POTUS Bans Transgender Individuals from Military Service

I’m a bit late in reporting a reappearing issue concerning POTUS Donald J. Trump banning transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military, but I’m doing it nonetheless because I spent time further researching it.

Last year, the president issued a presidential memorandum on 25 August 2017, “directing the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, to return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016,” which had “generally prohibited openly transgender individuals from accession into the United States military and authorized the discharge of such individuals”; furthermore, “The Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, shall... halt all use of DoD or DHS resources to fund sex reassignment surgical procedures for military personnel, except to the extent necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex.” According to the memorandum, these parts are set to start on 23 March 2018 [1].

But just last week, the president issued a similar presidential memorandum on 23 March 2018, the difference being: Whereas the previous memorandum precluded every transgender individual from joining the U.S. military, this memorandum bans only “transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery... from military service except under certain limited circumstances,” thereby counterposing and indeed revoking the previous memorandum of 25 August 2017 [2].

In case the aforementioned is unclear, and to determine the current memorandum’s specifications or “limited circumstances,” the BBC reported on 24 March 2018, “President Trump has signed a memorandum that bans some transgender people from US military service but rolls back the blanket ban he ordered last year... The earlier blanket ban was blocked by federal judges. The new memorandum says that transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are barred from military service ‘except under certain limited circumstances’... The new policy approved by President Trump allows current transgender service members with gender dysphoria to continue serving if they were diagnosed after the Obama administration's policy took effect... Transgender individuals not diagnosed with gender dysphoria, will be allowed to serve, ‘like all other service members, in their biological sex,’” [3] meaning that only those diagnosed before the passing of the Obama administration's policy, and those diagnosed after the passing of the current memorandum, are banned from serving in the U.S. military.

Regardless of the exceptions made for 1) the undiagnosed and 2) those diagnosed anytime between the Obama administration's policy and the current memorandum, it undeniably remains a premeditated and prejudiced act of discrimination against transgender individuals, yet at the same time, by precluding the bourgeois military of the U.S. from recruiting potential soldiers, the memorandum works in our favor.

Sources

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-memorandum-secretary-defense-secretary-homeland-security/

[2] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000162-5590-df2f-a7e2-d7d2ebe00001

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43525549