Canada Allows Trans People To Openly Serve- What's Wrong With The US Military?

As the existence of the Transgender American Veterans Association is irrefutable proof of, transpeople have proudly served in all branches of our nation's military.  

Christine Jorgenson was in the Army before transition. Much of the early leadership in our trans community was provided by people who took the lessons they learned in serving our country and translated them into organizing and serving our community when their service to their particular service branch was done. 

While we still fight tooth and nail in the United States just for the right to serve our country openly, there are six other nations on the planet that allow transpeople to serve in their armed forces.

Australia, Israel, the Czech Republic, Spain and Thailand not only allow transgender soldiers to serve but also support them through diversity programs.   The other nation that does so is our northern neighbor..

While the Canadian Armed Forces have been dealing with the issue of trans soldiers since Sgt. Sylvia Durand transitioned in 1998, they only just got around to making the necessary policy changes.

Back in December the Canadian Armed Forces issued a policy manual change that chronicles how they will accommodate trans soldiers. Soldiers, sailors and air force personnel who undergo a gender change have a right to privacy and respect around that decision, but must conform to the dress code of their target gender..

Cpl. Natalie Murray recently completed a gender transition and serves as an IT tech at a Canadian Armed Forces base in eastern Ontario.   She said during a CBC radio interview, “There shouldn’t be any issue at all. We’re just regular people doing a regular job, the same job as everybody else.”


So what's holding up the United States from doing so?   Transbigotry?  Lack of info?   The fact it's a rabidly conservative testosterone driven segment of our society?   

I find it bitterly ironic that the US military will recruit white supremacists or functionally illiterate people but a transperson is considered 'administratively unfit'.   Go figure that one out. 


Cpl. Murray was dead on target.  We're just patriotic Americans who want the opportunity to not only serve in our country's military, it's past time for our armed forces to allow qualified transpeople to serve just like any other citizen that wishes to sign up for military service.

Cold War Memories

While there are a lot of things I love about growing up in the 60's and 70's, one of things I didn't like was the Cold War.    

For those of you younglings who only read about it in your history books, one of the things we had to live with during that period was two nuclear armed superpowers aiming thousands of nuclear warheads at each other on hair trigger alert.

There were days I'd wake up and wonder at times whether this would be the day that somebody did something stupid, a political miscalculation or a misinterpreted malfunction would happen that kicked off World War III and altered our world forever.

If you've heard the songs '99 Luftballons' and Men At Work's 'It's A Mistake', it spoke to that fear of nuclear annihilation many of us humans around the planet had.   Our literature of the period spoke to those fears with books such as 'Alas, Babylon', 'Warday' and 'On The Beach' which was later turned into a movie.  

There were movies such as Fail Safe,  Dr. Strangelove,  Red Dawn and War Games, and television miniseries such as 1983's The Day After as the US and USSR both built up their nuclear stockpiles to obscene levels.   

Every time there was some international incident like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, drama between the Warsaw Pact and NATO nations or conflicts like the Korean, Vietnam, Arab-Israeli or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we worried that it would spiral out of control into a confrontational war between the superpowers  that would escalate into a nuclear exchange and the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) scenario we had nightmares about that would end life as we know it.

Hearing about the Soviets nearly launching on nuclear armed China during a 1969 border clash along the disputed Ussuri River border between the two nations,  Fidel Castro incessantly calling for nuclear first strikes on the US, the 1983 NATO Able Archer exercise that nearly jumped off a Soviet first strike and about other too close to call instances of malfunctions in command and control on both sides that nearly jumped off everyone's worst nightmare only heightened that planetary anxiety.

It also didn't help matters that the Soviet Union's citizens and leadership believed we'd launch a first strike on them and we grew up in the States immersed in the belief that the 'godless commies' would do the same to us and order that devastating nuclear first strike that would destroy our American way of life. 

From the time I entered kindergarten until third grade we used to do regular duck and cover drills and fallout shelter signs were everywhere.  One little known factoid about the Astrodome was it was designed to be a large fallout shelter when it opened in 1965.  After a while with more powerful nukes being added to the US and Soviet arsenals, we stopped doing duck and cover drills, the feds stopped spending large sums of money on civil defense and it became a 'what's the point' exercise.

