A Response to President Trump’s Transgender Announcement

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President Trump yesterday, via Twitter, announced his position on the future of transgender people being able to serve in the US armed forces. For those unaware by now, he said that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military where he pointed out a burden on the military via costs and disruption. As of this writing there has not been any official guidance given to military leaders, these are just tweets at this time. Having said that they will be addressed here. A response to the president’s remarks will be presented taking a position on the issue, a silver lining will be pointed out no matter how small, a prediction on what the outcome will be in the end and then a brief solution as to how the military should proceed with this and other issues afoot.

President Trump is flat out wrong in his tweet to not accept or allow transgender people in the military. Though there has been no official guidance these tweets suggests that willing and able people that want to serve in the military will not be allowed to do just that. To deny anyone, physically able, that wants to serve their country, neighbor and family honorably is wrong. The military is not only a great opportunity for young people to establish themselves in a career early on in life, as I did, it is also a place where one can learn a great deal about service to others and how to be generally a good human being. This route should not be denied to transgender people. The excuses that the president gave in his tweets were pretty weak too, as was his position. The estimated amount of troops that would seek SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) is around 130 in the entire armed services. This has been estimated to cost between $2.4 and $8.4 million dollars for the military health services. The cost in a nearly $1 trillion dollar budget is nearly nothing. More on this later in the post.

Now let us assume the worst and that president Trump’s tweets to end up going into affect. There are silver linings as I see it, if ever so small. If transgender people are no longer aloud to serve in the military a silver lining that I see here would be that this small group of people would at the very least be spared from having to serve in another war that the US finds itself involved in. This is not to say that this choice should be taken from them! They should be allowed to make that choice themselves if they are able. Again though, being barred from the military does have it’s own benefits. The first and for most, not having to worry about being called up to service. Another benefit I see is that many people that enter the military have a hard time adjusting to civilian life after words, even if they have never seen combat and have only served for a few years. Though a transgender person should be able to make that decision for themselves, there is a silver lining to all this I feel. Not having to worry about serving in a war and all that goes along with that, PTSD, lost time with loved ones, possibility of permanent disfigurement and disability too. Along with the possibility of finding it very difficult to transition into civilian life, these are two silver linings that I see.

I believe that if guidance is actually given to the military on banning transgender people from the military that this will find it’s way all the way to the Supreme Court. That is where I think it will be knocked down if it even gets that far at all. After that, the military will need to learn how to adapt to the situation it finds itself in.

A few thoughts on how the military should handle the situation with transgender people and other situations as I see them. I do believe that incorporating transgender people into the military can be a very, how do I say, sticky situation where everyone will be walking on eggshells for sometime. Now where these people will fit into combat rolls I am not at all sure as I think the current policies on women in combat rolls and units is not the correct path the military should be taking. To summarize quickly on that, I believe that the physical standards and readiness for males and females in combat MOSs (military occupational specialty) should be raised. I also feel that males and females should not be in the same combat units and should be segregated by gender. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has determined that their combat units were more effective after they they became segregated based on gender. I don’t know at this time how I would handle this situation with transgender combat troops. I do feel that overtime the correct action would be to let those transgender combat troops go to the segregated gender unit that they identify with. And back to the SRS as previously mentioned, I don’t believe the military or let alone the tax payer should foot the bill for this surgery. This is not a cost measure but more on the account of I don’t believe the armed forces health services should be used to treat things that were not much a result of military service. I believe that private insurance is the way to go and I feel that many of the things that troops go to the doc for now should be covered this way too.

I know this has been in the news and covered from nearly every view already but I felt it was very important to give mine here.

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Keep that coffee warm for us.

LWS