Trump Sends Pentagon Guidance on Transgender Policies
BUT it gives leeway to secretaries of defense and DHS to make changes.
President Donald Trump has issued guidance to the Pentagon on transgender policies. Trump has asked the military to stop admitting transgender individuals, but gives the secretaries of defense and homeland security some leeway. From Fox News:
The directive reinstates the ban on military service for transgender individuals. It also halts military expenses on sexual reassignment surgery, except for those who have already begun medical procedures, and implements criteria for whether transgender individuals already in the military should be allowed to continue to serve.
Transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year when then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, during the Obama administration, lifted the prior ban.
“In President Trump’s judgment, the previous administration failed to identify a sufficient basis to conclude that terminating long-standing policy and practice would not hinder military effectiveness, disrupt unit cohesion, tax military resources,” a senior administration official said Friday.
CONFIRMED: #Trump signs memo directing Pentagon to ban #transgender individuals from openly serving in U.S. military https://t.co/lj7ActIGYN pic.twitter.com/3b838egiRi
— ANTONIO ARELLANO (@AntonioArellano) August 25, 2017
Trump originally made his announcement at the end of July, but the Joint Chiefs said a day later that the military would not make any modifications until Trump sent them guidance. From Politico:
“I know there are questions about yesterday’s announcement on the transgender policy by the President,” Dunford wrote in the message, a copy of which was provided to POLITICO. “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.”
“In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions,” he continued.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter under President Barack Obama “issued a directive last year that permitted transgender troops to serve in the military, and to undergo reassignment surgery.”
Congress has started to look over a spending bill for the Pentagon worth almost $700 billion. The New York Times reported that Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) “has proposed an amendment that would bar the Pentagon from spending money on transition surgery or related hormone therapy.”
That same measure failed in the House earlier in July because some Republicans sided with “Democrats to reject it.” Conservative Republicans have insisted “they would not support the military spending measure without the language banning money for gender transition.”
The Hill also reported that “approximately 250 transgender people now” serve “openly in the U.S. military.”
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Comments
Seems very sensible …
… except for so many appearances of the classic weasel word “openly”.
A ‘transgender male’ (aka a female who has taken the form of a male) does not have the same upper body skeletal and muscular structure of a born male. Can they handle the physical stress of combat?
what (as in WTF) is a “transgender male” as there is no medical definition of said “transgender male” or “transgender female”. The medically correct term is “Gender Dysmorphic Disorder” that applies to both/either sex. AND if surgery & hormone treatments are done said person is only “TransGender” DURING SAID OPERATION per John Hopkins Medical Center that does NOT recommend gender reassignment due to the over 80% suicide rate AFTER said surgery. btw per JHMC the remaining 20% have surgeries flipping back and forth so it’s hard to track any success.
OK, let’s be clear; there are a LOT of MOSs that could be filled by anyone, including a physically infirm person.
Women, who do NOT have the upper body strength of most men, have made excellent pilots, for instance.
How much strength does it take to pilot a drone? Or fill out forms?
So that’s kind of a red herring.
Any “transgender” presents a whole snake basket of problems quite aside from the physical demands of a ground-pounder. THOSE are much more important.
Why should we preserve the safest jobs in the military for those who cannot meet the standards established for combat? So the least capable members of the military get the most training to fulfill the best jobs in the military and those fit young men fully capable of performing all tasks in the military get restricted to the training necessary to dig ditches with a bayonet? Sexist much? The Marines have always (until Ash Carter) held that every Marine was a rifleman. So long Marine Corps.
There may be one out of one hundred women who could fully perform combat tasks as well as the least qualified man. Worse, less than one out of one hundred of those barely functional women would have any inclination to join the military.
Why should the military duplicate its facilities (barracks, toilets, and such) for so very few applicants? Not to mention stuffing the logistics train with supplies that will almost never be used in the real world? Birth control pills in the C-RATS?
The military does not gain anything by admitting women but does have a huge increase in expenses. This is nothing but a ‘social justice’ program run amok. Whose well known costs and failures have been covered up by the military for decades.
Wow. So much bullshit, sooooo much lather.
I dunno who your think you’re talking to, but I am against transgenders in the military.
BTW, you’re full of shit. Women make fine pilots, and have since WWII. They make fine intelligence officers, too. And several etc.
But you just wanted to mix it up, and so you said stupid shit. I understand.
this memo just basically rolls back Obama’s Gender Dysmorphia Disorder agenda (trangender is just weakly defined) to the Pre-Obama Military Policy. so watch the Leftist Heads explode..
Obama’s policy of recruiting “transgenders”, starting very expensive treatments after said enlistments, promoting any with Gender Dysmorphia Disorder (this was an automatic section 8 discharge correct? or correct me on this) to declare & start treatments / sex change operation…is utter madness and had nothing whatsoever to do with Military fighting or readiness.
The size and strength differences between the genders are far more important than merely seeing who can lug what loads around during basic.
The layman is probably unaware that much military hardware—certainly the stuff at the outer fringes of the performance envelope—is designed to fit the size, strength, and senses of the personnel who will be using it. A requirement that it be “one size fits all” would cripple performance.
All recruits for any of the world’s more serious armed forces are measured—height, weight, interpupilary distance, arm reach, the forces which can be exerted by hands and feet in various positions (pushing, pulling, rotating, squeezing, etc, etc), and much more—and this information is tabulated by percentile. Machine designers then use the data to make aircraft, armored vehicles, space capsules, rifles, hand grenades, life jackets, etc. fit whichever subset of the recruit population the military requests. So if a requirement is for, say, a tank or a ground-attack jet to fit recruits in the height range of, say, 60 +/- 2 inches, then it will be essentially inoperable for a person 72 inches tall.
Many years ago the military was criticized for supposedly making it impossible for women to become fighter pilots because the planes were designed to be operated by pilots of a size and strength range which included only a tiny percentage of female recruits. I’m sure it’s still an issue.
The article says there are currently around 250 transvestites in the military. Out of nearly 1.5 million people between active, guard and reserve. This is a non-issue. 250 do not get to dictate the entire DOD and everyone in it. Shut up and color or get out.
When Trump first tweeted out his decision, lefties were claiming it would reduce the armed forces by about 2,500 members. As usual, data on victimhood is a touch exaggerated.