So, why should we even care about a remarkably blind statement like this? Well, it addresses two states of mind that still persist in America today: one, that homosexuality and other nontraditional orientations are simply caprices of the conscious mind and two, that sexual violence in prisons can be trivialized by the fact that it is perpetrated on men, and thus, homosexual. The implication is that the fact of homosexual rape in prisons somehow proves that sexual orientation is a choice: that starved of heterosexual intimacy, men choose to find pleasure in the company of other men. This sort of rhetorical question isn’t exactly convincing despite the confidence with which Carson presents it.
