CGA grad weighs in on Trump’s new transgender policy

When President Donald Trump released an order late last week banning most transgender troops from serving in the military, a 2012 Coast Guard Academy graduate didn’t believe it at first.

“All I could think of, at first, was you have to be kidding me because he had tried once and he failed,” said Lt. Taylor Miller, 27, a transgender woman who serves in the Coast Guard as a marine inspector at Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach, referring to legal challenges to Trump’s original announcement last July of a ban on transgender troops serving in the military.

Miller first heard about the Pentagon’s new transgender policy from her commanding officer, who called her while she was at dinner last Friday night to let her know before the news broke, and to tell her the unit was behind her, she said.

“Just give it up,” Miller said of the policy by phone Tuesday night. “We’ve been serving. I’ve been in for over three years since my transition started and have done nothing but serve this country to the best of my ability with zero punitive issues.”

The new policy says that transgender individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria are disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances. Those who require or have under-

“Just give it up. We’ve been serving. I’ve been in for over three years since my transition started and have done nothing but serve this country to the best of my ability with zero punitive issues.” LT. TAYLOR MILLER, 27, TRANSGENDER WOMAN AND 2012 USCGA GRADUATE

gone gender transition also are disqualified. The Pentagon describes gender dysphoria as a condition where a person is uncomfortable in their biological sex to the point of experiencing distress or impaired functioning.

Miller, who started taking hormones on Jan. 1, 2015, said since she has fully transitioned from male to female, and her assigned gender was changed, she’s not as worried about her status in the military as she is for those who “have recently come out and embraced themselves and just started their transitions.”

Still, it can be hard to remain motivated at work with the looming threat of being kicked out for being transgender. “How do you keep yourself moving while all that stuff is looming in back of your head?” Miller said. She has been on leave from the Coast Guard, but said she is planning to return to work Monday as usual.

“If anything, we have to perform at a higher level because the eyes are on us,” she added.

In a series of Twitter posts last July, Trump announced that the U.S. “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity” in the military, reversing an Obama administration plan to allow transgender troops to serve openly. After Trump’s tweets, the leader of the Coast Guard, Adm. Paul Zukunft, personally reached out to Miller and other transgender members of the Coast Guard to express his support.

Trump’s ban is facing several legal challenges, which Miller said made her optimistic that Trump’s policy wouldn’t go into effect. Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, reportedly said last week that the new policy wouldn’t have an immediate impact because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The new policy adopts recommendations from a February 2018 Pentagon memo.

“In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America’s wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote in summarizing the recommendations.

Mattis said there were “substantial risks” to allowing in military personnel who seek to change or question their gender identity, and that it “could undermine readiness, disrupt unit cohesion, and impose an unreasonable burden on the military that is not conducive to military effectiveness and lethality.”

The Pentagon does not keep track of the number of transgender service members. An August 2016 study from the RAND Corporation estimated that between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender individuals serve on active duty in the U.S. military. The study found that no more than 140 active-duty service members a year likely would seek gender-transition hormone treatments, and even fewer would seek transition-related surgeries, resulting in between $2.4 million and $8.4 million in additional costs to the military’s yearly health care budget of more than $6 billion.

Mattis dismissed the RAND study as “heavily caveated data to support its conclusions, glossed over the impacts of health care costs, readiness, and unit cohesion, and erroneously relied on the selective experiences of foreign militaries with different operational requirements than our own.”