Trump just announced that Transgendered folks will no longer be allowed to serve in the military. As some of you may know, Obama allowed them to serve openly, starting a year ago.
For debate, the two reasons cited by Trump:
Medical costs. Rand, Corp, estimates that cost to be about $2.4M - $8.4M, accord to CNN. That seems like a paltry amount when weighed against the banning of certain individuals from the military. Is there any precedent for this?
“Disruptions” caused by Transgendered folks. Now, this sounds like every other excuse to ban “undesirables” like gays or when the military was segregated. The only “disruption” I can think of is whether Transgendered folks are treated as males or females (since they either are or were female). But that presupposes that males and females are treated differently, still, in the military. I’m not sure if they are or are not, but welcome insight from more knowledgable posters (e.g., are there still roles that women may not be assigned to in the military?).
If there are other reasons that might make sense for banning Transgendered folks from the military, please feel free to offer those up. I only list the two, above, because that is what Trump said.
Bonus point: Do we have any way of knowing what “the generals” recommended? Trump says his policy reflects advise from them, but I’m not seeing how we will know until and unless one of them is no longer active duty and wishes to speak out.
PS: The other thread started here got moved to the Pit, so please… if you just want to vent, that thread is there for you, in The Pit.
Perhaps it’s reasonable to discuss what medical procedures and treatments should be covered by Tricare, but there are plenty of trans people who don’t need any more medical treatment than cis people. That’s a bogus reasoning for banning the entire category of people.
For the 2nd reason, “disruption” – similar arguments were made against desegregating the military, or preventing women from serving, or the ban on gays. All those were borne out to be bullshit – military folks adapt, especially once they see that this “new” category of people is just as likely to be hard-working and skilled and patriotic as any other category. I see no reason to believe this one is any different.
It would help discuss the issue if we knew why Trump tweeted this stuff; it seems to have come out of nowhere and caught the Pentagon quite by surprise.
This isn’t an issue set he comments on much, if ever, so I’m wondering why this happened now.
I don’t think we’re going to get as lot of people here saying this isn’t a weird and unnecessary decision, especially since a legitimate outfit did a study saying the costs are a rounding error of a rounding error. And of course the “disruption” thing is a red herring. So a more interesting question would be why Trump tweeted about it. What’s the political reason for this - is he throwing a bone to his Christian constituency?
I agree that’s a good thing to add to the debate. The only problem, of course, is that proof is going to be hard to find. But let’s hear what we know!
I wonder if he’s going to send one of “the generals” around to the Sunday talk shows to discuss this, or if it’s something they want to just get out there and then get out of the way. Of course, Trump is also famous for “the distraction”. Could this be another way to get people to stop talking about Russia? I would lean that way if Trump tries to make a big deal about this, like sending someone around to the Sunday Talk Shows, for example.
The RAND study estimated that possible medical costs, for surgery and hormone therapy, would be about $3-4 million. They were using a low end figure of about 2500 active personnel transgendered people. At least according toTalking points memo
Trump is possibly covering his right flank because of the conservative pushback he is getting over his fight with Sessions. That is the only thing I can think of because this policy comes totally out of the blue and appears to have had zero preparation of any kind.
As a uniformed officer in a military other than the US, I can say there are no ‘disruptions’ by having a transgendered person serve - and that argument is often used to debate whether women should be serving in uniform.
Carson said he is unclear who is driving Trump’s decision. While the president tweeted Wednesday that he consulted generals and military experts, Carson said he talked to all of the Joint Chiefs while he was working on transgender policy and none of them was in favor of a full ban.
The RAND study is here. It estimates the costs somewhere between $2.4 and $8.5 million annually depending on how you estimate the number of transgendered servicemembers and type of treatment that they will require.
Well, if we’re being generous, perhaps all their suggestions, when taken together, would result in a full ban. That is to say, just because none of them, individually, called for a full ban, doesn’t mean that one couldn’t walk away from an “advise me” meeting of all of them and not think a full ban was called for.
I’m not saying I think that’s what happened, I’m just pointing out a flaw in that guy’s logic, if indeed he is trying to make an argument that a full ban is inconsistent with advice he got from “the generals”.
The veep, as many of us know, is very socially conservative. Also, it seems like he’s in the background of a lot of Trumps speeches and so forth (which is just a personal observation). I wonder if they ever meet and Pence is working on the art of mentioning something important to him offhandedly to Trump, and hoping Trump blindly charges down that road for the 30 seconds of concentration he puts on any issue.
“Hey Don, great speech. Too bad some damn liberals will take it the wrong way, like those transgenders Obama put in the military…”
“What?! Obama transgendered the military! I bet the generals hate that! Lemme tweet about that. Transgender military, SAD!”
“eeeeeeexcellent, i mean, of course Mr. President, your insightful leadership is just what we need”
This of course depends on Trump listening to Pence over the sounds of Trump’s own internal monologue, but it explains this decision.
I’m not inclined to be generous. Trump has rolled back multiple forms of transgender rights and protections, and loves half-assed edicts based on nothing more than his feelings. This announcement fits that pattern perfectly.
Frankly, this all sounds like a good way to turn this into yet another Trump bashing thread. I think it would be a lot more useful to discuss how they can possible defend this policy rather than how whether this is playing to the base vs playing 3D chess.
A story on Trump’s reasoning for the ban is here. Basically, the shittiest possible reason one can imagine. The House is debating defense bills and unexpectedly got hung up on an amendment to prohibit funding for the surgeries. To avoid the House getting further mired in that debate, House members asked Trump to take unilateral action on the matter so the House didn’t have to.
ETA: the story also says that Secretary of Defense Mattis sandbagged the requests from House Republicans to do something abrupt on the policy, so that’s why the congressmen went to the White House. Mattis had reportedly seen no reason to rush do anything about the policy.
And the cost aspect of this issue seems totally bogus. As mentioned, the range of estimates for how much these surgeries may cost is in the single-digit millions. Meanwhile, according to multiple press reports, DoD spends $84 million a year on erectile dysfunction drugs.
That’s an interesting take on the issue, and involves the kind of political horse trading that probably goes on a lot in the background while we’re left scratching our heads and inventing conspiracy theories!
A Thought: Is there any chance that this ends up NOT actually being a policy, but just something Trump tweets about and then backs away from when the nitty gritty part about establishing policy rears its ugly head? For example, when it comes to expelling current military members who are Transgendered, might they just not do it? Or, could the military just no longer cover the medical expenses and otherwise leave things as they are?
Or, are the folks who do such thing busy right now writing the new regulations?
My gut feeling is that this is Trump pandering to his voters who thought that Democrats were spending too much time focusing on transgender bathrooms, the Dakota pipeline, and the usual snowflake and safe space targets. It is a distraction to get the focus off of his Boy Scout and USS Gerald Ford disastrous speeches.