Ex-convict blasts Ben Carson’s belief about widespread homosexuality in prisons

He should get his brain checked.

Neurosurgeon and potential presidential candidate Ben Carson’s wacky belief that prison turns people gay is both out there and “off-base,” an ex-convict and champion for the formerly incarcerated said.

“Prison does not make people gay,” said Stanley Richards, 54, who was in and out of New York state jails for over a decade. “I went in heterosexual, and I came out heterosexual, and I am heterosexual now.”

The vice president of the Fortune Society — a Queens-based nonprofit that works to reform former inmates — joined the chorus of critics who blasted Carson for claiming prison proves homosexuality is a choice.

“A lot of people who go into prison — go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay,” Carson said Wednesday on CNN.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth, said Richards, who finished his last sentence of 4 1/2 years for robbery in New York Downstate Correctional in 1991.

“I think his comments were absolutely, totally off-base in terms of the reality of what goes on in prison and in terms of his understanding of gay and lesbian and homosexual identifiers,” the married Bronx man said.

“I don’t know what he’s basing that observation on. I have not seen people come into prison and then all of a sudden say, ‘I’m gay.’ It doesn’t happen.”

It was not clear if Carson, 63, was solely referring to consensual sex. Attempts to reach him Wednesday were unsuccessful.

But Richards said the remarks undermine the brutal culture behind bars, saying “rape in prison is a reality.”

“If you experience it, it has nothing to do with choice,” he said. “It has everything to do with being violated, victimized. That in no way defines someone’s sexuality.”

Just Detention International, Los Angeles-based civil rights group that seeks to end sex abuse in jailhouses, agreed.

“Prisoner rape does not turn people gay… it turns people into survivors,” the organization’s spokesman Jesse Lerner-Kinglake said.

“It should not be trivialized nor used to score political points.”