama off, according to a conservative base that bases all of their new-hero decisions on who they think might be good at telling other people off. Yeah, I know, you never even heard of that. Neither did the rest of the country, but trust me, it was a
big deal. Apparently.
So now he's being pumped up into the new conservative hero, a job he's more than ready for. How's he doing? Well, he's certainly got the "being an ass during a live interview" art down, marriage equality to bestiality and pedophilia.
"Well, my thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It's a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality. It doesn't matter what they are. They don't get to change the definition. So he, it's not something that is against gays, it's against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications."
This has led to some blowback,
because duh.
The co-director of Johns Hopkins University's sexuality studies program is speaking out against his colleague Dr. Ben Carson's recent comments comparing supporters of marriage equality to members of NAMBLA and practitioners of bestiality.
"I don't think most people at Hopkins think what he says on this subject matters," Professor Todd Shepard, co-director of the university's Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, said in a statement to Media Matters. "They make him look nasty, petty, and ill-informed. It doesn't tell us anything about his amazing abilities as a surgeon. It does remind us, however, that those abilities do not mean we should listen to what he says in any other domain."
On a later MSNBC appearance about the remark, Carson issued a
sort of-apology, saying it was "misunderstood." There's also some talk of him withdrawing from delivering the Johns Hopkins commencement address as a result of student and staff protests.
I don't think this quite counts as a "gaffe" by Carson: He was, after all, just giving the sort of red-meat, moralizing answer that his new Fox News audience (at least, the theocratic wing of the party: remember the prayer breakfast part) wanted in the first place. And, therefore, I don't think he's going to suffer much for it in the party, though his remaining time at John Hopkins is going to be a bit testy. But it is a reminder that Mr. Latest Conservative Hero may not exactly be the "new face on the party," the new, I-swear-to-God-we're-gonna-be-inclusive-this-time Republican Party has been looking for, and there's probably a few people at the RNC right now going digging through their files to see if there's any other new heroes-in-waiting they might hitch their wagons too.
