Associated Press/Matt Rourke
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
- HUD Secretary Ben Carson horrified aides by making derogatory comments about transgender individuals in a staff meeting in the agency's San Francisco office, the Washington Post reported.
- HUD employees told the Post that he made the comments in front of approximately 50 staffers at a recent event when he referred to transgender women as "big, hairy men" would try to "infiltrate" women's homeless shelters.
- One staffer describing his remarks to the Post as "demoralizing and mortifying for many of us who work here and are about serving everybody."
- As the Post noted, Carson, a former neurosurgeon, also dismissed transgender rights in his 2016 GOP presidential campaign, when he stated his opposition to transgender individuals serving in the US armed forces.
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US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson horrified HUD aides by making derogatory comments about transgender individuals in a staff meeting in the agency's San Francisco office, according to a new report in the Washington Post.
HUD employees told the Post that Carson made the comments in front of approximately 50 staffers at a recent event, referring to transgender women as "big, hairy men" who would try to "infiltrate" women's homeless shelters.
Carson's comments - which also included a lament that his agency "no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women" - were so upsetting that they caused at least one HUD staffer to leave the room, the Post said, citing staffers present at the event.
As the Post noted, Carson, a former neurosurgeon, also dismissed transgender rights in his 2016 GOP presidential campaign, when he stated his opposition to transgender individuals serving in the US armed forces.
The National Center for Transgender Equality, which tracks litigation and public policy related to transgender rights, has identified at least three HUD policy changes under Carson that weakened protections for LGBTQ individuals, who experience a far higher risk of homelessness than the general population.
This past May, for example, HUD floated rescinding some protections for transgender individuals living in HUD's homeless shelters enacted under the Obama administration, which prohibited federally-funded shelters from discrimination on religious grounds.
In response to the Post's reporting, a HUD official issued a statement refuting the story and saying that "the Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals." (Ironically, the term "transgendered" itself is considered by many LGBTQ and transgender rights activists to be both inaccurate and offensive.)
The official also claimed to the Post that Carson's "big, hairy men" comment wasn't referring to transgender women, but cis-gender men who pose as women to gain access to federally funded shelters - but provided no evidence of that being a frequent occurrence.
The San Francisco-based staffers present for Carson's remarks told the Post that he was explicitly referring to transgender individuals, with one recounting that Carson said, "transgender people should get the same rights as everyone else, but they don't get to change things for everybody else" before referring to "big, hairy men."
Staffers told the Post that she had never heard Carson speak in such stark terms about transgender people before, with one describing his remarks as "demoralizing and mortifying for many of us who work here and are about serving everybody."