Last week the Supreme Court of the United States allowed Donald Trump’s ban on transgender
people serving in the military to take effect while its legality is decided in lower courts.
Now, as it happens I know trans people in the U.S. military who stand to be affected
by this.
I also know trans veterans who would have been affected by this, only they aren’t
in the military any longer.
I’m sure the same is true for some of you – you know trans people who are or were
in the military who will be affected by the ban, or who at least feel very close to it.
Some of you, I’m quite certain, are even closer to it than that because you are a trans
person who is currently serving in the military, or who previously served, or who thought they
might want to join at some point in the future.
But even if you aren’t a trans person who’s serving or has previously served in the military,
or a cis person who knows trans people who are serving or have served, even if you don’t
have any trans people you personally know or care about (to your knowledge), even if
you’ve never had anything to do with the American military, and even if you have no
particular interest in civil rights or social justice issues, this ban on trans people serving
in the armed forces should bother the hell out of you.
Why?
I will try to explain.
The first thing I’d like to propose is that along with everything else it is, serving
in the military is a job.
We Americans have an unfortunate tendency to sanctify the military and look upon people
who join the military as heroes following a noble calling, but the truth is in many
cases people who enlist in the military do so because it’s the best career opportunity
available to them.
Service in the military allows you to learn new skills that will potentially be very useful
to you once you return to civilian life.
Service in the military makes it easier to pay for college.
Service in the military enables you to travel to places you might never have seen otherwise.
If you were born to a family living on a low-income, enlisting in the military can improve your
prospects of pursuing a post-high-school education, getting a well paying job, and seeing the
world in ways almost nothing else can.
People enlist for more than just economic reasons – according to a study by the Council
on Foreign Relations released last year, most recruits are from middle class neighborhoods
– but even so, if you are a person from a poor neighborhood who wants to improve your
economic situation, the military is a better bet than most.
Now, thanks to the Trump administration, it’s a bet that trans people may no longer be able
to make.
Put more simply, it’s a job – and from a certain point of view, a pretty good job
– trans people may no longer be able to get.
And the reason that should matter to you, no matter who you are, is that there is no
just or practical reason for it.
And if one group of people can be legally discriminated against for no good reason,
so can any other group, maybe even a group you’re a member of.
Also, there’s this thing called empathy.
Allowing trans people to serve openly – which prior to the ban they’ve been able to do
for a few years now – hasn’t harmed the military.
And there’s no reason why anyone should have expected it to.
Sure, there are aspects of a trans person’s life that cis people will probably never experience,
but nothing, generally speaking, that prevents a trans person from serving just as effectively
as a cis person.
We can say this with confidence because there are currently thousands of trans Americans
serving in the military on active duty, and thousands more who serve in the reserve or
guard forces.
And while it is only recently that trans people have been able to serve openly, they, like
gays and lesbians, have been a part of the ranks since long before they were officially
acknowledged and welcomed.
A 2014 survey by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimated that over 20%
of the transgender population in the United States has served in the military at some
point.
If that seems high, it is – the same survey estimated that just over 10% of the total
adult population in the U.S. has served in the military.
So a trans American is over twice as likely to have served in the military as an average
American.
But that’s not the best reason to believe that allowing trans people to serve hasn’t
harmed the military.
The best reason, as I see it, is that the military itself came to the exact same conclusion.
In 2016 the Department of Defense commissioned a study from the RAND Corporation, a think
tank that does research for the armed forces.
The study examined the potential impact of allowing trans people to serve openly in the
military and concluded that the impact of paying for transition-related health care
would be negligible, and found no evidence to suggest that allowing trans people to serve
openly would have a negative impact on “the operational effectiveness, operational readiness,
or cohesion of the force.”
The RAND report was published in May 2016.
In June, the Secretary of Defense ended the ban on transgender service members, effective
immediately.
When President Trump reinstated the ban just over a year later, he declared (in a tweet,
naturally) that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs
and disruption” associated with trans people serving openly, but cited no evidence whatsoever
to back up his opinion.
History and empirical study suggest that there is no legitimate reason to keep trans people
from openly serving in the military.
Their unique health care needs are not a burden to the system, their presence does not reduce
effectiveness or cohesion, and there is nothing about being trans that renders a person automatically
less fit to be a member of the armed forces.
The main argument used by those in favor of the trans military ban to justify their position
is not only unsupported by history or facts, it’s also not unique to the question of
trans service.
“Allowing trans people to serve openly will reduce military effectiveness and unit cohesion,”
President Trump and other supporters of the ban now say.
In the 1940s, those in favor of continuing racial segregation in the American military
made the same argument.
“Allowing Black troops to serve in the same units with white troops will reduce effectiveness
and unit cohesion.”
They were wrong.
In the 1990s, those in favor of maintaining the ban on gay people serving in the military
said that allowing gays and lesbians to serve would reduce effectiveness and unit cohesion.”
They were wrong.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, the same thing was said about allowing women to
serve in combat roles.
They were wrong, too.
“The goal of the military is to protect our country, not a huge social experiment.”
That’s a quote from Neil Parrott, my district’s representative in the Maryland House of Delegates.
Parott is a small-minded, proudly bigoted man.
I’m embarrassed to be represented by him.
I find him contemptible.
He’s also not terribly creative.
He’s merely regurgitating an argument people like him have been making against any and
all attempts to address social inequality and injustice in the military: the armed forces
are not the place for social experimentation.
The existence of trans people is not a social experiment.
It is a reality.
It has been a reality for as long as human beings have existed.
Trans people are a normal and natural part of the population.
Being trans is simply one of many possible ways of being human.
And most challenges faced by trans people are not the inevitable result of their being
trans, but are caused by how they are misjudged and mistreated by society.
There are about 1.4 million trans people living in the United States.
They’re entitled to the same rights and opportunities as cis people.
That includes serving in the military, something that approximately 20% of trans Americans
have already done despite the fact that they’ve only been able to do so openly since 2016.
I mentioned at the beginning of this video that we Americans have a habit of being overly
reverent toward military veterans.
That’s a bad thing because those feelings are easy to exploit – politicians can persuade
us to support this or that candidate or policy if they can convince us that it’s what’s
best for the troops.
But I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t respect the troops at all.
They deserve everything they’ve been promised and a little more.
They deserve fair wages.
They deserve health care.
They deserve an education.
Of course, I think everyone else deserves those things, too, but that’s beside the
point.
Those who have served honorably in the armed forces deserve our respect.
They deserve to be treated fairly and justly.
That goes for all of them, including those who are trans.
If you claim to support the people of the American military but you don’t support
the trans Americans who serve, have served, or might serve one day, then what you’re
really saying is that your support only extends so far as your prejudice will allow it to.
And that’s pathetic.
Shame on you.
If you believe in honoring veterans, then stand up now and join those of us who believe
in honoring all veterans who served honorably, and all those who are currently serving with
honor in the United States military, regardless of their gender identity.
Write a blog article, make a video, write a letter to the editor of your local paper,
contact your member of Congress and your senators – use your voice and let people know you
oppose the trans military ban and you believe military service and the opportunities it
affords should be open trans people.
Don’t let the bigotry and ignorance of a few erase the contributions and deny the humanity
of trans members of the military or of any trans people.