Pentagon Moves to Green Light Open Transgender Service
“Outdated,” or there for a reason?
Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that he is taking steps to reverse a longstanding ban on open military service by transgender people.
Carter said that he has asked a panel of senior Pentagon officials to study the affect transgender service members will have on military procedure, as well as what it will take to adapt current procedures to accommodate the new policy.
More via CNN:
Carter made the announcement in a memo outlining a pair of directives to both study the effect of transgender service men and women over the next sixth months, as well as adding the new protocol that any personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify as transgender will have their paperwork for dismissal from the military reviewed at the highest personnel levels in DOD.
“At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they’re able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite,” Carter wrote in his statement. “Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – real, patriotic Americans – who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.”
Get prepared for a blitz, because the mainstream media is excited:
Allowing transgender troops to serve openly is an important step towards a stronger, more inclusive military. http://t.co/FnE3Xstp9s
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) July 14, 2015
The Pentagon is reportedly working on a plan to allow trans people to serve in the military http://t.co/0Qb9nPr9rM pic.twitter.com/pLJoUBEpKn
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 13, 2015
This morning in my coverage of the world’s reaction to the nuclear deal with Iran, I pointed out that in situations like these, the simple instance of an initial policy rollout ups the chances that that policy will eventually end up on the books—no matter how controversial.
Ash Carter is hedging his bets with this one; he’s under pressure from the White House to create a “more inclusive,” friendlier military. Four years ago, gays gained the ability to serve openly; this, however, is a natural progression not in policy, but in narrative.
The White House—and progressives at large—have the momentum on gender issues. The fall of DOMA, the ruling in Obergefell, and a shift in public sentiment all contribute to a conducive atmosphere for Carter to officially float this policy change.
Last month, when Carter addressed an LGBT pride month event at the Pentagon, he discussed diversity at length but made no specific mention of transgender military service.
“Embracing diversity and inclusion is critical to recruiting and retaining the force of the future. Young Americans today are more diverse, open, and tolerant than past generations,” he said. “If we’re going to attract the best and brightest among them to contribute to our mission of national defense, we have to ourselves be more diverse, open, and tolerant, too.”
The move comes as a handful of service members still serving have started to come out publicly as trans, including Jamie Lee Henry, a doctor and major in the Army’s Medical Corps who spoke with BuzzFeed News in June about being a trans person serving in the military today.
Hopefully, DoD will do their duty—but at this point, does anyone really trust the Obama Administration to be honest about cause and effect?
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Cutting veteran benefits, cutting military budget, cutting active personnel, trashing the VA and refusing to fix it, active recruitment of gays, open now to transgenders, etc., etc.
The Obama adminstration is doing everything in its power to degrade our military forces, ignore veteran needs, and demonize as “potential terrorists” anyone who has served over the past decade or more, all the while making sure our allies understand we don’t have your backs, we won’t defend you militarily, and we won’t be extending our power past our own borders (except for politically motivated regimne changes in dinky little no-risk/nobody cares countries). Morale is tripping down the basement stairs.
The effect on national security will be catastrophic.
…and cutting active status members and new recruits.
Will the Pentagon be trafficking in body parts as Planned Parenthood is doing? (See article below this one.)
So, first it was transsexuals (e.g. homosexuals), and now it’s transgenders. With indiscriminate killing or “planning” tipping the scale, are there any behaviors that can be legitimately described as dysfunctional or psychopathic? The Supreme Court seems to think so, but it seems utterly… Well, pro-choice or selective.
In 18 months the most needed and the most psychologically healthy transition of all will take place: America will divest itself of Obama and Co.
I doubt that. The Constitution is largely irrelevant these days.
If President Jugears wants to help create private militias, this seems like what he would do. I predict that many militias will sprout soon.
41% of those who identify as Transgender attempt suicide. Why would you add this burden of the mentally challenged onto the shoulders of those who serve this Nation? What did these soldiers do to you?
Fit, athletic trans women (which I believe is the proper terminology for boys who think they’re girls) will raise the performance statistics for women in the military. Equality at last!
But what if they get their wewe’s blown off……I mean shot off. Sorry.
“Outdated,” or there for a reason?
You mean like “marriage”?
Naw. THAT’s just being “traditional”. Hell, there’s NO reason why someone with a deep, dark pathology should not be given REALLY high security clearances and entrusted with immensely powerful weapons.
