Russell Brand is having none of Dr. Ben Carson's anti-gay rhetoric against marriage equality.
In his July 1 episode of "The Trews" -- a YouTube series in which he disassembles dubious arguments about social issues like gay rights and abortion -- Brand takes on Carson as his main subject. The latest segment features clips of the columnist and retired neurosurgeon discussing same-sex unions.
At one point in Brand's eight-minute video, Carson claims that changing the definition of marriage is like changing math.
"He's demonstrated here how far away from the correct frequency of thought he is by comparing a social and civil idea, like sexuality, to an objective system of signs, like arithmetic, like math," he said. "The only point of [math] is that it's about definitive systems and symbols. ... If you apply that to social structures, which are cultural and constructed, by saying that your opinion is as objectively righteous as mathematics, something that is beyond morality and is absolute."
After cutting to a clip of Carson and Fox News host Sean Hannity aligning homosexuality with polygamy and incest, Brand summarized their entire argument thus: "I suppose what they're doing is they equate something that they personally dislike with other things that they assume a larger category of people will find objectionable." Then he asked what would happen if people like Carson and Hannity just dropped their anti-gay crusade altogether. "Do they think it would go out of control and someone would go, 'Well, you shouldn't have done that because now you've got to get gay married?'"
Carson is known for his incendiary comments. Last year, he backed out of speaking at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine commencement ceremony because students demanded he be replaced after he compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.
Carson is reportedly a "fan favorite" within the GOP as the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election, according to Salon. "At the recent Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans he came in second only to Ted Cruz as their top choice to run for president and only by 1 point," the website noted.
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