Transgender defeat
Trump’s ban amounts to a betrayal of vows made during his race for the presidency.
On the anniversary of the day President Truman integrated our nation’s armed forces, our current president has slammed the door on a group of American citizens whose minority status will deny them the opportunity to serve in their country’s defense.
President Trump has announced a ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. This shameful proclamation not only insults thousands of men and women currently serving in uniform, it also denigrates a misunderstood minority group solely for political purposes. And it does nothing to make our country safer.
Although Trump claims he reached his decision after consulting with leaders of the armed forces, his announcement apparently caught the Pentagon by surprise. On orders from Defense Secretary James Mattis, military officials had been conducting a study on transgender troops in the armed forces, and Mattis himself had announced he would delay a decision on the matter until the end of the year. What’s more, recruiters had been scrambling to sign people up for service, so eliminating a pool of potential candidates seemed counter-productive to the president’s stated goal of building up the nation’s military forces.
Trump cited “tremendous medical costs and disruption” as justifications for reinstating the transgender ban that was lifted under President Obama, but those excuses don’t hold up under scrutiny. A study conducted by the RAND Corporation last year concluded allowing transgender people into the armed forces would have a minimal impact on health care costs and military readiness. About 2,400 of our nation’s 1.3 million active-duty members of the military are transgender, the study concluded, raising health care expenses an estimated $2.4 million to $8.4 million; that’s an increase of about one-tenth of one percent. Other countries that recruit transgender personnel — like the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia — reported little or no impact on military readiness.
Trump’s announcement amounts to a betrayal of campaign promises made during his race for the presidency. At the Republican National Convention, he vowed he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBT community.” As a candidate, he wrote a message on Twitter saying, “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you …” But after his inauguration, the White House has rolled back protections for transgender schoolchildren and didn’t even recognize LGBT Pride Month. Now, a president who promised to fight for transgender Americans has slapped them in the face by essentially declaring them unfit to fight for their country.
The motive seems entirely political. A president who’s a master of media distraction instantly deflected attention from his bullying of the attorney general and his frantic efforts to stop the investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russia. The move also throws red meat to a base of voters who backed Trump because they were uncomfortable with the pace of cultural change during the Obama years.
It also cruelly denies transgender Americans the honor of wearing their nation’s uniform and bearing arms in defense of our country. Amid the avalanche of criticism prompted by the ban, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said it best: “In the land of the free and the home of the brave, every American who is brave enough to serve their country should be free to do so.”