Taking the majority’s rights of privacy away is as wrong as forcing compliance on the 3/1000 people estimated to be transgender. <me>
Speaking to the Florida delegation at the RNC , Carson insisted that biology trumps gender identity:
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!
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.
Unlike Carson I BELIEVE we need to find ways to respect peoples choices of gender identity without infringing on other people’s rights of privacy. He said ” Transgender people don’t deserve “extra rights (because )nobody gets to redefine everything for everybody else and then make them comply to it. That’s not tolerance.”