Last week, President (POTUS) Donald
Trump issued a new executive order barring most transgender individuals from serving
in the military.
Late last July 2017, Trump announced
he would direct the military to stop allowing transgender individuals “to serve
in any capacity.” He cited the need for
military policy to focus on effectiveness, which the “tremendous medical costs
and disruption” of accommodating transgender troops would derail. He gave the military 6-months to prepare for
the policy change.
The latest memorandum says that the
policy will disqualify from service “transgender persons with a history or
diagnosis of gender dysphoria,” specifically those who “may require substantial
medical treatment, including medications and surgery,” except in “certain limited
circumstances.” The POTUS finalized the policy
in consultation with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. In a
statement, the White House said that “extensive study by senior uniformed and
civilian leaders, including combat veterans,” informed Mattis’ recommendation,
which was that troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria presented “considerable
risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”
A memo from Mattis further notes that
the Obama Administration justified permitting transgender service by citing a
RAND National Defense Research Institute study with “significant shortcomings.”
The RAND study, he said, “referred to
limited and heavily caveated data to support its conclusions, glossed over the
impacts of healthcare costs, readiness, and unit cohesion, and erroneously
relied on the selective experiences of foreign militaries with different
operational requirements than our own.” Mattis’
memo also detailed exceptions to the policy.
Those with a diagnosis can still serve if they “have been stable for 36
consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession,” if they can
meet deployability and retention standards without changing genders, and if
they are already-serving soldiers diagnosed prior to the new policy’s implementation.
Transgender soldiers without a gender
dysphoria diagnosis may also continue to serve, although they will be expected
to do so in their biological sex.
“The armed forces are not a petri dish
for social experimentation, nor is military service a guaranteed right,”
Heritage Foundation defense expert and retired Lieutenant General Tom Spoehr
said in response to the news. Rather,
“our military is the first line of defense for America’s own unique experiment
in liberty.” He added that the Pentagon
should be able to make case-by-case exceptions for already-serving soldiers.
As expected, the new policy was
promptly assailed by congressional Democrats, civil rights groups, and the pro-LGBT
Human Rights Campaign. House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed the ban’s purpose was to “humiliate our brave
transgender members of the military.” Matt
Thorn, president of pro-LGBT military group OutServe-SLDN, claimed it was
“riddled with blatant animus, bigotry, and ignorance.”
However, when Trump originally
announced the change, former Army drill instructor John Burk defended it in a
viral video. Burk noted that depression,
anxiety, color-blindness, and a “whole slew” of other conditions also render
people ineligible for military service without claims of discrimination. He also pointed out that transgender
individuals suffer higher suicide rates and that the American Psychological
Association recognizes gender dysphoria as a psychological disorder. “The military is not a social experiment for
a very small demographic of people that want to enlist,” Burk said. “You cannot
change the course of how the entire organization works.”
The RAND study criticized by Mattis
claims as many as 6,630 out of 1.3 million active-duty troops may be
transgendered, but a defense official told ABC
News in July the actual number of troops identified as such is in the “low
hundreds.”
Elaine Donnelly, president of the
Center for Military Readiness, says while the Trump Administration has taken a
big step to eliminate political correctness in the military, more steps still
need to be taken. “The federal judges
still are running the military – and you can see the difficulties here because
of the court orders. It’s almost a
bifurcated policy now,” she explains.
It is not yet known when the new
policy will take effect. The Los Angeles Times notes that four
federal district judges have issued orders blocking implementation of the ban.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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