Trump throws the transgender community under the bus


Donald Trump has decreed that members of the transgender community cannot serve in the military in any capacity. There are estimated to be about 2,500 transgender service members already in the military but how many of them are open about it and what happens to them now is unclear. Chelsea Manning was the most visible of them.

The Obama administration decided last year to allow transgender people to serve openly in the military.

But in June, Defence Secretary James Mattis agreed to a six-month delay in the recruitment of transgender people.

The timing of this transgender ban is almost as interesting as the move itself.

Why now? With the Trump administration being buffeted by the Jeff Sessions political death watch, the ongoing multi-prong investigation into the Trump campaign, the healthcare drama in the Senate and the impending Russian sanctions bill, perhaps the administration decided this was a good time to change the subject and rally conservative forces to his side.

Republicans have long used cultural issues as a wedge to divide Democrats and energise evangelicals. As one White House insider acknowledged, this is straight out of that playbook. While Mr Trump campaigned as sympathetic to LGBT rights, he needs the traditional religious conservatives to stay loyal to him now, more than ever.

Robert Mackey says that the economic reasons trotted out by Trump are, as with pretty much anything he says, bogus. The Pentagon seemed to be taken by surprise and his estimation of increased medical costs are wildly exaggerated.

It is easy to see the calculation behind throwing the transgender community under the bus. Since they are already one of the most discriminated and persecuted members of our society, who cares if further pain and indignities are heaped upon them in order to gain favor with the bigots? And the bigots are pleased.

In a gleeful statement, Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a former marine, applauded Trump’s decision to reverse the Pentagon’s decision last year to allow transgender members to serve openly, which he called “the social experimentation of the Obama era that has crippled our nation’s military.”

Without citing any source for the statistic, Perkins went on to claim that having the Pentagon pay for gender transition–related treatment would mean “diverting billions of dollars from mission-critical training.”

It is a sickening, cynical move, typical of Trump.

Comments

  1. Siobhan says

    Of note, the Family Research Council has a plan on committing genocide towards trans folk, and removal of military service is on their five point list.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/and-then-they-came-for-tr_b_9258678.html

    The military being an “option” for the working poor to gain access to the educations and healthcare systems your government should have been providing in the first place; the ban now revokes this option, essentially forcing trans folk into survival sex work.

    Oh, and criminalization of sex work is also a common Republican plank.

    Good times.

  2. says

    I’m pretty sure that this is a case of what Talleyrand called “don’t interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake.” There are going to be constitutional challenges that are going to set some precedents I think will probably be favorable to transpeople. Trump is pretty thoroughly hated and his administration’s general dysfunction makes it unlikely that anything he does except fart and play golf is going to stick.

    I could be wrong, of course, but I think this amounts to Trump making a really foolish move.

  3. No one special says

    #2 Marcus Ranum: “Don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake”. It is sad that even you are willing to use such language, throwing transpeople under the bus in the hopes of scoring a political point ostensibly for our benefit.

    I know this probably isn’t what you thought you meant and probably not the message you intended to send, but it is the message you have conveyed.

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