Republican presidential candidate Ben
Carson on Thursday suggested creating separate bathrooms for
transgender people.
In an interview with Fusion's Jorge
Ramos from Miami, Carson was asked about Tuesday's defeat of a law
banning LGBT discrimination in Houston.
“How about we have a transgender
bathroom?” Carson said.
“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 – extra rights when it comes to redefining everything for
everybody else and imposing your view on everybody else,” he
added.
(Related: Annise
Parker blames “fear mongering” for defeat of LGBT protections.)
Chad Griffin, president of the Human
Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate,
condemned Carson's remarks as “dangerously transphobic.”
“Ben Carson's hateful comments are
out of touch and all candidates should immediately make clear that
they disavow his dangerously transphobic views,” Griffin
said in a statement. “Ben Carson can't go a week without
invoking reckless and irresponsible stereotypes about the LGBT
community, and his suggestion that transgender people be required to
use segregated bathrooms echoes an ugly past our country should never
revisit.”