Bigots…!!!
From what I understand, once someone who is ‘transgender’ starts the hormone process, they must stay on it for the rest of their life.
Stop Caitlyn’s estrogen and Bruce will quickly appear.
So from a practical standpoint, how would this work if a ‘transgender’ individual is in a combat zone where they don’t have access to their meds? Let me guess, they will be exempted from combat service.
It turns out that, at different times in our societies, people have had delusions about their bodies characteristic of the age, such as being convinced that their bodies are made of glass or concrete.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32625632
I wonder if gender dysphoria, the conviction that a person has a body that is the wrong sex, isn’t also a kind of delusion.
I mean no disrespect for the people who suffer from this condition, because it has an element of self-rejection that must be painful to bear. Indeed, people with this condition are volatile to the point of suicide, whether they are treated, or untreated. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
I have wondered publicly how a physician can ethically “treat” this condition by prescribing a life-long regimen of hormones incompatible with the person’s body at a cellular level, and butchery of a functional physical body. Now I know that people who have actually attempted to treat this condition with drugs and surgery have the same problem.
Indeed, Johns Hopkins University, which pioneered gender reassignment surgery, dropped the treatment as ineffective.
http://yiannopoulos.net/2014/08/15/transgenderism-is-a-psychiatric-disorder-its-sufferers-need-therapy-not-surgery/
Experience has shown that indulging this delusion is not in the patient’s best interest.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change
I can readily understand that psychiatrists might try all kinds of different approaches to this problem, and if some old, rich man wants to spend his money to look like an old woman, it’s really none of my business.
The US military, however, has a purpose to accomplish certain sorts of missions. It is the function of other agencies to act as a social safety net for needy, not-wholly-functional persons.
I think this action is, at bottom, a demonstration of the Administration’s complete failure to grasp the notion that our different executive agencies have different purposes. That failure would explain the arbitrary and capricious actions of several agencies, including attempts by the IRS to influence elections and the EPA to punish manufacturers in competition with their political supporters.
There is no “right to serve” and pandering to a psychological condition isn’t the proper role of the US Military.
The Army will have to create a new rank to accommodate these cryptoqueers. Perhaps they could have a Sargent Major Take It in the Ass. I believe that on first opportunity these guys will get fragged.
I’m willing to bet my next retirement check (22 years active duty) that no one – no one – talked to a cross section of current active duty troops about whether or not they felt comfortable with these changes. Combat effectiveness is significantly degraded if even a small number of troops aren’t convinced that the person that has their six can be trusted, and there is doubt in the ranks about the mindset and emotional stability of a “guy” that used to be a girl. These doubts are exacerbated by the psych studies showing the abnormally high rates of depression and suicide among the transgendered.
As Robert Heinlein said, “The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment; good but not good enough to win.” This administration seems hellbent to make that description fit our military services.
“…under pressure from the White House to create a “more inclusive,” friendlier military”
I’m not really much interested in a “friendlier” military. In fact I’d like my military to be damned unfriendly.
Especially to our psycho U.S. politicians!
Considering Bradley Manning led the way, the Pentagon is 0 for 1 with this decision. All that twisted mess of a human did was sabotage his country and then let the military pay for his reassignment surgery.
Exactly. As I have written before, many of these folks were abused as children. They’re not what you would call stable people. They may have D.I.D., or multiple personalities.
Bradley Manning is par for the course with these folks. They need therapy, not military service.
Army plans to cut troops by 40,000. “A smaller force will require that the Army recruit and retain the best and brightest, Carter said.”
Now we see what he had in mind by best and brightest.
Barack Obama has done the equivalent of taking an intact and structurally sound house constructed of the best douglas fir lumber available and inoculated every stud, joist, rafter, header and carrying beam with a termite colony, so that after a short while elapses, each and every framing member has the consistency and strength of toilet paper and all it will take is the slightest nudge from a perfectly placed kick to bring the entire structure crumbling down upon itself.
“Fundamental Transformation “time
I hear a rumble. I think it’s the Canadian artillery massing on our border.
The Mauve Berets learn jungle combat slapping.
‘I’ve always suspected Obama is a pot smoking gay/bi/transgendered depending on her mood and the direction political winds are blowing at any given moment.
Any bets she will put on a dress in office before stepping down?