As a neurosurgeon, Ben Carson is used to operating on brains. Good thing he doesn’t have to operate on his own because he’d never find it. In his latest tour through alternate reality, Carson seems to be suggesting that you wouldn’t want to push an antigay baker to make your wedding cake because you could end up being poisoned.
Carson had just wrapped up a rousing speech at Rep. Steve King’s Iowa jamboree for Republican presidential candidates when he launched into a rant at a press conference against gay marriage and the brave bakers who are fighting it.
“What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say ‘they’re discriminating against me,'” Carson groused. “So they can go right down the street and buy a cake, but no, let’s bring a suit against this person because I want them to make my cake even though they don’t believe in it. Which is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake.”
Apparently, Carson’s staff thought this was a great joke because, really, what’s funnier than the idea of so-called Christians killing gay people. The Hill, which reported this attempt at humor, noted that while Carson’s staff chuckled, the comment met with “dead silence from the journalists in the room.”
Of course, Carson sealed his reputation as a rising star in the GOP firmament by comparing marriage equality to pedophilia and bestiality. In case you think Carson is too fringe for the party faithful, The Hill notes that his Iowa speech received a standing ovation.
1EqualityUSA
The hated are now the haters, no surprise.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Very few things in this world infuriate me more than a Black person spewing abhorrent, vile, noxious, bigotry against any other minority….
This vile, ignorant, and certainly delusional disgusting pig seems to somehow forget the epic struggle for equality that his own race faced only 50 years ago…………
onthemark
Are you sure he meant it as a joke? Or more of a threat? Call me paranoid but it seems like a legitimate concern to me!
tdx3fan
“What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say ‘they’re discriminating against me,’”
Yeah, how dare they force themselves onto the great Christian people at that lunch counter. Those great people were just following their own personal faith…
Oh wait, wrong decade.
Seriously though, I actually do agree with him. I would much rather know that someone desires not to serve me then have them not want to serve me but do it because they were forced to. Especially regarding something as important as a wedding… You just want them to be a part of your big day because they want to be not because they have to be.
tdx3fan
@onthemark: Next he will be threatening to turn the fire hose on them… oh wait, wrong decade again.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
@tdx3fan:
Perfect!
Ladbrook
Baffling how a fucking brain surgeon (!) can hold such archaic views about sexual orientation. That being said, I have two thoughts about Carson.
First, anyone who wants to start his or her political career at the top (ie: the White House) can’t be taken seriously. It’s a classic sign of narcissism. “If I can’t be in charge of everything, I’m outta here!” I felt the same way about Sharpton and Jackson, and feel equally about Trump, Carly, etc. Damn, at least run for mayor or something first!
Second, I actually do understand his point… I don’t think that bakers should be allowed to discriminate against LGBT couples, BUT I would NEVER pay those types of bakers to prepare a wedding cake for me or one of my friends. I wouldn’t want to give him my money, and yes, I’d be fearful that the cake wouldn’t taste quite right.
Kieran
I kind of understand the point he’s making. Why would you want people that hate you to bake anything for you? Especially since their are other people who would gladly take your money to bake for you. It would be like being a black person and demanding that a KKK owned restaurant cater his party. Why would I want them handling my food? Why would I want to support their business?
AthanWinter
If I needed a wedding cake I would ask my brother. Since he is a pastrychef and baker. And why would you want to buy from a homophobic bakery anyway?
CoachS
If the guy that I love, someday, wants to marry me I’ll hire a baker that wants to bake our cake – sans poison thanks. And… if I ever need brain surgery, I’ll make sure to call someone other than Ben Carson. Also, when I need to cast a Presidential vote, I’ll find a different candidate, thanks. Nobody at the “Steve King Revival Tent Meeting and Hatefest” caught my eye. Paging Jon Huntsman.
BJ McFrisky
This is blatant racism on the part of Queerty. My white guilt has been offended in the most offensive of offenses.
enfilmigult
You guys with all the “why would you want a cake from there” comments are completely missing the point.
