TRUMP REINSTATES BROAD BAN ON TRANSGENDER TROOPS

Trump reinstates broad ban on transgender troops

Allows limited exceptions that Pentagon says won’t damage readiness or unit cohesion

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Friday, March 23, 2018

President Trump moved late Friday to exclude most transgender persons from signing up for the U.S. military, after his defense and homeland security chiefs said they were worried about the armed forces’ ability to handle the different challenges the troops would bring.

The decision replaces Mr. Trump’s earlier ban, announced last summer, with a more thoroughly justified and somewhat tailored approach.

The White House announced the policy even as the Justice Department submitted it to a federal court, which had been hearing a lawsuit challenging the original ban.

“The Department of Defense concludes that there are substantial risks associated with allowing the accession and retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and require, or have already undertaken, a course of treatment to change their gender,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis said in a February memo, submitted to the court.

“I firmly believe that compelling behavioral health reasons require the department to proceed with caution before compounding the significant challenges inherent in treating gender dysphoria with the unique, highly stressful circumstances of military training and combat operations,” he wrote, warning of problems with “unit cohesion” otherwise.

Transgender persons who have “been stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex” can still sign up, and troops already serving who have gender dysphoria but don’t require a change of gender can also continue, Mr. Mattis said.

The Obama administration had announced it would allow transgender troops to serve, after a RAND Corp. study concluded the military could handle the challenges.

That decision had drawn fierce opposition from many military groups and conservatives on Capitol Hill, who’d accused President Obama of subverting military readiness to social policy.

On orders from Mr. Trump, Mr. Mattis led a new study which said RAND’s review was selective and RAND itself acknowledged limits to the data it was looking at. The new Trump administration review, detailed in a 43-page report submitted to the court, said the issue turned out to be “more complicated” than RAND had foreseen.

Advocates for transgender troops blasted the move and the reasoning included in the Trump review. And they seemed to place particular blame on Vice President Mike Pence, a conservative Republican with deep ties to the religious right.

“This policy is a thinly-veiled and feeble attempt by the Trump-Pence administration to justify the unnecessary discrimination of qualified patriots in order to advance their own personal agendas and in defiance of the administration’s top military leadership,” said Matt Thorn, president of OutServe-SLDN.

The Palm Center, a think tank that advocates for LGBT troops, said the move was an attempt to appeal to “the Trump-Pence base.”

The number of transgender persons serving in the military is heatedly debated. The 2016 RAND study figured there were between about 2,000 and 11,000 in both active duty and the reserves, while gay-rights groups say the number is higher.

It’s also unclear how many of those current troops would fit into the exceptions Mr. Mattis laid out that would allow them to continue serving.

Mr. Trump’s new policy will likely face more legal challenges, just as his July 2017 policy did. That previous policy had been put on hold by the courts while the cases were being heard.

The new policy applies to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, which is a branch of the armed forces but situated in the Homeland Security Department.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/23/trump-reinstates-broad-ban-transgender-troops/?

My comments: The LEFT would put the entire Nation in Military Readiness and Effectiveness, Jeopardy, to uphold their Perverted cause of Transgenderism. Common Sense tells you that this would negatively affect Military Readiness and Effectiveness. Transgenderism, is one of the many Anti-God causes of the LEFT.