Thread: Trump triggers storm with transgender ban

Trump triggers storm with transgender ban

07/26/17 06:33 PM EDT



President Trump announced Wednesday that he would end service by transgender people in the military, opening up a culture battle that caught much of Washington by surprise.

Trump made the announcement after House conservatives pushed the White House to curb Pentagon funding for transition-related medical care and indicated they may not support the spending bill currently on the floor over the issue.

But Trump went much further, and decision-makers on Capitol Hill, including the Armed Services committees, were out of the loop.

Trump’s announcement, made in two morning posts on Twitter, also left more questions than answers — including whether the 250 openly transgender troops and thousands more who remain private about their gender identity could face immediate discharge.

Trump announced the military would “not accept or allow” transgender people to serve “in any capacity,” saying he had made the decision after consultation with “my Generals and military experts.”

It came with Defense Secretary James Mattis on vacation for the week.

The Pentagon, in a three-sentence statement, referred all questions to the White House and said more guidance would be given in the “near future.”

The White House press briefing on Wednesday did little to clear up confusion.

“I really don't have anything else to add on that topic,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in evident frustration. “As I do, I'll keep you posted. But if those are the only questions we have, I'm going to call it a day. But if we have questions on other topics, I'll be happy to take those.”

Transgender troops have been able to serve openly since summer 2016, when the Obama administration lifted the ban. They also receive coverage for any treatment deemed medically necessary by their doctors, including surgery and hormone therapy.

Trump’s tweets appear to reverse the entire policy.

“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,” the president tweeted.

“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.”

Estimates on the number of transgender troops vary widely. On the high end, LGBT advocates put it at 15,000. On the low end, a 2016 Rand Corporation study estimated there were 2,450 in active duty and 1,510 in the reserves.

About 250 troops have officially come out as transgender since the ban was lifted.

Asked whether currently serving transgender troops, including those now deployed to war zones, would be discharged, Sanders could not answer.

“The implementation policy is going to be something that the White House and the Department of Defense have to work together to lawfully determine, and I would imagine the
Department of Defense will be the lead on that and keep you posted as that takes place,” she said.

Asked why such a decision was not made before announcing the new policy, Sanders said Trump did not feel the need to wait after making up his mind. Trump made the decision

Tuesday, she said, and informed Mattis that day.

“I think sometimes you have to make decisions, and once he made a decision, he didn't feel it was necessary to hold that decision and they're going to work together with the
Department of Defense to lawfully implement it,” she said.

On the Capitol, defense hawks and GOP leadership were caught off guard.

A House Armed Services Committee staffer said the committee was “surprised” by the announcement and was waiting for more information. Notably, Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) made no statement.

House leadership sources said GOP leaders knew the White House was looking into the issue but thought the review was only on how and whether to use taxpayer funding for transition-related medical care. The actual announcement was far beyond what was expected and caught many by surprise, the sources added.

Other GOP sources said conservatives pushed Trump to take action after the failure of an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would have banned Pentagon funding for the medical care.

The conservatives expressed concern about supporting a wide-ranging spending bill without such a ban. The bill includes defense spending, as well as funding for the border wall promised by Trump during his campaign.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), notoriously furious when kept out of the loop on Pentagon policy changes, appeared to be equally caught off guard.

“The president’s tweet this morning regarding transgender Americans in the military is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter,” McCain said in a statement.

Several other Republicans, too, did not agree with Trump’s decision. Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), for example, said that “transgender people are people,” and Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) said while taxpayer funding shouldn’t be used on transition surgery, “Americans who are qualified and can meet the standards to serve in the military should be afforded that opportunity.”

Democrats, too, were outraged and promised to take action to reverse Trump’s decision.

“It takes a brave and committed person to volunteer to defend this country, and every American that is able and willing to do so should be allowed to join the U.S. military,” Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), ranking Democrat of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “We will fight this decision, just like we fought ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and ultimately justice will prevail.”

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/34...ransgender-ban

Legitimate, biological transgender individuals or men who think they are a woman, have a lot of problems
and personal drama in their lives and have no business being in the military.

Add them to the list of medically unfit to serve.

Taxpayers should NOT foot the bill for this...or the ongoing treatment when they are discharged.

Former Transgender: Trump 'Made Right Decision,' 'Military Is a Fighting Force, Not a Gender Clinic'


By Craig Bannister | July 26, 2017 | 1:12 PM EDT

Heyer regrets having had sex-change surgery.

A man who lived for eight years as a transgender female says President Donald Trump did the right thing for the U.S. military, as well as for all Americans, by banning transgenders from serving in the military.

Walt Heyer, who has transitioned back to his birth gender, writes in a commentary that his personal experience leads him to support Trump’s announcement:

“I think he made the right decision—and as someone who lived as trans-female for several years, I should know.”



Heyer says allowing transgenders to serve is “devastating…to the fitness, readiness, and moral of our combat read troops.”

“The military is a Fighting Force, Not a Gender Clinic,” Heyer says, adding that concept of taxpayer-funded transition surgery for service members defies logic:

“Paying for transition-related surgeries for military service members and their families is beyond comprehensible.”


Finally, Heyer warns that Trump’s ban protects Americans from the activists’ next demands – that all of government and private enterprise be forced to fund sex-change surgery:

“If the military had been forced to pay, the advocates would have used this as leverage to press every other entity—both government and commercial—to pay for sex change surgeries as well.”



