“By the government's
own numbers in 2016, there were approximately 8,980 Service members
that identify as transgender. During the Obama administration, 937
members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began or completed
their transition.”
– Cable News Network
The Supreme Court reinstated President
Trump's order placing restrictions on transgender persons enlisting
and serving in the military, by granting a stay of two lower court
injunctions that had blocked the president's policy. The justices
voted 5-4, reflecting the high court's conservative majority.
The decision allows the Pentagon to
prevent many transgender persons from joining or, in some
circumstances, remaining in the military while the lower court
rulings that had blocked the policy are appealed. The justices did
not rule on the merits of the case, but di allow the ban to go
forward while those lower courts worth through it.
The court's move is a victory for the
Trump administration. It is not a mandate, but it has opened up the
option for the military to enforce the ban. The ruling is a
tremendous blow to LGBT activists who call the ban cruel and
irrational.
The policy, first announced by the
President in July 2017 via Twitter, and later officially released by
then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, blocks individuals who have
been diagnosed with a condition known as gender dysphoria from
serving with limited exceptions. It also specifies that individuals
without the condition can serve, but only if they do so according to
the sex they were assigned at birth.
The move is a reversal of an Obama
administration policy that ruled transgender Americans could serve
openly in the military as well as obtain funding for gender
re-assignment surgery.
* Note: The exception to
the policy is for people who are already in the military and
diagnosed with gender dysphoria to get around the court orders in
place. But that is a small exception. The actual policy is that if
you are transgender, you can't serve. For the people currently
serving, many were serving in the shadows before the previous ban was
lifted in 2016, so they do not have that documentation.
Aaron Belkin, sociologist and director
of the Palm Center, said, "We had an inclusive policy for almost
three years. What today's ruling enables is the whipsawing of policy,
back and forth."
What was Trump's rationale for banning
transgender troops? He has stated it was financial. According to
estimates by the RAND Corporation, a policy think tank working with
the US Armed Forces, transition-related healthcare costs are between
$2.4m and $8.4m per year.
In 2017, defense data viewed by the
Palm Center indicates that cost was in fact lower, at $2.2m.
Belkin said, "This is not a
financial issue, it's not a disruption issue - it's an issue of
emotion, tolerance and politics."
Seeking Truth About Reasons For the
Ban
This ban is, indeed, an issue of
politics. And, those politics are discriminatory, reeking of
homophobia. The Supreme Court has swung to backing the bigoted Trump
agenda. In addition, this is one more policy of President Obama that
Trump wishes to destroy. Trump’s presidency and administration have
adopted a broad anti-LGBTQ agenda – one that has gone after LGBTQ
workers, students, troops, and patients. And more than showing
Trump’s dishonesty, this agenda potentially threatens the rights of
millions of LGBTQ Americans.
Joshua Block, Senior Staff Attorney
ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, said about the reasoning for the ban:
“The simple answer is that the administration wants to encourage
discrimination against trans people any time it has power to do so.”
So, to advance a discriminatory agenda,
the government is claiming it has new evidence that should be
sufficient justification for the ban moving forward. They were
supposed to study the issue, but their "new evidence" is
mostly data from before transgender people were allowed to serve
openly.
A lot of uncited ideological attacks
about how trans people are just inherently devious and threaten the
privacy of others exist. Of course, there is no support for any of
that nonsense, which is why groups like the American Psychological
Association say, “The APA is alarmed by the administration’s
misuse of psychological science to stigmatize transgender Americans
and justify limiting their ability to serve in uniform and access
medically necessary health care."
One vital question remains unanswered:
What kind of punishment will those in the armed forces face for being
trans: lack of promotions, denial of deployment, forced discharge for
pretextual reasons?
Block claims the government is
pretending that they have now gone through an independent analysis
that is not infected by Trump's transparent discriminatory intent.
It's very similar to the games the government has played with the
Muslim ban. Pretending to pass a new policy and then claiming it
isn't tainted by Trump's unconstitutional orders.
Let's be brutally honest, the Trump
administration has adopted a host of anti-LGBTQ actions over the last
two years. Here are some of the major examples:
- The Trump administration rescinded a nonbinding Obama-era guidance that told K-12 schools that receive federal funding that trans students are protected under federal civil rights law and, therefore, schools should respect trans students’ rights, including their right to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. The Trump administration took back the guidance altogether, arguing trans students aren’t protected under federal civil rights law.
- Trump’s Justice Department also rescinded another Obama-era memo that said trans workers are protected under civil rights law. This has enabled the federal government, including its army of attorneys, to now argue in court that anti-trans discrimination isn’t illegal under federal law. The courts are ultimately independent of the Trump administration, but the federal government can play a big role in legal arguments by throwing its people and resources behind a case.
- At every opportunity, the Trump administration has sided with anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the courts — including the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, another about whether federal law prohibited an employer from firing a skydiving instructor over his sexual orientation, and a legal battle over whether federal law prohibits discrimination against trans people in health care.
- The Trump administration sent out a “religious liberty” guidance to federal agencies, essentially asking them to respect “religious-liberty protections” in all of the federal government’s work. It’s unclear what kind of impact the guidance will have, but LGBTQ organizations worry that it will be used to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people within the federal government and its work.
Reports even surfaced in October that
the administration had started denying visas to some unmarried,
same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and employees of the United
Nations (U.N.). Is it any wonder many feel “transgender” could
be defined right out of existence under Trump.
Trump speaks to people who believe that
too many groups – African-Americans, immigrants, Muslims, women,
queer people – are given “special rights.” This has led the
National Center for Transgender Equality to label his administration
“The Discrimination Administration” and to conclude that since
the day President Trump took office, his administration has waged a
nonstop onslaught against the rights of LGBTQ people.
This is the Equal Protection Clause
located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
“All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
[emphasis added].”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released hate crime statistics for 2017 revealing a disturbing increase of 17 percent in reported hate crimes from the previous year. These statistics highlight the ongoing epidemic of anti-transgender violence, as well as hate violence against other marginalized communities. Because hate crimes reporting is not mandatory, the numbers undercount -- likely significantly -- the reality of bias-motivated crimes.
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