Transgender People Are ‘The Height Of Absurdity’

Ben Carson: Transgender People Are ‘The Height Of Absurdity’

Jul 20, 2016 9:43 am

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Before failed presidential candidate Ben Carson spoke at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, he spent much of the day railing against transgender people. His latest quip is to suggest that being transgender is like deciding one day to be a different race.

Speaking to the convention’s Florida delegation Tuesday morning, Carson insisted that biology trumps gender identity:

You know, we look at this whole transgender thing. I got to tell you: For thousands of years, mankind has known what a man is and what a woman is. And now, all of a sudden we don’t know anymore. Now, is that the height of absurdity? Because today you feel like a woman, even though everything about you genetically says that you’re a man or vice versa?

Wouldn’t that be the same as if you woke up tomorrow morning after seeing a movie about Afghanistan or reading some books and said, “You know what? I’m Afghanistan [sic]. I know I don’t look that way. My ancestors came from Sweden, or something, I don’t know. But I really am. And if you say I’m not, you’re a racist.” This is how absurd we have become!

Carson went on to say that he’s “disturbed” that “secular progressives” are discussing transgender issues in terms of civil rights. “We have to be willing to call out people for this absolutely ridiculous stuff that they’re trying to put over on us, that they’re trying to put over on our children,” he said.

In an interview later that day with Katie Couric, Carson doubled down on these remarks, repeating his Afghan/Swedish metaphor and reasserting his belief that gender identity is prescribed by genetics just like a leopard’s spots:

It is silly for us to engage in something that we have known for thousands of years. We have known what a man is and what a woman is for thousands of years. All of a sudden, we don’t know anymore. I said that is absurd. […] There are biological markers that tell us whether we are a male or a female, and just because you wake up one day and you say, ‘I think I’m the other one,’ that doesn’t change it. Just — a leopard can’t change its spots.

When Couric pushed back, Carson insisted that the way people feel doesn’t change who they are and doesn’t change their genetics. When asked if there should be tolerance for transgender people, he demanded that tolerance “goes in both directions.” Transgender people don’t deserve “extra rights,” he said, because “nobody gets to redefine everything for everybody else and then make them comply to it. That’s not tolerance.”

Carson isn’t wrong that biology is a factor, but he is wrong that it disproves transgender identities. Indeed, it does the very opposite. Researchers at Boston University reviewed the available research and found significant evidence that there is a biological basis for being transgender. Studies have identified differences in sexual development, brain structure, and hormone genetics unique to transgender identity.

As Couric tried to point out, transgender people do not wake up one day and decide to be a different gender, as Carson suggested. The increasing number of young children who feel comfortable coming out as transgender indicates that this is not an experience spurred by something like watching a movie or reading a book. Research on these kids is finding that their gender identities are just as consistent as their cisgender peers, and their mental health benefits when those identities are affirmed by their families.

Carson’s comments Tuesday were not out of character. He has previously suggested that allowing transgender people to use the bathroom amounts to granting them “extra rights” at the expense of others’ “comfort.” Allowing trans people to serve in the armed services, he has said, would treat the military “as a laboratory for social experimentation.”

And he’s hardly alone. The 2016 Republican Platform takes similar aim, calling policies that respect trans identities “alien to America’s history and traditions” because they are “illegal, dangerous, and ignore privacy issues.”

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2016/0...leopard-spots/

Carson needs to stop this. These people are not one of our problems. Our problems are trade, immigration, foreign wars, ObamaCare, wasteful spending, unemployment, poverty, horrible education systems and an out of control rogue government that is representing foreign interests instead of American interests.

Lets keep our eye on the ball.

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Originally Posted by Judy

Carson needs to stop this. These people are not one of our problems. Our problems are trade, immigration, foreign wars, ObamaCare, wasteful spending, unemployment, poverty, horrible education systems and an out of control rogue government that is representing foreign interests instead of American interests.

Lets keep our eye on the ball.

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The problem is that the LGBT-whatever political cult has seized a good part of what is known as "political correctness". The same social forces that prevent us from identifying Islam as a national security threat also require us to pause and show respect and deference to the LGBT community at the slightest provocation. Our ability to function according to our real experience of the world around us is constantly interrupted by these people who constantly want attention and assurance that the very things they do deliberately to shock and offend people will be affirmed and encouraged.

I think we have all had enough of the endless LGBT parade that has gone global. The practice of transgender surgery is the weirdest and most dangerous part of this political cult. It is medically sanctioned sexual mutilation. There is no rational argument for it and that our medical community would volunteer to participate in this atrocity is truly frightening. This is the same medical community that issues licenses to get stoned with "medical" marijuana. Something has gone horribly wrong with our medical doctors, and maybe this has been going on a long time.

The problem with Carson is that he himself is a medical doctor and makes no medical arguments against it. You would think that a doctor who claims to know so much about the human brain might know a little more about human genitals.