1. NOBODY who files these complaints is doing it because they want a cake from that particular bakery, dammit, and will force them in court if necessary. Every single person who’s filed such a complaint did indeed take their business elsewhere (who wouldn’t?). They just also filed a complaint saying the first place they went to was breaking the law, because it was. This scenario where some couple forces a reluctant baker to make their cake after months in court is total bullshit.
2. It’s great that you don’t want to give your money to a business that is run by a homophobe. That choice should be yours, as a customer. Without these laws the choice becomes theirs, as a business, and it doesn’t matter what you want at all. That’s the problem with not having an anti-discrimination law.
BitterOldQueen
Imagine the furor of outrage if some gay leader suggested that gay caterers might feel morally compelled to poison christians…
ppp111
Honestly, I don’t understand why anyone would want to go to a bakery that doesn’t want your business in the first place. Are Christians the only bakers in the industry? The moment I learn that the shop I’m at is opposed to baking such cakes, I would be out of there. Why give them the publicity? You know antigay bigots will make it a point to give them their business. I would tell my friends not to visit the shop anymore and leave it at that.
onthemark
@enfilmigult: I see your point, since these cases take months to resolve – months after the wedding is over and presumably a cake was acquired from elsewhere.
But in nearly every wedding cake story I’ve seen in Queerty, the gay couples complain to the effect that “this is the only [fancy] bakery in town, we HAD to go there.” This always seems a little weird to me, but as an adult I’ve always lived in the northeast where we just go to our trusty PINK PAGES to find a gay-friendly business.
Can’t some enterprising gay bakers solve the cake problem by airlifting wedding cakes to all these gay hayseeds out in the sticks, the way Legal Seafoods flies lobster dinners?
And to address your Point 1, I can’t recall ever seeing a follow-up story that says what an aggrieved couple DID end up doing about a cake. Do they resort to a few boxes of Duncan Hines, or what?
Cam
@BJ McFrisky: said… “This is blatant racism on the part of Queerty. My white guilt has been offended in the most offensive of offenses”
__________________
And On Cue, the apologist for anti-gay hatred and bigotry (If it’s from a republican) speaks.
So according to Ben Carson, if the Mormons still taught that Blacks were inferior, and nobody in Utah wanted to hire him, that would be ok?
Maude
It’s not the cake, it’s the issue.
They didn’t want the cake in the first place. They wanted to sue.
They wanted attention, and they got it.
Time to move on, and ask someone to paint my guestroom….oh, wait, that’s a porn video.uhmmm….clean my pool?….fix my sink?…..deliver a pizza?…..give me a massage?….ask me for a job?…..go camping?….stay after school?…join my frat house?….
SteveDenver
It’s bad enough that Carson thought up this idea, but that he let it out of his word hole shows what an imbecile he is.
Desert Boy
I am convinced Ben Carson is mentally ill.
BitterOldQueen
I am SO tired of the thinly-veiled apologists for discrimination constantly pointing out, “oh my but why would anyone want to buy a cake from a baker who think’s gays are terrible?” and thinking that that actually makes some rational point. Sure, if I know a bakery is run by idiot christianists who think the world is 6000 years old and I am an evil sodomite I’ll go elsewhere, but I live in a large-ish city with lots of bakeries. What if idiot christianists are the only bakery in town? Or what if they happen to be a particularly good bakery? The fault is not with the customers here, but with shopkeepers who seem to think they can put up “No Coloreds” or “No Irish” or “No Homos” signs and we all should respect their sacred religious freedom, that apparently trumps all other Constitutional rights. Nonsense. If you are a public accommodation (i.e., a place of business) your doors are open to anyone who’s able to pay for your service. If you don’t like that, then bake your ugly cakes in your house for your friends. Otherwise, quit judging what you think two people may be doing at home. It’s irrelevant to your f*cking cake, and your “deeply-held religious beliefs” are based on things that people told you were said by a made-up make-believe invisible sky-friend, and deserve all the legal respect of that logical tangibility.
