Ben Carson: Being transgender ‘doesn’t make any sense’

CLEVELAND — Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Monday that being transgender “doesn’t make any sense” and likened it to waking up and deciding to change one’s ethnicity.

“For someone to wake up and think that they belong to a different sex because they feel different that day is the same as if you woke up and said, ‘I’m Afghani today because I saw a movie about that last night, and even though my genetics might not indicate that, that’s the way I feel, and if you say that I’m not, then you’re a racist,’ ” Carson told The Hill.

{mosads}“It’s the same kind of situation,” he continued. “What we ought to do is utilize our brains, utilize our common sense as human beings. We’ve known what men are and what women are for thousands of years. So we don’t know anything, everything is relative — this doesn’t make any sense.”

Carson did a walk-through of the Quicken Loans Arena early on Tuesday ahead of his prime-time speech to the Republican National Convention.

Carson is a staunch social conservative and advocate for traditional family structures. He has previously made controversial remarks about the LGBT community.

In the interview with The Hill, he also likened being transgender to a leopard trying to change its spots.

“It’s not based on your feelings, it’s based on what you are,” Carson said. “Can a leopard change its spots? No. It can’t because it feels like maybe it’s a different creature. No. it’s still a leopard. Sorry.”