By Nancy Thorner -
With a series of tweets on Wednesday morning, July 26, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military will not accept openly transgender individuals. By so doing, Trump reversed an Obama administration policy directive. Earlier this July, Defense Secretary James Mattis had said he would delay new admissions of openly transgender Americans into the military until Jan. 1 on the advice of military brass. Trump’s announcement, however, at least for the time being, appeared to seal the matter.
There are, however, Republican members of Congress who believe that taxpayers should pay for castration and vaginal construction for transvestite males, double mastectomies of healthy breasts for male-posing women and hormone therapy and all else that goes with it. The Hartzler Amendment to the House appropriations bill would have stopped the military from paying for the procedures related to sex changes after Obama executive order, but all the Democrats in the House, and 24 Republicans, kept this amendment from passing.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman General Joseph Dunford, reacted a day after Trump's tweet announcement with this admonishment:
“There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president’s direction has been received by the secretary of defense and the secretary has issued implementation guidance.”
Critics of the president’s policy have compared the transgender ban to the racial segregation of the military. Just as racial segregation championed by so-called progressives Democrats like President Woodrow Wilson didn't increase the effectiveness of our troops, the push for transgender soldiers represents another largely Democratic effort to use the military to achieve social outcomes unrelated to the primary purpose of the military, which is to defend the country and defeat enemies.
David Kupelian, Managing editor of World Net Daily, had this to say about the meltdown of Democrats and the establishment press about President Trump's tweet announcement:
“Remember, up until just recently, being transgender was universally recognized around the world as a serious mental disorder. Then suddenly, under relentless LGBT pressure, a panel of people at the top of the American Psychiatric Association decides to partially de-pathologize ‘gender identity disorder’ and suddenly it’s perfectly normal – and now everybody who doesn’t play along is a hater and a klansman.”
What about the right to serve?
Just as in most everything else we do, there are condition (rules and regulations) that are prescribed for service in the military. Being too tall; too short; too thin, too fat, too old, too young, or not being able to hear or see well, can all be disqualifying conditions. Then there are medical conditions that require constant treatment or excessive accommodation. That's why people with asthma, diabetes, permanent STD's/STI's (like HIV), people with cancer or a recurring history of cancer and individuals with physical disabilities can't serve (except in very rare cases where a specific waiver is granted). Do people ever complain about any of the before mentioned restrictions, yet rejection from the military because you are "transgender" implies discrimination.
Society as a whole, seems to have little knowledge of the transgender controversy, especially as it relates to the military? Here are some facts:
Transgender individuals require hormone replacement therapy, they require psychiatric care during transition, and if they elect to get surgery it can take 2-4 years for them to recover to the point of being eligible to deploy. On top of that, after the surgery they are at a higher risk of infection for the rest of their life, which complicates any attempt at sending them to the field to train where hygiene isn't always able to be pristine maintained or overseas. An overseas deployment also puts the individual at risk because they may not have steady access to their hormone replacement drugs, which leads to withdrawal and hormone imbalances as well as health problems. So, just like diabetics and cancer patients and individuals with physical or mental disabilities, it just isn't feasible to accommodate these people so that they can serve.
Although transgender service members have been serving openly in the military since June 30, 2016, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the ban, it was on Oct. 1, 2016, that transgender troops have been able to receive medical care and start formally changing their gender identifications in the Pentagon’s personnel system.
The Pentagon has refused to release any data on the number of transgender troops currently serving in the military, but a Rand Corp. study estimated that there are between 2,500 and 7,000 transgender service members on active duty and an additional 1,500 to 4,000 in the reserves. Within the Pentagon's personnel system, there are as many as 250 service members in the process of transitioning to their preferred genders or who have been approved to formally change gender.
Reported in an article by Daniel Greenfield in Front Page Magazine, The Transgender Ban Isn’t Fair. Neither is War:
"As 45% of transgender persons in the 18 to 44 age range are suicidal, this is a serious risk for personnel who are around weapons or operating machinery or aircraft. If this were the only issue, it would be enough to justify the medical ban. Transgender operations and hormone therapy requires constant monitoring by a doctor. They carry serious health risks. Some of those risks require serious medications and ongoing management. The military demands results, not diversity."
What about cost to the American taxpayer?
The Rand study touted by transgender advocates claiming that medical expenses will only be in the millions, relies on a statistical bait and switch. The actual cost is estimated to be in the billions.
Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R., Mo.), leading opponent of taxpayer-funded sex changes as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of oversight and investigations, provided internal data to the Washington Free Beacon showing that even by using a conservative estimate, the costs associated with only 0.7 percent of the military population is huge, $1.35 billion. Calculations included the current number of transgenders now serving and those who are likely to seek taxpayer-funded gender transitions. The $1.35 billion doesn't even include additional medical costs of transgender service members, including hormone therapy, mental health service, or costs associated with surgical complications.
In the past Hartzler has pointed out that for $1.35 billion, the Pentagon could purchase 13 F-35 fighters or 14 F-18 Super Hornets.
Trump's Transgender Ban Applauded
As expressed by Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis (USA-Ret.), Senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council:
"It's about time common sense comes to the Pentagon. The president obviously has been consulting with the top leaders in the Pentagon, who are grounded in common sense, and they made recommendations to end it. So the president [has decided to] not go down that path that the Obama administration paved regarding political correctness."
Retired Colonel Will Merrill wrote the following remarks via a request from Nancy Thorner, who was introduced to Col. Merrill through a friend who likewise lives in Florida:
Col. Merrill served for thirty-one years in the army. Having graduated from West Point in 1958, he served eleven years overseas and had tours in Germany, Vietnam, Korea and Greece. He has written two books, 9/11- Ordinary People: Extraordinary Heroes- NYC, the First Battle in the War against Terror!, which includes interviews with Mayor Rudy Giuliani and FDNY Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano and other involved in 9/11 and Ordinary People: Extraordinary Heroes- Afghanistan and Iraq, based on Merrill's interviews with thirty-five soldiers and family members. His books are available on Amazon.com.
"There is no room for transgender in the military. We can accommodate them in civilian life but it just won't work in the military. They would not be deploy-able, which would mean that the others would have to deploy more often. Again, the military was being for social engineering. Reminds me of my first command experience. Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense under Project 100,000 let that many unqualified people join the military as a social experiment. My experience was that most of these people were not able to perform even basic military tasks. Many got in trouble with local police and much of my time was spent in working with them and arranging to have them eliminated from the army."
"I also feel that if transgender people were permitted to join the military, many would do so, solely so they could get expensive sex change operations and medical care from the military. Many would likely leave the military as soon as they could after that."
President Trump's policy is the same one that existed for most of Obama's time in office. So why now the outrage and the cynical and hypocritical posturing by those in the media. Military preparedness should not be how the military can accommodate one identity group or another, but how the recruits can be shaped to the needs of the military. The transgender ban is not a moral or a religious policy, but a medical one. Should the military really be required to deal with the complicated medical and social problems that arise to accommodate transgender troops?
Instead of admitting that Trump was right, and that allowing transgenders to share the showers, barracks and latrines, of female soldiers, made no sense at all, the political poltroons immediately began to spew the typical bilge about Trump’s being a sexist, and that the military should be open to all those transgender patriots who wish to fight for their country…or at least have the country pay for their surgery.
The LGTB culture should be left in peace, but peace is not what the military is about.
