Republican presidential candidate Ben
Carson said Saturday that he doesn't want the military dealing “with
the transgender thing.”
Carson made his remarks during a
“veterans and military town hall” in Waterloo, Iowa organized by
the Concerned Veterans for American, MSNBC
reported.
“I do not appreciate using our
military as a laboratory for social experiments,” Carson said.
“We have too many important things to
do when our men and women are out there fighting the enemy. The last
thing we need to be doing is saying, 'What would it be like if we
introduced several transgender people into this platoon?' Give me a
break. Deal with the transgender thing somewhere else,” he said.
Carson added that he liked the
military's now repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which
prohibited gay and bisexual troops from serving openly.
“Why do you have to go around
flaunting your sexuality? It's not necessary. You don't need to
talk about that. We need to talk about how we eliminate the enemy,”
he said.