My friend, Nicole Shounder, currently serves on board a Military Sealift Command (MSC) ship out of the Pacific Northwest. She’s a nurse, and when she’s assigned onto any U.S. Navy ship she takes on the equivalent rank of a lieutenant commander (LCDR).
She was cited in a document entitled Report of the Transgender Military Service Commission; she was cited in the section entitled Medical Aspects Of Transgender Service. “The U.S. has deployed a post-operative transgender member of the Military Sealift Command,” stated the report, “repeatedly on Navy ships.” Nicole is that MSC civilian mariner who has been assigned to remote locations.
This is significant because in 1987’s Leland v. Orr, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Dr. Donald Novicki stated regarding deploying transgender people “would be equivalent to placing an individual with known coronary artery disease in a remote location without readily available coronary care.” He further stated “[i]t has been and remains the policy of the surgeon general that such abnormalities be identified and that such individuals be denied entry or continued active duty for their benefit and for the benefit of the United States Air Force.”
Now, more than 25 years later, former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders and RADM Alan M. Steinman, MD, USPHS/USCG (Ret.) co-chaired “[a] nonpartisan national commission comprised of medical and psychological experts, to consider whether Pentagon policies that exclude transgender service members are based on medically sound reasons.”
The quick answer is “no.”
“We find that there is no compelling medical rationale for banning transgender military service,” states the first line item in the report’s executive summary, “and that eliminating the ban would advance a number of military interests, including enabling commanders to better care for their servicemembers.”
The second line item states “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.”
Current Department of Defense (DoD) regulations require that transgender people are not allowed to enlist, and should they enlist they are subject to discharge for medical and psychological reasons.
“Military regulations should be stripped of enlistment disqualifications for transgender conditions,” states line item 7 in the report’s executive summary, “whether defined physically or mentally, as well as retention provisions that specify gender identity disorder as grounds for administrative separation. Transgender personnel should be treated in accordance with established medical standards of care, as is done with all other medical conditions.”
Monday, March 17, President Obama’s press secretary, James Carney was asked about the report of the Transgender Military Service Commission by the Washington Blade and asked about the policy on transgender servicemembers.
Washington Blade: The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” enabled openly gay people to serve in the U.S. military, but transgender people are still barred because of medical regulations. Last week, an independent commission led by a former U.S. surgeon general issued a report saying there’s no compelling medical reason to [continue] this ban and called on the commander-in-chief to lift it. Will the president direct the Pentagon to lift the ban on transgender service?”
Carney: I don’t have anything on that. I’ll have to direct you to the Pentagon at this point.
Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Pentagon spokesperson contacted by the Blade, said, “There are no plans to change the department’s policy and regulations which do not allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military.”
And, the DoD could change their policy of transgender people serving openly with regulation alone. Unlike with the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that barred lesbian, gay and bisexual people from serving openly, there is no federal law barring transgender people from serving openly: it’s only regulation that keeps transgender people from serving openly.
Current regulations force commanders to do something they don’t especially like doing: terminating the careers of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are making valuable contributions to their units and to the defense of our country.
Nicole Shounder’s case is a case that shows that transgender women can make a vital contribution to the military services. The Report of the Transgender Military Service Commission, hopefully, will be one in a series of reports that will change the hearts and minds of the DoD, and that someday soon transgender servicemembers will be able to serve as out and proud as their lesbian, gay and bisexual siblings in the military currently can.
