BIRMINGHAM — Dr. Ben Carson discussed the necessity of defending children and the traditional family on Thursday at the Alabama Policy Institute's 35th Anniversary Dinner.
Carson, a neurosurgeon by trade and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, is the founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute, a new think tank with the mission to promote the four founding principles that are cornerstones of the United States: faith, liberty, community and life. He most recently served as the 17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under former President Donald Trump.
Carson also ran for president in the Republican primary in 2016.
Carson encouraged the hundreds of attendees at API's anniversary celebration at The Club to defend children and the traditional family against attacks from popular culture and the educational system. He said educators who encourage young children to transition to a different gender were engaging in "nothing short of child abuse."
"You have all these people and many in the school systems challenging 9,10,11,12,13 year olds with incompletely developed brains to think about whether they're a boy or a girl. Now, children are naturally curious and they're very suggestible. Couple that with having an incompletely developed brain and they can act frequently without the consent or knowledge of the parent that is nothing short of child abuse that is going on in our system," Carson said. "We have a responsibility to protect those children and that's one of the real functions of families to make sure they know what's going on with the children. I'm so glad that some of the legislators in this state have seen how important that is and made sure that the material is available for people to oversee and determine whether it's appropriate or not. That has a profound effect on what's happening to our society."
Carson also said traditional values would continue to decline in America without a respect for family.
"Do you notice how the traditional American family is being denigrated? Particularly in social media, in television, and magazines and almost everything that our young people are being exposed to. The whole concept of a traditional nuclear family is derided," Carson said. "You turn your television on, you start looking at a program or a series, they almost immediately introduce something other than the traditional family. They make that not only acceptable but perhaps preferable and our young people are exposed to that. When it comes to relationships our young people don't even know the meaning of abstinence anymore. We don't talk about it. We have accepted the secular norm of what relationships should be. As a result of that, we're not forming families at a rapid rate. We only have 23.1 million traditional nuclear families left in the United States. Think about that because the family is where your values are derived."
API is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational and research organization committed to free markets, limited government, and strong families.
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