Ben Carson Says LGBT, Single Parents Not of 'Equal Value'

Republican presidential hopeful and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has a long history of anti-LGBT commentary, but the conservative politician's latest remarks are anything but "pro-family."

"We've got to stop paying attention to the PC police who say every lifestyle is exactly of the same value," Carson said in a Sirius XM radio interview this morning, according to Talking Points Memo. "No, it's not of the same value. It is very clear that intact, traditional families with traditional, intact values do much better in terms of raising children. So let's stop pretending that everything is of equal value."

He continued, directing his spite toward single parents:

"We need to face the fact that when young girls have babies out of wedlock, most of the time their education ends with that first baby. And those babies are four times as likely to grow up in poverty, end up in the penal system or the welfare system. You know, I'm not making this stuff up. That's well-documented. That's a problem."

In fact, the problem is that Carson's claims that so-called traditional families produce healthier outcomes for children is false. Several major, long-term studies have demonstrated that LGBT parents, including parents who are transgender, are just as loving, supportive, and well-equipped to care for and provide for their children.

What's more, the largest study to date of children raised by same-sex parents determined that those children are actually healthier and happier on average than kids raised by opposite-sex parents.

Lest anyone believe that Carson's definition of high-value "traditional" families might somehow include legally married same-sex couples, the retired neurosurgeon makes his feelings about marriage equality clear as mud (that's ready to sling at LGBT parents) in his new book, A More Perfect Union.

"Laws and regulations should be designed to address normal situations while providing special mechanisms for the creation of exceptions in abnormal situations," Carson writes, according to U.K. LGBT site PinkNews. He continues:

"Changing the law governing the normal situation in order to accommodate the abnormal situation is like requiring that car seats be designed to accommodate conjoined twins as well as anatomically normal children. ... The more sensible thing would be to require car seats to accommodate typical children and design special car seats for atypical children as needed. This principle can be applied to a host of situations in our nation. For example, most people are heterosexual, and changing the definition of marriage to suit those outside that definition is unnecessarily complicated."