About a month ago, the Commander-in-Chief issued a series of Tweets in which he announced the re-establishment of a military ban for those who suffer from the mental disorder known diplomatically as “gender dysphoria.” This is a condition in which males, whose DNA is 100% male, become so confused they think they are females trapped inside a male body, and in which females, whose DNA is 100% female, are so mentally confused they think they are males trapped inside female bodies.
Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal (emphasis mine):
Mr. Mattis under the new policy is expected to consider “deployability”—the ability to serve in a war zone, participate in exercises or live for months on a ship—as the primary legal means to decide whether to separate service members from the military, the officials said… The White House memo also directs the Pentagon to deny admittance to transgender individuals and to stop spending on medical treatment regimens for those currently serving, according to U.S. officials familiar with the document.
The president’s directive is perfectly in line with long-standing military policy, which includes a list of all disqualifying medical conditions that make an applicant unfit for military duty. On that list (emphasis mine): “Any history or current psychosexual conditions, including, but not limited to transsexualism, exhibitionism, transvestism, voyeurism, and other paraphilias, are disqualifying.” “Transsexualism” and “transvestism” are simply conventional terms for what today has been softened for PC purposes to “transgenderism.”
But regardless of the vocabulary used, these conditions have been a longstanding barrier to military service for obvious reasons having to do with military readiness, retention, and recruitment. When President Obama lifted the ban on transgenderism last year, he was doing something entirely without constitutional justification since Congress and Congress alone is tasked with the responsibility to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces” (Article I, Sec. 8). President Trump is simply restoring constitutional order here since Congress has never approved military service for those with psychosexual disorders.
The psychological effects of pursuing a change in sexual identity are so severe that Johns Hopkins stopped performing sex-reassignment surgeries in the 1970s because it left patients worse off than they were before. They were astonished to discover that the rate of suicide among those who had gone through the transition was 41%, about 19 times higher than the rate among the sexually normal population. This obviously is not a lifestyle to be encouraged, promoted, or subsidized by taxpayers. These individuals need compassionate interventions and intense psychotherapeutic help, not high-pressured military assignments.
Deployability is an obviously significant concern, since soldiers who go through the surgical mutilation involved in sex-reassignment surgery may be out of commission for as long as 270 days as they recover. Some wind up classified as “disabled,” which means taxpayers will carry them for the rest of their lives.
Cost is another significant factor. Full blown sexual reassignment procedures cost north of $132,000 per person, leading to estimates that adopting full-scale transgender integration into the military will cost as much as $1.35 billion over a decade. With that money we could buy 13 F-35 fighters or 14 F-18 Super Hornets. Other estimates are even higher, at close to $2 billion.
The purpose of the military is not to serve as some kind of giant social engineering laboratory. It is impossible to make a credible case that admitting transsexuals and transvestites to our nation’s military will make it more ready to fight our nation’s wars.
Walt Heyer, a former male-to-female transsexual, said Trump’s policy is wise and prudent. It will prevent, he says, “turning the military into a giant, tax-funded, sex-change clinic.”
So President Trump has done a very good thing for our nation and for our military. He has also done a very compassionate thing for transgendered individuals themselves, for this may serve as a signal to them that they should pursue help for their condition rather than stay on a path that will lead almost half of them to take their own lives. No compassionate American wants that for anyone.
