Carson Says He’s Ready To Step Down As Commencement Speaker At Johns Hopkins

[DonViejo]

Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who's emerged as a star on the right, said Friday that he wants to restore civility to American political discourse and acknowledged that he is prepared to step down as commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins University.

"My goal is to help move our country in the right direction. My goal is to get people to be able to have discussions about things about which they disagree in a civil way, not call each other names and get into all kinds of infantile type of discussions," Carson told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "We don't need to do that. We have so many pressing problems in our country and at some point we're going to have to tone down the rhetoric and just move toward solutions to the multitudinous problems or we're going to go right down the tubes just like every other pinnacle nation that has done many of the same things we're doing. We need to talk about these things."

Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, on Tuesday called hetero-sexual marriage “a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”

Students at Johns Hopkins have since circulated a petition to replace Carson, who's retiring this year, as the university's commencement speaker. He told Mitchell that he's willing to honor those students' wishes. "Absolutely. I would say this is their day and the last thing I would want to do is rain on their parade," Carson said, adding that that he didn't want to make such an announcement on television.

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Johns Hopkins University Stands By Dr. Ben Carson After Anti-Gay Comments

A spokesperson for Johns Hopkins University told TPM the school stands by its choice to invite him as commencement speaker for its medical school's May graduation. Some students are circulating a petition to replace him after Carson compared gay marriage to pedophilia and bestiality in an interview with Fox News.

"Dr. Carson is a distinguished Johns Hopkins surgeon and scientist chosen to speak at the School of Medicine diploma ceremony because of his extraordinary accomplishments as a neurosurgeon and his many contributions as an advocate for education and children," Kim Hoppe, director of communications for the JHU School of Medicine, said in an e-mail. "His personal views are just that, his own. When he speaks about them, he is not speaking on behalf of Johns Hopkins."

Carson, who is retiring this year from his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at JHU, did not back down from his remarks about homosexuality on Friday, but told the Baltimore Sun he was sorry "if I offended anyone" with his choice of words. He told MSNBC that he is considering stepping down from his commencement role in light of student complaints.

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