Trump Reinstates Trans Military Service Ban

Every day Donald Trump proves what those of us who were paying attention during the 2016 presidential election already knew.  That he is not only incompetent and unfit to be POTUS, but was no friend of the TBLGQ community

Today he unleashed a series of tweets in which he stated that the armed forces ban on transgender military service that had been rescinded just last year by President Obama was being reinstated citing the BS reason of costs.

It's also bitterly ironic that he did so on the same day 69 years ago that President Harry S. Truman issued the executive order that desegregated the US military in 1948.

Two studies done by the RAND Corporation in June 2016 and another that was done in September 2015 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine basically came to the same conclusions that the medical gender transition costs that Trump and Republican opponents rail against would be minimal.

The RAND Corporation study estimated that there were 1,320 to 6,630 active duty trans service members, and projected that those costs would be $2.4 million to $8.4 million, which is only a 0.04 to 0.13 % increase in the budget.  

It also pointed out that not all current active duty trans military service members would seek gender transitioning treatment, and that 0.1%  of those service members would seek treatments that could delay a deployment.

The September 2015 study estimated that it would cost $4.2 million to $5.6 million and of the 12,500 service members, less than 200 would seek medical gender transition related care.

The US military's annual healthcare budget is $47.8 billion dollars.

The brand new aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford at $13 billion cost more to build than the negligible annual transition related healthcare for trans service members.

And I feel today for all those trans veterans like Carla, who proudly served this country and fought for your right to hate us. 

One of those 15,000 military trans people you peeps are hating on, is serving out nation and currently deployed in Air Force SSgt Logan Ireland.  He had this to say about the announcement.

"For my President to deny an able bodied, fully qualified person the inherent right to raise their right hand and serve their country, potentially giving their own life for our freedoms, is doing this country an injustice. I would love for my President to meet me so I can tell him about the 15,500 honorably serving transgender military members that are fighting right now for their liberties and for their country." -Air Force SSgt Logan Ireland

It most definitely is an injustice to not allow trans Americans to serve their nation like everyone else who gets the choice to do.  18 other nations allow their trans citizens to serve in their military

It's also infuriating to me as a trans African American to hear the same lies that were told to attempt to justify Jim Crow military segregation being retooled to aim at transpeople who wish to openly serve our country.

But then again 45 and his party don't care about your human rights unless you are a white male wealthy Republican.