VETERANS ENCOURAGED BY TRANSGENDER BAN REPEAL

Gender identity should not be bar to service, order says

San Diego veterans and LGBT activists are celebrating the announcement last week that transgender people will be allowed to serve in the military.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing a Trump-imposed ban, one of many signed in the first week of the new president’s term as he seeks to undo many of the policies of the last administration.

“It is my conviction as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces that gender identity should not be a bar to military service,” Biden’s executive order says. “Moreover, there is substantial evidence that allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military does not have any meaningful negative impact on the Armed Forces.”

The reversal is the latest move in a tug-of-war over trans rights in the military.

Trans people were banned from military service, alongside gay and lesbian troops, through the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era. While the ban was lifted for gay and lesbian troops in 2011, the one for trans troops remained until 2016, when then President Barack Obama moved to lift it. However then President Donald Trump reversed Obama’s policy in a July 2017 tweet that was eventually codified into two executive orders and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2019.

Biden’s order reversing Trump’s ban is historic, said Fernando López Jr., the executive director of San Diego Pride.

“Transgender service members and veterans have been a part of the fabric of our country since our nation’s founding and important drivers of our movement for LGBTQ equality throughout our history,” López said. “Today our country took an important, humanizing step for our trans siblings in showing people across the U.S. and the world that all those who are willing and able to protect and serve our country should be afforded dignity and respect.”

The order did more than just lift the ban. It called on the military to halt any ongoing separations, discharges and denials of reenlistment on the basis of anyone’s gender identity. It called on the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, to examine the records of members involuntarily separated on the basis of gender identity and to correct the service records “as necessary to remove an injustice.”

Anyone separated from the military under those conditions will be offered the opportunity to rejoin the services, the order says.

Trans veterans in San Diego welcomed the announcement.

“I’m extremely happy the repeal went through,” said Nic Herrera, a California National Guard veteran from San Diego. “Anybody fit and capable should have the honor and privilege (to serve).”

Herrera served for eight years in the Guard, which included deployments to Afghanistan in 2009 and to the U.S. southern border in 2011. She left the service in 2014, a few years after the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which banned gay people from openly serving in the military. The ongoing ban of trans people contributed to her decision to leave, she said.

“It’s disheartening when you have to constantly be concerned about whether or not you’ll have your job or be kicked out for who you are, despite being capable and qualified,” Herrera said.

Veronica Zerrer spent more than 20 years in the Navy and the Army — active duty and reserves — and now is board president of Neutral Corner, a San Diego-based trans nonprofit. She retired in 1998 as a major in the Army.

Zerrer said the military’s discriminatory policies affected her career, which included stints as an armored cavalry platoon leader and a company commander.

“If I declared I was transgender they would have kicked me out under don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said. “It’s very, very tough to focus on your job. I keep wondering how much more effective I would have been at my job had I been able to transition.”

Zerrer began her transition a month after her military retirement, she said.

“I had to wait,” she said. “One thing I did not want to do was devote decades of service and run the risk of being kicked out.”

TJ Seguine served 10 years in the Navy and left because he said he could no longer live his life in the “gender closet.”

“If I could have served openly, hands down, I would have finished out my military service,” Seguine said. “My blood runs Navy blue.”

Seguine found another way to serve the Navy — he has worked as a civilian for the service for 15 years. He said his comments reflect his personal views, not those of the Navy or the government.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin voiced support for the change in a statement.

“The United States armed forces are in the business of defending our fellow citizens from our enemies, foreign and domestic,” Austin said. “We would be rendering ourselves less fit to the task if we excluded from our ranks people who meet our standards and who have the skills and the devotion to serve in uniform.”

Critics of allowing trans people to serve openly have cited health costs and unit cohesion, as did former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in 2017. However the Pentagon and the Rand Corp studied the issue in 2016 and found it would have minimal impact on readiness and health costs. According to the study, there were about 1,300 to 6,600 trans people in the military at the time.

Biden cited the study in his executive order.

In 2018, the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all testified before Congress that they saw no evidence to justify the exclusion of trans people from the services.