Once again turning to his preferred communications medium of Twitter, President Trump this morning announced what appears to be a sweeping change toward the policies of the U.S. military regarding service by transgender individuals:
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States will not “accept or allow” transgender people in the United States military, saying American forces “must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory” and could not afford to accommodate them.
Mr. Trump made the surprise declaration in a series of posts on Twitter, saying he had come to the decision after talking to generals and military experts, whom he did not name.
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
The sweeping policy decision reverses the gradual transformation of the military under President Barack Obama, whose administration announced last year that transgender people could serve openly in the military. Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, also opened all combat roles to women and appointed the first openly gay Army secretary.
It was not clear what prompted Mr. Trump’s announcement on Wednesday. In June, the administration delayed a decision on whether to allow transgender recruits to join the military. At the time, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said an extra six months would give military leaders a chance to review its potential impact.
The president’s announcement came amid a debate on Capitol Hill over the Obama-era practice of requiring the Pentagon to pay for medical treatment related to gender transition. The dispute has unfolded as Congress considers a nearly $700 billion spending bill to fund the Pentagon. Representative Vicky Hartzler, Republican of Missouri, has proposed an amendment that would bar the Pentagon from spending money on transition surgery or related hormone therapy.
The same measure narrowly failed this month in the House, with some Republicans joining Democrats to reject it. But some conservative Republicans have said they would not support the military spending measure without the language banning money for gender transition.
Here are Trump’s tweets on this issue:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
As it stands, the announcement from Trump appears to have caught the Pentagon by surprise to some degree. Secretary of Defense Mattis is on vacation, and reporters are saying that they haven’t been able to get a response from other Defense Department officials as of yet. If Trump is to be taken at this word, though, then it would appear that this goes beyond the issue of the military declining to cover the cost of gender reassignment surgery and other issues that were still being reviewed inside the Pentagon and essentially means that any transgender person who has come out of the closet since the policy change was announced will end up being discharged and that people who identify as transgendered will not be accepted as recruits going forward. At the same time, those members of the military who are transgendered but are not serving openly will have to live in constant fear that they will be subject to discharge and discipline if they are discovered in much the same way that gay and lesbian service members lived prior to the time when the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy was finally repealed in 2011.
According to a study by the RAND Corporation, there are roughly 2,500 transgendered individuals actively serving in the military, but the same study also stated that a change in policy regarding transgender individuals could impact as many as 11,000 people once you include not only people on active duty but also reservists and members of National Guard units that could be called to fill combat or other overseas roles as has occurred over the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years, though, the military has been exploring the issues surrounding this segment of the population and their service in the military, as well as the extent to which the military medical services would cover the cost of gender reassignment surgery for those already in the military. Just over a year ago, however, the Pentagon announced that it was ending the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military and also announced that transgender individuals would be able to receive hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery at government expense provided that treating medical professionals deemed it to be medically necessary. The new policy also provided that new recruits would have to be “stable” in their gender identity for at least 18 months before they would be accepted into the military, a policy that seemed at first glance to be reasonable under the circumstances. At the time, the Defense Department said that the change in policy would occur in phases and that it came after a long process that included consultation with transgender service members, leaders of the military itself, and outside experts. The Trump Defense Department was continuing that process but had recently signaled that it might need more time to consider the changes that would have to be made to allow the policy change to move forward. There was no indication, though, that they were considering revoking the policy entirely.
In what amounts to a sad bit of irony, this announcement comes on the 69th anniversary of the day that President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which ended the long-standing racial segregation in the military that had become increasingly anachronistic and more obviously unjust in the wake of the Second World War. Whether Trump or the White House was aware of this fact is unclear, although one gets the sense that nobody over there has any clue when it comes to historical milestones such as this. In any case, given the fact that many of America’s closest allies, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom, allow transgender individuals serve openly in the military and have not reported any problems or issues whatsoever, it seems clear that there is no rational basis for this ban. Just as with allowing African-Americans and women to serve in non-segregated units, there’s simply no reason to believe that a properly trained military force would not able to accommodate transgender soldiers. The experience since the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ should also stand as evidence that there is no rational basis for banning people because of their gender identity. Based on that, this policy change seems to be rooted in nothing more than pure bigotry, a complete refutation of Trump’s campaign promise that he would be “a real friend” to the LGBT community, and nothing more than a sop to the bigoted social conservatives in the GOP who seem oddly obsessed with things such as people’s genitals and what bathroom they use.
Here’s a copy of the RAND Corporation study I referenced above:
Rand Corporation Study On Transgender Military Service by Doug Mataconis on Scribd
