The transgender community in the United States have been forced to deal with some very anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent times, and now it appears that President Trump has added to that pile.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump took to Twitter to make the following announcement:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
LGBT in United States military service has had a chequered past, with a blanket ban on all gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers until the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation was passed in 1993.
This was then repealed in 2010, which effectively put an end to the restrictions put in place for gay, lesbian and bisexual service personnel.
The situation was different for the transgender community, since any openly transgender person was not allowed to serve since the 1960s but, in June 2016, Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defence Ash Carter announced that the ban had been lifted, and that the US Military services would undergo a twelve month transition period to satisfy the need of transgender soldiers.
The full policy was to be put into action on 1 July 2017, but was provisionally delayed six months while Trump’s new Secretary Of Defence reviewed the plan, to assess whether or not it would damage the “readiness or lethality” of American troops.
As has already been pointed out by some, it is not entirely clear how Trump plans to carry out the ban, as there are already approximately 12,000 transgender people serving in the American military, and according to this article by the Wall Street Journal, the annual cost of transgender service members is as little as $2m.
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