It doesn't matter. There are a lot of people in this country who disrupt my world, who piss me off, who I despise, who give me disgusted feelings towards them, and none of them are LGBT. Republicans and those who lean Republican when we have a good candidate need to refrain in my opinion from injecting these personal attitudes, feelings and obsessions with other people's legal sexual behavior in our elections. I would personally care less about a transgender person using the women's bathroom than these squatters who pee all over the seat and leave it to the next person to have to wipe their nasty urine off a public toilet.

There's an ole saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I think this is one of those moments.

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Originally Posted by Judy

It doesn't matter. There are a lot of people in this country who disrupt my world, who piss me off, who I despise, who give me disgusted feelings towards them, and none of them are LGBT. Republicans and those who lean Republican when we have a good candidate need to refrain in my opinion from injecting these personal attitudes, feelings and obsessions with other people's legal sexual behavior in our elections. I would personally care less about a transgender person using the women's bathroom than these squatters who pee all over the seat and leave it to the next person to have to wipe their nasty urine off a public toilet.

There's an ole saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I think this is one of those moments.

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Again, people prying into the affairs of people's sex lives is not really the problem. The problem is the attention that the LGBT political cult requires of us. The problem is that the LGBT are living in glass houses and throwing stones and then blaming everyone else when their windows are broken.

The whole bathroom thing is a non-issue, really. Recall this thread?

http://www.alipac.us/f19/target-take...0/#post1506380

Trump was obliged to say "LGBT" in his convention speech, even though he brought it up in the context of the terrorist attack in Florida.

There are a lot of cults who take up our attention.

Much ado over this female that wants to be a male - as all students suffer the consequences....especially the privacy & safety issues/rights of young girls....

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Gavin Grimm is interviewed at his home in Gloucester, Va., on August 24, 2015. Grimm is a transgender student whose demand to use the boys' restrooms has divided the community and prompted a lawsuit. | AP Photo

Supreme Court blocks ruling that let transgender Va. student use boys' bathroom

By Caitlin Emma and Josh Gerstein
08/03/16 04:52 PM EDT Updated 08/03/16 06:52 PM EDT

The Supreme Court signaled in an order Wednesday that it is highly likely to grapple with the issue of transgender bathrooms in its coming term.

Acting on a 5-3 vote, the justices put on hold a groundbreaking court ruling requiring a Virginia school district to accommodate a transgender high school student’s request to use the boys’ bathroom.

It’s the first time the high court has shown interest in the transgender bathroom issue, which has prompted nearly half of states to sue the Obama administration over its interpretation of federal civil rights law. The Justice and Education Departments have said transgender students are offered sweeping civil rights protections under federal law, including their right to access bathrooms and locker rooms in alignment with their gender identity.

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing student Gavin Grimm in the case. Senior staff attorney Joshua Block said, “We are disappointed that the court has issued a stay and that Gavin will have to begin another school year isolated from his peers and stigmatized by the Gloucester County school board just because he’s a boy who is transgender. We remain hopeful that Gavin will ultimately prevail.”

Francisco Negrón, general counsel and associate executive director of legal advocacy at the National School Boards Association, said the high court eventually will have to resolve the issue of transgender bathroom access.

"A quick court resolution would be a welcome thing," he said, as schools and districts are struggling with conflicting messages and policies from the federal government, states, districts and court cases.

Attorneys for the school board said they welcomed the Supreme Court’s action "as the new school year approaches."

"The Board continues to believe that its resolution of this complex matter fully considered the interests of all students and parents in the Gloucester County school system," the school board said.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Justice Stephen Breyer joined with the court’s four GOP appointees to lift—for now—the obligation of the Gloucester County school system to allow Grimm to use the bathroom of his choice in accordance with Obama Administration guidance.

In a statement accompanying the order, Breyer said he was agreeing to the stay as a “courtesy” because the court is in recess and putting the ruling on hold "will preserve the status quo." The three other Democratic appointees opposed the stay.

However, since only four justices are needed to grant review in a case, the fact that the four Republican appointees favored the stay sought by the school district is a strong sign the high court will agree to take up the case this fall.

Nathan Smith, director of public policy for the LGBT advocacy organization GLSEN, said "preserving the 'status quo’ unfortunately means allowing a school district to discriminate against a transgender student."

"But it doesn’t seem like the decision here was on the merits of the case, so we feel pretty confident that they’ll ultimately rule in a just way," Smith added. "But at least in the short-term we’re pretty disappointed.”

A Richmond, Va.-based federal appeals court ruled in April that the U.S. Department of Education acted within its authority when issuing guidance to school systems on the transgender bathroom issue and that Grimm’s school had a duty to follow it.

The school board filed an emergency application with SCOTUS last month, asking Chief Justice John Roberts to suspend a lower court’s decision granting Grimm bathroom access while they ask the Supreme Court to take up the case. As is customary, Roberts referred the request to the full court.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...athroom-226636