Restrictions On Transgenders In the Military: Why?

“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.
• Trump has filled his administration with people vehemently opposed to LGBTQ rights, including Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Roger Severino, who directs the Office for Civil Rights at HHS. These people are major players in shaping all sorts of federal policy.

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.

Am I bugging you? If so … for good reason?