Move prompts LGBT outrage

WASHINGTON: Kristen Beck was a US Navy SEAL who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and came out as transgender in 2011 after leaving the military. She has said Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people from serving in US military is “disrespectful”.

“I fight for every religion. I fight for every colour. Every race, every everything,” she told CNN. “And if he is going to pick and choose, that’s a wrong thing. That’s not what we believe in.”

Backlash to Trump’s Wednesday tweet has been fierce.

“We are indebted to all who serve. Discrimination against anyone holds everyone back. #LetThemServe,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO who came out as gay in 2014, tweeted. Google’s Sundar Pichai, wrote “I am grateful to the transgender members of the military for their service. #LetThemServe.”

Even Republicans have criticised the ban. “I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone,” Senator Orrin Hatch said in a statement. “Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.”

Defence secretary James Mattis was told of the ban just a day before Trump tweeted it out, and the department of defence is waiting for clarity on related issues of how to implement it. Such as: what will happen to transgender people already serving in military? Will they fired? Can they stay? There are an estimated 6,630 transgender individuals on active duty in the US military, according to a RAND corporation study from 2016.