Heyer’s website, SexChangeRegret.com, “offers encouragement and hope for others who want to detransition back to their innate birth gender.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-ba...rce-not-gender

Originally Posted by lorrie

Legitimate, biological transgender individuals or men who think they are a woman, have a lot of problems
and personal drama in their lives and have no business being in the military.

There is no such thing as a legitimate, biological transgender condition. There is no medical reason to perform transgender surgery on anyone, not even those born with birth defects known as hermaphroditism where sexual characteristics fail to develop during gestation. Transgender surgery is elective, cosmetic surgery.

Transgenders are strictly a social construction, nothing more than surgically enhance transvestites.

Originally Posted by Beezer

Add them to the list of medically unfit to serve.

Taxpayers should NOT foot the bill for this...or the ongoing treatment when they are discharged.

AGREED!

Originally Posted by pkskyali

There is no such thing as a legitimate, biological transgender condition. There is no medical reason to perform transgender surgery on anyone, not even those born with birth defects known as hermaphroditism where sexual characteristics fail to develop during gestation. Transgender surgery is elective, cosmetic surgery.

Transgenders are strictly a social construction, nothing more than surgically enhance transvestites.

You are absolutely correct pkskyali!

I was just trying to be polite with the terminology.

These so-called transgender people are nothing more than confused, delusional individuals who think
lipstick and high heels makes them a transgender and entitles them special privileges.

NOT SO FAST
Pentagon: Trump trans ban not in effect until Mattis gives order


Defense Department to Trump on transgender ban: Not so fast


By Barnini Chakraborty Published July 27, 2017Fox News

The Department of Defense declared Thursday there will be “no modifications to the current policy” on transgender service members for now, a day after President Trump issued a surprise three-tweet directive banning those troops from the military.

In a memo to service chiefs and commanders, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, Jr. declared no changes to the policy until "the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance" -- which has not yet happened.

“In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect,” Dunford said in the memo obtained by Fox News. “As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions.”

Dunford’s statement suggests Defense Secretary James Mattis wasn’t given any significant heads up on the policy change. Mattis was on vacation when Trump tweeted. Mattis has also been publicly silent amid questions about Trump’s announced ban, though the White House said Wednesday that Mattis was "immediately informed" of Trump's decision.

Dunford himself was not aware that Trump was going to announce the ban, a U.S. official said.

Trump’s Wednesday morning tweets reversed an Obama-era policy of allowing transgender troops to serve. 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."

TRUMP ANNOUNCES BAN ON TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS SERVING IN THE MILITARY

Trump did not mention Mattis, the retired Marine general who recently told the service chiefs to spend another six months weighing the costs and benefits of allowing transgender individuals to enlist.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders seemed unable to provide basic details on the rollout of the change on Wednesday, saying the implementation would be worked out "lawfully."

Civil liberty and LGBTQ groups quickly condemned Trump’s decision but were left in limbo trying to decipher the tweets. Was Trump enacting new policy or simply saying what he’d like to see happen?

“If you’re a transgender service member anywhere in the world, you are very nervous about what you’re hearing,” former Army Chief Eric Fanning, the first openly gay head of a U.S. military service, told NBC's "Today" show. “Now you’re probably very confused and very frightened about what the future holds for you, when your commander in chief tweets a message like this.”

GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said the president is “calling for a witch hunt & purge of 15,000 trans military Americans.”

Transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the prior ban. Some lawmakers including Reps. Steve King, R-Iowa, and Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., backed the president's move.

Sanders said Trump made "a military decision." She said it was his judgment that allowing transgender service "erodes military readiness and unit cohesion."

But experts told Fox News that from a legal standpoint, Trump’s tweets for now have all the merit of a public service announcement.

In the short term, nothing changes until a policy is drafted or some type of formal modification is made to military regulations. Lawsuits cannot be filed, and transgender troops cannot be yanked out of service or denied health care benefits.

“Until formal guidance is issued, nothing is going to change,” one U.S. defense official told Fox News, adding that tweets don’t count as “formal guidance.”

Separately, the Navy announced it would continue to provide transgender individuals medical treatment.

The Pentagon has not released data on the number of transgender people currently serving. A Rand Corp. study has estimated the number at between 1,320 and 6,630 out of 1.3 million active-duty troops.

Former President Bill Clinton in 1993 began the push to allow gays to serve, only under the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In December 2015, former President Barack Obama's Pentagon chief, Carter, announced that all military positions would be open to women.

Liberalizing policy on transgender troops was the next step. Carter also gave the services until July 1 to develop policies to allow people already identifying as transgender to join the military if they meet normal standards and have been stable in their identified genders for 18 months.

On June 30, Mattis extended the July 1 deadline to next Jan. 1, saying the services should study the impact on the "readiness and lethality of our forces."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...t-so-fast.html

Of course they're not going to act on a tweet. They'll have to wait for specific direction from the President and Secretary of Defense. That should have been well understood.

GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said the president is “calling for a witch hunt & purge of 15,000 trans military Americans.”

Please, there is nowhere near that number of transgenders serving in the military. It's my sense that the coming directive will not immediately force anyone out but will end the possibility of government covered trans surgery. I think they'll just end up ceasing to enlist or reenlist transgender folks. No one who joins the military is guaranteed a career. If you're a transgender and your enlistment contract has expired, you're gone.

This is just my guess. They may very well start the immediate process of discharging transgender members. However, if they that route I'm sure they'll be forced to deal with lawsuits.