We entered a period of detente in the 70's, but the military buildups continued  The Soviet Navy became a global force that posed a challenge to US naval dominance, the NATO and Warsaw Pact forces trained on their sides of a split Germany in endless maneuvers and wargames waiting for the other side to invade.  

The space race, the Olympics, and international sports became ways to prove our competing economic and political systems were better than theirs without shooting at each other and recruit support from the non aligned or Third World nations to either the Western or Communist blocs.     

Glasnost, the demise of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany at the tail end of the 80's thankfully spelled the end of the Cold War and a much needed respite from the international stress that period caused..

I'm also thankful that my nieces won't have to grow up in a world that was a hair trigger away from self inflicted nuclear annihilation.

Still Concerned About The Flawed MD Trans Rights Bill

I still have serious concerns about HB 235, the flawed Maryland trans rights bill that doesn't cover 'public accommodations.'

And to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here's the legal definition of 'public accommodations, why I'm harping on it, and why I'm not happy that language has been left out of the flawed Maryland Trans Rights bill 

A place of "public accommodation" is defined as “an establishment either affecting interstate commerce or supported by state action, and falling into one of the following categories: (1) a lodging for transient guests located within a building with more than five rooms for rent; (2) a facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including such facilities located within retail establishments and gasoline stations; (3) any place of exhibition or entertainment; (4) any establishment located within an establishment falling into one of the first three categories, and which holds itself out as serving patrons of that establishment; or (5) any establishment that contains a covered establishment, and which holds itself out as serving patrons of that covered establishment. Bishop v. Henry Modell & Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104830, 39-40 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 9, 2009)

Any civil rights bill ever written has that no brainer language in it, including the ones that the GL community cut us out of that cover them.   But yet Equality Maryland drafted and submitted HB 235 to the Maryland legislature, admitted they did so, and is pimping the 'incremental rights' mantra at the trans community while they settle for nothing less than full blown same sex marriage for themselves.

GL community, if legislative 'crumbs' aren't acceptable to you, they aren't for me and my community either, especially in light of the fact it's trans POC's who are taking the brunt of the trans hate casualties and the discrimination.

And no amount of obfuscation, lying, and spin by you GL peeps can change the fact that this is a bad bill.

Even though it isn't my state, what is being done in Maryland will have deleterious effects on the rest of us trying to petition our legislators in our states for redress of grievances and trans discrimination.

And putting Sandy Rawls' face up on your blog as a spokesperson for that flawed bill not only pissed me off, but doesn't lessen my concerns about how fracked up the bill is.

I had a chat with Sandy, and understand as a local trans leader who had no input in writing the bill she's in a no win situation.   But it also isn't going to keep me from criticizing a bad bill either when I see it.

Yes Maryland trans peeps, Lord knows I understand how badly you want trans rights coverage along with everyone else shouting from the rooftops that this bill is flawed. But better to insist on an airtight and properly written trans rights bill from the outset, even if it takes a few more years to pass than settle for a bad bill now.

Your trans cousins elsewhere in the country are concerned that when it's glaringly obvious HB 235 won't work to stop trans discrimination and give us the legal recourse we need to combat said discrimination, legislators will not feel the fierce sense of urgency we'll feel to fix it.

EQ MD will be too busy planning their weddings, assuming the marriage bills they get through aren't subsequently spiked by the upcoming  statewide referendum that will be designed to repeal them, to give a rats anus about it either once they get what they want.

We have the previous 2001 history of the GL rights only bill we got cut out of in Maryland to judge them by that EQ MD is repeating already by submitting a subpar trans rights bill.

We also feel a bad precedent is being set in terms of trying to pass a statewide trans rights law without public accommodations language.

So the eyes of the trans Texan are trained on the legislative maneuvering in Maryland along with other people who also have concerns about this flawed bill and how it's fairing vis a vis the same sex marriage push.