Posted on 06/27/2015 11:11:04 AM PDT by jazusamo
There is renewed energy on Capitol Hill to lift the Defense Department's ban on transgender troops.
Lawmakers view recent steps by the Pentagon and some of the armed services to expand protections for gay and lesbian troops as an opportunity to do away with the decades-old prohibition on allowing transgender troops to serve openly.
They are also taking note of other societal changes in calling for the ban on service by transgender trips to be lifted. “In politics, I think it’s always appropriate to take advantage of timing. Whether it’s taking down the Confederate flag or creating equality in the military for transgender persons,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).
She plans to introduce legislation next month that calls on the Pentagon to immediately grant anti-discrimination protection for all service members, and their dependents, who identify as transgender.
The bill, which is still being drafted, would also direct the Defense secretary to hammer out new policies for transgender troops, from regulations about their uniforms to what treatments would be covered under Tricare, the military's healthcare system.
Separately, Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) on Thursday lead a group of nearly 20 House members in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that urged him to do away with the policy.
“People should be evaluated on performance, not gender," Honda, who has a transgender granddaughter, said in a statement
Any effort to do away with the prohibition is likely to face stiff resistance in a GOP-controlled Congress.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) has said the decision on the ban should be left to the Pentagon.
The department “needs to look at a variety of policies. As long as they look at it objectively, based on what’s best for the security interests of the country, then we’ll oversee or review what they do,” he told The Hill.
“When there’s a sense that there’s some extraneous social or political agenda … people get concerned,” Thornberry added.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) struck a similar chord.
“The administration policy should always be a basis for our discussion,” he said.
Transgender activists say that, while they are heartened by the increased focus on the issue, they aren’t about to pin their hopes on Capitol Hill.
They note that, while lawmakers led the charge in the 2011 repeal of "Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Clinton-era law that prohibited gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the military, the transgender ban is department-level policy.
“Everyone in advocacy believes this needs to be a Pentagon thing,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. She added that the legislative push could wind up being an “education and advocacy tool.”
She pointed to recent moves by the DOD, as well as the Air Force and Army to expand protections for LGBT service members, as evidence that many Pentagon leaders can “feel the dominoes falling.”
Hopes for lifting the ban grew days after Carter took office and signaled that a person's gender identity shouldn’t factor into if he or she can serve in the armed forces.
“I don't think anything but their suitability for service should preclude them,” he said.
The White House quickly endorsed Carter’s remarks.
“The president agrees with the sentiment that all Americans who are qualified to serve should be able to serve,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
Earlier this month Carter announced sexual orientation would be added to the military's anti-discrimination policy.
And just last week, the White House hosted a handful of transgender service members and veterans at its gay pride event.
Keisling said the comments, along with last week’s event, show that there's “an understanding in the administration that it’s all right with the civilian powers that be to end the ban.”
“The Pentagon’s a trickier place than that, however,” she added.
A DOD spokesman said there is “no ongoing review to specifically address the Department's transgender policy.”
However, in February, the Pentagon started a “routine, periodic review” of its medical guidelines that specifically prohibit service by transgender people, he added. The assessment, last conducted in 2011, is slated to wrap up some time next year.
“My sense is that all eyes are on the secretary of Defense. He’s the center of gravity on this,” said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center.
He predicted that Carter ultimately would decide to trash the prohibition, noting that the influential American Medical Association recently concluded there is “no medically valid reason” to keep transgender persons out of the military.
Both he and Keisling said it was “inevitable” that the ban would be lifted, though neither would hazard to guess when it might happen.
For her part, Speier isn’t willing to sit back and wait for the DOD to act.
“I don’t necessarily think one branch of government has the lock on good policy,” said Speier, who has a transgender nephew.
She said her staff has been in contact with two Senate offices about introducing a companion bill in that chamber, though she declined to identify them.
“The time is right, so let’s do what the right thing is," Speier said.
“I don’t necessarily think one branch of government has the lock on good policy,” said [Rep. Jackie] Speier, who has a transgender nephew.
Why am I not surprised but they'll win, it's only a matter of when.
These people will not be in combat battalions.
They will do everything they can to avoid actual fighting. They will fail downwards into support jobs where they can featherbed as much as possible and undermine actual combat troops whenever they can.
It’s a money scam. They aren’t “patriotic”, they’re leeches, looking for yet another guaranteed revenue stream.
The inmates running the frick’n asylum.
The Palm Center’s Aaron Belkin asks international transgender servicewomen Maj. Alexandra Larson,Sweden; Sgt.,Lucy Jordan,New Zealand; Maj. Donna Harding,Australia,and Cpl. Natalie Murray,Canada,about their stories. Their countries allow transgender to people to serve openly in the military.
http://www.shfwire.com/aclu-conference-examines-us-militarys-transgender-ban/
All of these problems are a consequence of a corrupt Senate that won’t work with the House to remove corrupt federal government leaders from office imo. In other words, senators are treasonously protecting federal government corruption imo.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators and other corrupt “leaders” along with it.
Will a military of freaks and perverts be able or willing to defend us? I think not.
“People should be evaluated on performance, not gender," Honda, who has a transgender granddaughter, said in a statement.
Yes, because what's important for our over-paid and underworked US legislators is the two or three "transgender" people in the United States who want to join the armed forces, and NOT enforcing black-letter US criminal law, and arresting presidential candidate "Felony" Clinton for her multiple Obstruction of Justice felonies involving her private email server...
These people are just trolling us, their enemies.
o.m.g.
That is one pathetic pic.
From who?
the only “momentum” is from the betraying news media class.
...I've got a lovely pair of coconuts....somewhere
Evil reigns and the barbarians are in control.
Not just scrap the ban.
They’re going to have to start paying for penisectomies.
Klinger will never get that section 8 now.
That's all it is.
Honda is Mr. Japanese Victim, always wailing about the Internment. He never served in the U.S. military and has done everything he can to retaliate for having spent a few years in one of the camps. He literally believes the U.S. had no right to oppose the Sacred Japanese Empire.
As for Speier, she only holds on to power based on her status as a Victim of herself when she was shot in Guyana after trying to negotiate with Jim Jones and his Kool Aid drinkers. Her district is now primarily Asian and she panders to their instinctual Anti-Americanism. If she can cripple the military in any way she does.
Two freaks in search of a brain, nothing more.
Lost, of course, is any consideration of the functional insanity of putting demonstrably mixed up people into an organization that has a clearly defined function, that is best served by men with particular aptitudes, personalities and motivations.
Almost everything, that is contributing to the destruction of our way of life, can be traced to a Compulsion to force acceptance of a cloud-borne Egalitarian fantasy upon Western man.
Active Duty ping.
Is the Westboro Baptist Church really quite so insane as ever..?
Go on, give it a real hard, good look.
THAT is where the country is headed, right now.
I don’t know how Jamie Farr did what he did for all those years on MASH wearing ladies clothes.
I wouldn’t be so opposed to trannies and homo’s in the military, if they were only used in a limited role on the front lines as human shields in wartime, and, of course kept separated from regular troops.
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