More Red Meat - Transgender Individuals Can't Enter Military Service

[mark46]

This isn't a surprise. Of course, ALL the military branches have said that there is no issue regarding their service, just as been the case for gay, women and blacks in past era.

The base will be happy with, as they will be with his attacks on Senate and House Republicans who are seen as establishment types.

Trump is truly acting like a candidate, rather than a president. This usually happens after the mid-terms.

 

[WilliamBo]

The next step is they need to remove the law making homosexual marriage legal

 

[Go Braves]

Just got back from ROTC training. Most of us aren't liberals, most are still opposed to this, on account of how it's wrong, and it's stupid. In order to serve you have to pass tests
proving you're capable. Anybody who passes those tests, wants to serve their country, ought to be able to. Trump's fat butt never served a day, and I doubt any of his children will ever serve.

Trump's claimed that this was about saving money. That's a flat out stupid claim. There's a far bigger waste in dismissing folks who've been trained. It's a huge investment of time & funds, especially for folks like Kristin Beck who was a Navy Seal. The amount of training others to take their place exceeds far the cost of their medical expenses. And the cost of their medical expenses is actually pretty small.

 

[friend of]

Well I mean... the way society is these days, if Trump did not make this decree you'd have hordes of LGBTQ members signing up for the single reason of getting a free sex change.

Call me old fashioned, but it's not the business of the US military to accommodate sex changes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what benefit does such a thing yield to defense of the nation?

 

[HawgWyld]

The next step is they need to remove the law making homosexual marriage legal

What law? The U.S. Supreme Court found back in 2015 that gay marriage is a Constitutional right. If the goal is to change that ruling, then the strategy is to pack the Court with justices who are opposed to gay marriage.

 

[Go Braves]

Well I mean... the way society is these days, if Trump did not make this decree you'd have hordes of LGBTQ members signing up for the single reason of getting a free sex change.

Call me old fashioned, but it's not the business of the US military to accommodate sex changes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what benefit does such a thing yield to defense of the nation?

A 2016 RAND study commissioned by the Pentagon totally contradicts what you wrote. It found that the medical costs for transgender military members would be an "exceedingly small portion of active-component health care expenditures." It estimated that only 29-129 service members would seek transition care. Your theory is completely ridiculous.

 

[HereIStand]

The military isn't about compassion. If you can't deploy, you can't serve.

 

[Go Braves]

The military isn't about compassion. If you can't deploy, you can't serve.

That's true. There's plenty of transgender folks who were capable of being deployed, so they did and they serve our country. It's not about compassion, but service.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

This isn't a surprise. Of course, ALL the military branches have said that there is no issue regarding their service, just as been the case for gay, women and blacks in past era.

That is simply untrue. Even if having undergone the surgery were not expressly listed as a condition that medically disqualifies a candidate for military service, the mutilation of the genitals that such surgery entails would. The military isn't too keen about allowing in people with psychological conditions associated with high suicide rates either.

Obama's order to remove transsexualism from the list of medical conditions precluding military service was set to take effect at the end of June this year. The top brass asked Secretary Mattis for a six month delay in the implementation to allow further time to study the effects of the policy change, which Mattis granted. The idea that military leadership was just chomping at the bit to allow more mental cases into the ranks of the armed forces until Trump moved in to stop them is nonsense.

 

[friend of]

A 2016 RAND study commissioned by the Pentagon totally contradicts what you wrote. It found that the medical costs for transgender military members would be an "exceedingly small portion of active-component health care expenditures." It estimated that only 29-129 service members would seek transition care. Your theory is completely ridiculous.

It's still an unnecessary expense, but my point was actually that such therapy is on the uptick in comparison with, say, enlistment of 60 years ago, where there were fewer human beings in America so desperate to mutilate their genitals.

There is also a psychological component in all of this that is being ignored and downplayed.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

This isn't a surprise. Of course, ALL the military branches have said that there is no issue regarding their service, just as been the case for gay, women and blacks in past era.

The base will be happy with, as they will be with his attacks on Senate and House Republicans who are seen as establishment types.

Trump is truly acting like a candidate, rather than a president. This usually happens after the mid-terms.

Trump likes to reach out and hurt people.

