Conservative neurosurgeon Ben Carson said last week that supporters of equal marriage rights for LGBT people were “directly attacking the relationship between God and his people” and could endanger “everything else in the Bible.”

Speaking to the anti-LGBT group Illinois Family Institute (IFI) on Friday, Carson explained that the Bible compares the relationship between Jesus Christ and his followers to a marriage.

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“Think about the implications of that,” he said. “When people come along and try to change the definition of marriage, they are directly attacking the relationship between God and his people.”

“And that’s the reason it’s so important for them to change the definition, because if you can get rid of that, you can get rid of everything else in the Bible too,” Carson warned.

Carson, who became a tea party hero after he lectured President Barack Obama about a flat tax during the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year, said that he drew fire from liberals when he suggested to Fox News host Sean Hannity that same sex marriage was like pedophilia and bestiality.

In his speech to IFI on Friday, Carson opined that the “secular progressive movement” was like a “new group of mathematicians who come along and say, ‘Two plus two is five.'”

“The new ones say, ‘If it’s not five for you, you’re a mathophobe,'” he added. “We just have to continue to make it clear because they want to say that anybody who doesn’t believe what they believe is a hater.”

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“I was amused how they tried to paint me as a homophobe, they came out with all guns blasting. It was funny, it had the Chick-fil-A effect… They realized they were actually doing me a favor so they stopped.”

Carson remarks begin at the 12:50 mark in the video below, uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 6, 2013.