In his new book A More Perfect Union, Carson tackled the issue of altering laws to allow same-sex couples to marry.
“Laws and regulations should be designed to address normal situations while providing special mechanisms for the creation of exceptions in abnormal situations,” Carson writes, according to PinkNews. “Changing the law governing the normal situation in order to accommodate the abnormal situation is like requiring that car seats be designed to accommodate conjoined twins as well as anatomically normal children.
“The more sensible thing would be to require car seats to accommodate typical children and design special car seats for atypical children as needed,” he continues. “This principle can be applied to a host of situations in our nation. For example, most people are heterosexual, and changing the definition of marriage to suit those outside that definition is unnecessarily complicated.”
TJ Helmstetter, Democratic National Committee spokesperson, took Carson’s unusual stance to attack both him and the Republican field for their outdated views on marriage equality.
“Today, Ben Carson has released a great summary of the entire Republican field’s talking points. Thanks Ben Carson!” Helmstetter stated. “Our children’s freedom is threatened by abortion. Immigrant families should be deported. Gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
“We’ve heard it all before from the Republican field, and now we’re reading it in Ben Carson’s book,” he continued. “Carson, Trump, Bush, Fiorina, Rubio and the others — it’s no coincidence that they agree on so much. They would shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood, and they’d all take our country backwards.”
Carson currently polls second for the Republican nomination, behind the ever buoyant Donald Trump.
Last week, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law prohibiting school boards from arbitrarily banning books based on their content, setting into place a process for dealing with potentially controversial works in school libraries.
Under the "Freedom to Read Act," the state Commissioner of Education and State Librarian are tasked with creating "model policies" that will serve as an example of how library materials are curated or removed, and how any challenges will be evaluated.
The law requires local school boards and governing bodies of public libraries to establish their own individual policies -- preferably based on the model policies -- for curating and removing library materials, including a process for determining whether a challenged book may remain in the library's collection.
Time to turkey-trot out a timely gratitude column. I often extol the benefits of gratitude. It may have come later in life, but I have learned that simply being thankful is a nearly impenetrable shield from life's blows. It's a superpower. No wonder Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday after New Year's Eve.
Most LGBTQ Americans are probably not feeling particularly grateful ahead of this year's feasting. According to polling commissioned by the Human Rights Campaign, we voted for Vice President Kamala Harris over President-elect Donald Trump by an 84-14 margin.
So, what's there to be particularly grateful for as we watch the Gilded Age 2.0 billionaire class line up behind a guy who's already shown us how little he cares for democracy? As even the popular vote has apparently nudged into the Trump column?
In the wake of Donald Trump's win in the 2024 election, some voters have been receiving offensive text messages.
The FBI said in a statement that it is aware of a flood of texts aimed at LGBTQ people being told to report to a "re-education camp," an apparent reference to conversion therapy.
Diana Brier, a 41-year-old lesbian, told The New York Times that she received one of the texts referring to an executive order and instructing her to check in to be transported to an undisclosed location for an "LGB re-education camp." The message also mentioned Trump and the date of his inauguration.
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