jar
@enfilmigult: Right on. Damn, the density of some of the people commenting here. First of all, no one can be compelled to bake a cake or do anything else they object to. The 13th amendment prohibits compelled performance. Secondly, none of these plaintiffs purposely chose a homophobic baker (or other service provider). They were told, “we don’t serve your kind here.” They learned after the fact. So, they sued, as is their right under the law. Also, it is abundantly clear, to anyone with a functioning brain, that no one is intentionally patronizing homophobic bigots because most, if not all, of these businesses were forced to close. Why? Because no one wanted to do business with these bigots. The plaintiffs did us all a favor by publicly exposing their discriminatory behavior, so that all of the tongue cluckers here would have the knowledge necessary to “just take their business elsewhere.”
onthemark
@BitterOldQueen: So are you saying we should all go to Chik-Fil-A now?
Or do we boycott Chik-Fil-A until they put up a sign saying “No Catering for Gay Weddings”… and then we clamor to get in?
McShane
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aygZa9TeaEU&w=560&h=315%5D
You guys, we are just immaturely misinterpreting what he said. LOL.
BitterOldQueen
@onthemark: Um, no (although a case could be made that when a boycott achieves the desired behavioral change, in this case an (apparent) cessation of corporate contributions to stupid-ass anti-gay christianist political gangs and an invitation to gays to come eat their chicken and ice cream then it’s incumbent on the boycotters to recognize that progress and be as active in rewarding good behavior as they were in penalizing bad). Chik-Fil-A was boycotted not because it refused to serve anyone, but because it DID serve folks we perceived as “bad”(rightly). If they refused to serve gays, then they would be like the bakers, and subject to legal action for discriminatory activity.
enfilmigult
@onthemark: “in nearly every wedding cake story I’ve seen in Queerty, the gay couples complain to the effect that ‘this is the only [fancy] bakery in town, we HAD to go there.'”
I can’t remember seeing anything like that even once, to be honest, although it’s certainly possible (and is, obviously, one of the very reasons these laws exist—you can’t guarantee there’ll be another business doing the same thing within a certain distance). Do you remember anybody in particular saying this?
“I can’t recall ever seeing a follow-up story that says what an aggrieved couple DID end up doing about a cake. Do they resort to a few boxes of Duncan Hines, or what?”
Typically they just went to a different bakery. That’s what happened with the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop case. It didn’t even require a follow-up story as I recall, since by the time it was making its way through the courts they’d long since married already.
enfilmigult
@BitterOldQueen: Chik-Fil-A was boycotted for where its profits were going (anti-gay “charities”), not for how it did its whole chicken-selling thing. Or was the charity aspect what you meant by “serve.”
jwtraveler
This man grew up in poverty with an illiterate, single mother in a Detroit housing project. Through his mother’s efforts and his own intelligence and hard work he was able to achieve the American Dream and become one of the world’s leading neurosurgeons. What went wrong? How did his own remarkable achievements lead to such contempt for others? Did his education not include the history of oppression and discrimination in this country? Did his moral training not include compassion and the Golden Rule? It’s an American Tragedy.
jwtraveler
@Kieran: And if an employer doesn’t want to hire you because you’re gay and/or black, or a landlord doesn’t want to rent you an apartment, is that OK too? You can find a job somewhere else, or a different apartment.
McShane
@enfilmigult: Yes, the Oregon couple went to a different bakery. Actually a bunch of bakeries offered to donate free wedding cakes. Sweet Cakes by Mellisa went out of business. Now they make cakes out of their home/trailer.
http://nydn.us/1oHdttU
BitterOldQueen
@enfilmigult: B. I’m actually aware of the situation.
jar
@enfilmigult: You didn’t see that because it isn’t true. Thatr poster is just fabricating his/her own history.
onthemark
@jar: Well, I admit I haven’t been taking notes for the Final Exam on Same Sex Wedding Cakes. But that doesn’t = “fabricating” anything. That’s been my subjective impression. They seem to follow a pattern: hicks in the sticks, The Only Bakery In Town, etc.
money718
Idk. If someone doesn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, they shouldn’t have to. During the creative process, doesn’t your heart have to be it?