 

[Go Braves]

It's still an unnecessary expense, but my point was actually that such therapy is on the uptick in comparison with, say, enlistment of 60 years ago, where there were fewer human beings in America so desperate to mutilate their genitals.

There is also a psychological component in all of this that is being ignored and downplayed.

The military spends five times as much on viagra than it ever has on transgender medical care. There's a lot of expenses folks would consider unnecessary. The cost of transgender medical care is tiny. It's a fallacy that everyone who is transgender wants to mutilate their genitals. Like the Rand study found, there's very, very few who'd seek that surgery. Most folks I know who've served / are serving in the military don't look down the britches of anybody else. They only care about whether the person beside them is carrying their own weight, doing their own job. There's no evidence the transgender folks who've served honorably in the military aren't doing just that. Trump's spoiled self has never served a day, it's a good thing the folks who have have said this is stupid.

60 years ago there were folks who didn't want women to serve in the military, and history has proven them to be ignorant.

Enlistment has had a long slump. A lot of folks have no desire to enlist, and a lot of those who do try are disqualified because they're too fat.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Trump's claimed that this was about saving money. That's a flat out stupid claim.

The facts were that the Congressional budget bill was being held up in the House of Representatives precisely over the question of providing funding for this kind of surgery. It was holding funding for the wall. Trump handle it by reversing Obama's order and rendering the whole issue moot.

There's a far bigger waste in dismissing folks who've been trained. It's a huge investment of time & funds, especially for folks like Kristin Beck who was a Navy Seal. The amount of training others to take their place exceeds far the cost of their medical expenses.

This is what economists call sunk costs. They are losses that have already been taken, and thus do not figure into future cost benefit analysis.

 

[friend of]

@Go Braves

If the enlisted is not emotionally/mentally stable enough to reconcile their own anatomy with their gender, why would you expect —less, rely on— such a person to obtain the mental/emotional hardiness required for guerrilla combat?

 

[Belk]

It is amazing how quickly we go from revering our soldiers to denigrating them when they are different then we would wish them.

 

[jayem]

This is a knuckleheaded decision by Pres. Trump that cannot be justified. As the article notes, there is no evidence that transgender personnel adversely affect military readiness or performance. He's pandering to the prejudices and ancient taboos of reactionary conservatives. It's regressive. And it's asinine.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-07-28/donald-trumps-transgender-military-ban-has-no-justification

 

[Belk]

This quip is false equivalence.

The concern is over placing unstable individuals into positions that range from pedestrian to excruciatingly stressful. I think we can all agree that any functioning military operates on the creed of minimizing risk in every conceivable form it presents itself. Greater stability translates into lower risk.

Are you a mental health professional? If not what are your qualifications for labeling transgender individuals as unstable?

 

[GoldenBoy89]

The next step is they need to remove the law making homosexual marriage legal

There is no law that makes gay marriage legal. The laws that made it illegal have been ruled unconstitutional.

 

[Simmeh]

It's been years since I posted here, but I came back just to address this issue, because I think I have some personal insight.

Now, I don't serve in the US armed forces. I do, however, serve the armed forces of my own country. Also, one of the guys I did basic training with is now a woman.

And you know what? I don't care. In fact, it's probably a good thing. According to her, she's in a much better place now as being able to express as a woman relieved a whole bunch of anger issues.

See, I don't care how you express your gender or who or who your parents are or who you choose to sleep with (provided there was consent, obviously). If you can handle the physical and mental stress of the profession and can do the tasks required of your trade, you are welcome to share a foxhole (literal or proverbial) with me.

 

[lasthero]

It's been years since I posted here, but I came back just to address this issue, because I think I have some personal insight.

Now, I don't serve in the US armed forces. I do, however, serve the armed forces of my own country. Also, one of the guys I did basic training with is now a woman.

And you know what? I don't care. In fact, it's probably a good thing. According to her, she's in a much better place now as being able to express as a woman relieved a whole bunch of anger issues.

See, I don't care how you express your gender or who or who your parents are or who you choose to sleep with (provided there was consent, obviously). If you can handle the physical and mental stress of the profession and can do the tasks required of your trade, you are welcome to share a foxhole (literal or proverbial) with me.

That's what makes America great.