The Pentagon is preparing to announce a lift of the ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military on July 1st. The left will undoubtedly hail this as a sign of progress but it turns years of policy on its head and raises a host of issues.
Will transgender troops be allowed to choose which barracks they live in? Which bathrooms will they use? These may sound like trivial questions but military life doesn’t afford much privacy.
USA Today reports:
Ban on transgender troops to be lifted July 1The Pentagon plans to announce the repeal of its ban on transgender service members July 1, a controversial decision that would end nearly a year of internal wrangling among the services on how to allow those troops to serve openly, according to Defense officials.Top personnel officials plan to meet as early as Monday to finalize details of the plan, and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work could sign off on it by Wednesday, according to a Defense official familiar with the timetable but who spoke on condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Final approval would come from Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and the announcement will be on the eve of the Fourth of July weekend.The plan would direct each branch of the armed services over a one-year period to implement new policies affecting recruiting, housing and uniforms for transgender troops, one official said.Carter announced last year that the ban, which affects a fraction of the military’s 1.3 million active duty members, would be lifted unless a review showed that doing so would have “adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness.”That phrase raised concerns on Capitol Hill where a key lawmaker questioned whether an “honest and balanced assessment” could be made of the effects on “military readiness, morale and good order and discipline” under Carter’s guidelines for the review.
However you feel about transgenderism, the bigger issue is military readiness. Under Obama, our military has been decimated while his administration has used our armed forces as a laboratory for progressive social issues.
Last month, Frank Gaffney of Secure Freedom Radio interviewed Elaine Donnelly, the President of the Center for Military Readiness, and she explained how and why this is happening:
The reason the military is a target for leftist activism is because everyone in the military must follow orders. Just like the mid-level or in general… who addressed the presidential commission, they’re not really free to dissent from the orders they’re given. This is what makes the military very vulnerable to leftist forces who want to use it to advance social agendas rather than improve its strength and readiness. The intangibles are even more important than what you can see with weapons, systems, ships and planes, how much money is spent on things involving training.
The military exists for one purpose and that is America’s defense. Our brave men and women in uniform should not be burdened with the task of advancing progressive agendas.
Featured image is a screencap from Fusion.
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