A week ago Monday, (Oct. 20) the Palm Center, SPARTA and the ACLU convened a conference to discuss open transgender military service in the United States. In the largest gathering of its kind, transgender military personnel from 18 countries that allow open military service for transgender servicemembers attended the conference to discuss that issue.
With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in 2011, lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers have been able to serve openly in U.S military services, but repeal of DADT didn’t address trans military service. Yet open trans military service is still prohibited by Department of Defense (DoD) regulation.
Defense Secretary Hagel stated earlier this year on ABC’s This Week that the review of the transgender service policy is something he’d support. “I can confirm that for you … that no review of the policy has been ordered,” Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Department of Defense spokesman, told The Huffington Post for their article Transgender Troops in Other Nations Are Proof That Inclusive Militaries Work. DoD regulations don’t allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military, based upon medical standards for military service.
But that reason for excluding transgender servicemembers isn’t logical. A study published by the Palm Center last March stated, “Medical regulations requiring the discharge of all transgender personnel are inconsistent with how the military regulates medical and psychological conditions, and arbitrary in that medical conditions related to transgender identity appear to be the only gender-related conditions requiring discharge irrespective of fitness for duty.”
Transgender medical care is no more expensive, no more complicated and no less necessary than other kinds of medical care we provide to servicemembers and their families every day.
If we’re going to argue that transgender people would then join the service to receive transition related medical coverage, we have servicemembers who cite as a reason they’re enlisting in the military for the medical care that they and their families will receive. And, many other businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, municipalities and now even the Department of State are providing transition related medical care to trans people; the military would not be the only option by far for trans people receiving transition related medical care from the same people who write their paychecks.
If we want to make this about bathrooms and showers, please. There are 18 allies to America, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and even Israel who’ve figured out how to accommodate transgender servicemembers. Surely a nation as great as America could figure out how to accommodate transgender servicemembers, even if it’s just copying and pasting a coherent policy based on excerpts of the policies of those other 18 allied nations.
If we’re going to argue that Chelsea Manning is transgender and released classified information, then we’re saying that the roughly 15,000 transgender service members currently serving in silence, as well as the roughly 135,000 transgender veterans who served their nation honorably, are and were the kind of people who would release classified information. It would be in the family of arguments that would say that because I’m a transgender veteran who was a Fire Controlman in the U.S. military, that all transgender active duty servicemembers and veterans must be Fire Controlmen. Citing one case that was true for one transgender servicemember doesn’t mean that that case is a universal truth for all transgender servicemembers.
This is about military readiness. The military services are meritocracies, so why would we get rid of well qualified, good, honorably serving military servicemembers for stupid reasons? It was stupid to discharge lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers under DADT for no good reason; it’s equally as stupid to discharge transgender servicemembers for no good reason.
I’m confident that over time, the Pentagon will do the right thing for its transgender servicemembers and for military readiness. What we can all hope for is this happens sooner rather than later, but it will no doubt happen eventually.
SPARTA was not a sponsor of this meeting and if you mention them then the other organizations represented, which were numerous and included actual 501 C 3’s such as TAVA and OS-SLDN, should also be mentioned.
Savvy writing . I was enlightened by the info ! Does someone know if I might be able to get ahold of a blank CA DWC Form 10232.2 form to use ?