Baking a cake for MARRIAGE is not the same as hiring, renting an apt, etc. Why? B/c marriage is a religious activity.
jar
@onthemark: Off the top of my head, one of the cases occurred in the Denver area and another in the Portland area. As the number of other options available to these plaintiffs is irrelevant, I don’t understand why you would bring your “subjective impression” into the discussion in the first place.
onthemark
@jar: “As the number of other options available to these plaintiffs is irrelevant…”
They did end up getting cakes elsewhere, so why is it irrelevant?
Yeah yeah yeah, I get the legal issue involved and I don’t disagree. But I’ll tell you why I’m annoyed. In a recent thread about JOB discrimination, a lot of people had the elegant solution that any gay person facing job discrimination, who lives in one of the 29 states without an ENDA law, should just MOVE!
Somehow this never became the default with marriage. Imagine that: “If you want to get married so bad, move to Massachusetts.” “I don’t get these whiners in California with Prop 8, they should just move to Iowa.”
But with something as basic as a JOB, this is somehow okay. And suddenly, wedding cakes are a more earthshaking issue than jobs?
onthemark
@money718: Marriage is not always a religious issue, and marriages are licensed by the gov’t.
money718
@onthemark: For most people in this country it definitely it is a religious issue.
onthemark
@money718: “Most” might be stretching it.
Anyway it works the other way around in the law, whether they like it or not, marriages are civil first and many aren’t religious, and even religious marriages need a civil license first.
Atomicrob
One would think someone of color–a minority– would be supportive of our issues . . .
NAH! This guy is a jerk.
Billysees
@Ladbrook:
“First, anyone who wants to start his or her political career at the top (ie: the White House) can’t be taken seriously. It’s a classic sign of narcissism. “If I can’t be in charge of everything, I’m outta here!” Damn, at least run for mayor or something first!”
Most perfectly said, especially…’can’t be taken seriously. It’s a classic sign of narcissism.’
Billysees
@jwtraveler:
“What went wrong? How did his own remarkable achievements lead to such contempt for others? Did his education not include the history of oppression and discrimination in this country? Did his moral training not include compassion and the Golden Rule? It’s an American Tragedy.”
Excellent comment.
TomMc
Read “The Bell Curve”. That explains this.
jwtraveler
@Cam: There are 49 other states where he could get a job.
jwtraveler
@BitterOldQueen: I don’t know if this is the most politically effective argument, but I’m with you 100%.
jwtraveler
@money718: In modern, industrial societies (like ours), marriage is a civil contract sanctioned by the state. I know of no society where baking a cake is a religious activity.
And no one’s religious beliefs should ever be used as an excuse to deny people their civil rights. The wedding cakes are not the issue. The misrepresentation of religious freedom as the right to impose your religious prejudices on others in a free society is the issue.
onthemark
@jwtraveler: “There are 49 other states where he could get a job.”
A stunning statement. How is that ANY different from: “If you want to get gay-married so bad, just move to Massachusetts.”
Wow, you marriage fanatics never give up on the “trickle-down economics” argument of marriage.
Apparently ENDA will need to wait until all 50 states are safe for the wedding cakes!
Maude
Dr.Ben Carson is no doubt, misguided, wrong, even prejudiced because he is a christian.
But an imbecile, he ain’t.
Never underestimate your enemy. that’s how they beat you.
In his case, I would hope he gets the GOP nomination, that’s when he will self implode.
Maude
@TomMc:
THAT IS FUNNY. REALLY REALLY FUNNY.
jwtraveler
@onthemark: I was being sarcastic, using an analogy to show how ludicrous that argument is. Obviously being denied unemployment is worse than being denied the right to marry or being refused a wedding cake, but the argument that you can go somewhere else for your rights is contrary to the principles of civil rights. It would be like telling those black people at the lunch counters that they can eat at black-owned restaurants.