Impressing the need for family values, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Wednesday different families are “not of the same value” in terms of raising children.
The former neurosurgeon was responding to a question during a Sirius XM radio interview about single parent birth rates and didn’t explicitly mention same-sex parents, but his words in favor of “intact, traditional families” could be interpreted as being directed toward LGBT people.
“We’ve got to stop paying attention to the PC police who say every lifestyle is exactly of the same value,” Carson said. “No, it’s not of the same value. It is very clear that intact, traditional families with traditional, intact values do much better in terms of raising children. So let’s stop pretending that everything is of equal value.”
Carson said young single mothers need the opportunity to finish their education and when they have children out of wedlock “most of the time their education ends with that first baby.”
“And those babies are four times as likely to grow up in poverty, end up in the penal system or the welfare system,” Carson said. “You know, I’m not making this stuff up. That’s well-documented. That’s a problem.”
Carson, who’s polling in second-place just after Donald Trump in many polls on Republican candidates, is an opponent of same-sex marriage.
In addition to making to comments against gay rights throughout his candidacy, he has signed a pledge with the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage expressing support for a constitutional amendment against the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.
The Carson campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment to deny the remarks on lifestyle were intended to include same-sex parents.
TJ Helmstetter, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said Carson’s comments represent the discriminatory views of all Republican presidential candidates.
“Love makes a family, period,” Helmstetter said. “The sooner the Republican candidates for president learn that, the better off all Americans will be. Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and the others – they’re so stuck in their ways, they can’t see that the country has moved beyond the divisive culture wars of the past. Americans want to hear positive visions for the middle class, but Republicans like Carson, Trump, and Bush are too busy finding new ways to insult women, LGBT people, immigrants, single mothers, Asian Americans, and even shooting victims. When will it end?”
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