It represents a return to the commonsense recognition of the reality that military policies should prioritize the U.S. military’s functional imperative: to fight and win America’s wars.
P resident Trump has just signed an executive order prohibiting taxpayer-funded accommodations for trans-identifying people in the military. As was the case during Trump’s first term, his action is being portrayed as a setback for civil rights. It is no such thing. For one thing, it violates no one’s “rights.” Transgenders continue to possess all of the rights of their fellow citizens, but there is no “right” to serve in the military. The military rejects many people based on physical and psychological conditions.
And indeed, despite claims by transgender advocates, it does not actually “ban” service by transgenders. It merely prohibits radical medical procedures that adversely affect the readiness of the force. According to the New York Post, these include hormone replacement drugs, cosmetic genital surgery, cosmetic breast removal, and mixed-sex housing.
It should be recognized that we are not discussing changing a long-standing policy. Opening service to transgenders was an executive decision made during the last year of the Obama administration and, after having been reversed during Trump’s first term, again at the beginning of Biden’s term. Congress has never held hearings on the issue. The reversal of the Obama-Biden policy represents nothing but a return to the status quo ante.
Liberal activists insist on treating transgender military service as the latest milestone on the road to complete social justice, one that stretches from the integration of African-Americans into the military, to women in combat, to the present. That is simply wrong. Rather, it is — or should be — an issue of military effectiveness. Did the Obama-Biden transgender policy increase the lethality of the force? There is no evidence that it did. Quite the contrary.
As noted above, the Trump policy does not ban transgenders from the military. But there are perfectly good reasons to do so. People who identify as transgender suffer a host of mental health and social problems — including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse — at higher rates than the general population.
For instance, a 2015 National Center for Transgender Equality study found that 53 percent of transgender respondents aged 18 to 25 reported “experiencing current serious psychological distress (compared to 10 percent of the general population) . . . Forty percent of respondents have attempted suicide at some point in their life, compared to 4.6 percent of the U.S. population. Forty-eight percent of respondents have seriously thought about killing themselves in the past year, compared to 4 percent of the U.S. population, and 82 percent have had serious thoughts about killing themselves at some point in their life . . . 29 percent of respondents reported illicit drug use, marijuana consumption, and/or nonmedical prescription drug use in the past month, nearly three times the rate in the U.S. population (10 percent). . . .”
Meanwhile, transgender veterans have been found to have the highest rates of mental-health problems in the United States. A 2016 study found that 90 percent of military members who identify as transgender were diagnosed with at least one mental-health disorder, and almost 50 percent were hospitalized after attempting or considering suicide.
Advocates of transgender military service continue to claim that medical costs associated with transgenderism are minimal, for instance, that the total costs of hormone treatments and “reassignment surgery” would range from $2.4 million to $8.4 million, which is “0.005 percent to 0.017 percent of all Department of Defense health care spending.” But this ignores some important points: The 10-year cost of military transgender medical care is $3–4 billion; since this means that resources are diverted from other medical causes for military personnel and veterans, it represents a very real opportunity cost to the military’s health services. At the same time, expensive life-long hormone treatments and irreversible surgeries associated with gender dysphoria would negatively affect personnel’s ability to deploy and mission readiness. Why would we saddle a military with problems that can only exacerbate administrative burdens in times of stress?
In justifying the change to military transgender policy, the administration writes: “It can take a minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments after transition surgery, which often involves the use of heavy narcotics.” “During this period, they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements and require ongoing medical care. This is not conducive to deployment or other readiness requirements.”
In fact, this understates the problem. For men, transitional surgery involves the mutilation of the penis, from which they never fully recover. Such surgery requires hormone drugs that cause chemical imbalances with such adverse side effects as weight gain, blood clots, and a higher risk of stroke.
When I first addressed this issue during Trump’s first term, I suggested what I argued was a fair policy. I cited a Rand study suggesting that there were between 1,320 and 6,000 “transgenders” serving in the U.S. military at the time. But what did these numbers mean: Those who had made the transition or those who were in transition? I noted that it was the latter group that created the problems — administrative and financial. My solution was this: Any person who enters the military has to depart it with the same “gender” as when he or she joined. No transition. No surgery. No hormone treatment. While a biological male is in the service, he may Claim to be “transgender” (that he is a woman in a man’s body), but while he is in the service, he must shower and share the head, latrine, etc., with those who share his biological sex. I noted that even the former SEAL who had been trotted out to defend the idea of service by transgenders (Christian Beck), did not make the transition until after he left the service.
I can’t claim to have influenced Trump’s policy, but in fact, that is exactly what the Trump executive order does. As such, it represents a return to the commonsense recognition of the reality that military policies should prioritize the U.S. military’s functional imperative: to fight and win America’s wars. It has no higher purpose.