President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. government will not allow individuals who suffer from gender dysphoria, now labeled transgender, serving in the military, more specifically, “to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.”
President Trump’s announcement came just weeks after Defense Secretary James Mattis announced that he will defer implementation of the transgender policy until January 1, 2018.
photo courtesy of LC.org
The Obama-era policy would have allowed incoming service members identifying as “transgender” to enlist if they have been “stable” in their gender identity for 18 months.
“Transgender” service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the ban. Since Oct. 1, transgender troops have been able to receive medical care and receive taxpayer-fund medical treatment that includes hormone therapy, counseling, and body mutilating plastic surgery.
Trump wrote: “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty commended the Trump move: “Serving in the military, whose only mission is to defend the nation, is a privilege and not a right,” said Chaplain (COL) Ron Crews, USA (Retired), executive director of Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “In an increasingly dangerous world full of ever present threats, the president’s announcement rightly prioritizes combat readiness over costly social experimentation by ending the current policy of providing and paying for expensive surgeries that prevent service members from being deployed.”
Studies project an estimated $1-3 billion in medical costs over the next 10 years. Additional costs impose a burden on an already strained military health care system – a system with the primary responsibility of serving service members who are injured in the line of duty.
“I applaud President Trump for making America safe again,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The military is a lethal weapon designed to protect America and our allies. It is not a social club, a social experimentation petri dish, or ClubMed. The focus should be military readiness and unit cohesion. The President has kept his promise to return to military priorities by not continuing the ‘transgender’ policy that undermines unit cohesion, preparedness, and morale. The duty of military officers is to appropriately lead and prepare their personnel to serve and protect, and they cannot do that when there is confusion, dysfunction, and safety issues within the barracks,” said Staver.
“The military has a history of selecting recruits to field the strongest military in the world, and that includes physical and medical considerations,” added CH (COL) Phil Wright, USA Retired, chaplain endorser for the Evangelical Free Church of America.
Studies indicate that transgender people have an extremely high rate of suicide attempts; one study of 6,450 transgender people in the United States found 41% had attempted suicide, compared to a national average of 1.6%.
photo John Hain
