Ben Carson Says He Isn’t Homophobic, But His SuperPAC Sponsored An Anti-LGBT Hate Group

Ben Carson says he isn’t a homophobe, but one of his biggest fundraisers most certainly is.

At tonight’s GOP debates, the neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate said gays should be treated “fair,” only a day after his 2016 Committee SuperPAC, which has so far raised him over $5 million, helped sponsor this week’s anti-gay World Congress of Families (WCF) conference in Salt Lake City.

The news was discovered by a Human Right’s Campaign (HRC) staffer who snapped a photo of WCF’s sponsors.

“[WCF] speakers have compared LGBT rights to terrorism, called LGBT people pedophiles and warned that LGBT rights would lead to cyborgs taking over humanity,” said HRC’s global press secretary Kerry Brodie in a statement on Wednesday.

The WCF is the largest international anti-gay organization, with operations spanning across five continents, according to HRC. The WCF notably supported Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law, which criminalizes any pro-gay speech in the Russian Federation.

This week’s WCF conference had speakers like Nigerian Theresa Okafor, who has compared LGBT people to the terrorist group Boko Haram; Sharon Slater, who has called gay people “inherently destructive,” and Peter Sprigg, who wants gay people to be deported.

The Southern Poverty Law Center also does not look upon the WCF kindly.

“The World Congress of Families (WCF) is one of the key driving forces behind the US religious right’s global export of homophobia and sexism,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement on Monday.

Although one of Carson’s biggest fundraisers is sponsoring the WCF’s homophobic agenda, the Seventh Day Adventist presidential candidate said LGBT people should be treated “fair” during tonight’s GOP debates.

“I believe our constitution protects everybody regardless of their sexual orientation or any other aspect,” Carson said. “I also believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. And there is no reason you can’t be perfectly fair to the gay community.”

Along with saying gay marriage shouldn’t be legal, Carson said he thinks people who support gay marriage are scaring people.

“[Gays shouldn’t assume] because you believe marriage is between one man and one woman that makes you a homophobe,” Carson said. “That’s one of the myths the left perpetuates on our society. This is how they frighten people, and get people to shut up.”

After Carson said he isn’t a homophobe, he called supporters of gay marriage “enemies.”

“We the American people are not each other’s enemies,” Carson said. “It’s those people who are trying to divide us who are the enemies.”

Carson has come under fire from HuffPost blogger Domenick Scudera for writing in his book, A More Perfect Union, that gay marriage is akin to an “abnormal car seat that has been manufactured to accommodate conjoined twins.”

Regardless of Carson’s views, gay marriage is the law of the land after this year’s Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling. The only way Carson could get succeed in stopping gay marriages is if Congress, the majority of the states, and the president wanted to create a constitutional amendment that redefined marriage as between a man and a woman.

And that’s exactly what Carson wants.

In August, Carson, along with three other Republican presidential candidates, pledged to The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) that he, if elected president, would work to make gay marriage illegal. You can read the full NOM pledge here.

An anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment is a pie in the sky idea. Sixty-one percent of young Republicans – not to mention 55-percent of the American public – favor gay marriage, according to the Pew Research Center.

Keep dreaming, Ben Carson.

[Header Image Justin Sullivan/Getty]