Transgender Service Members: Serving in Silence

In adding to MSG Sand's response.....
The US armed forces, tasked with the protection and safeguarding of our freedoms from those who would take it from us, is no place for Social Equity, social experimentation or social engineering and never a forum for expressing one's individuality. It reminds me a bit of our Joint exercises with NATO in the 1990s, where long hair, sloppy dress, wearing of personal buttons and pins on their uniform was allowed and use of marijuana was tolerated in certain Nordic countries. The quip amongst US and British forces was these units make formidable military units....until somebody shoots at them.

SGT Aras Troy - So someone born a biological male who wants to pretend to be a female and to convince others of that.....is this kind of self-deception a sound foundation for the hard discipline and absolute commitment required of a soldier (airman or seaman) we can depend upon?

Thank you for mentioning felons and those challenged by the ASVAB in your comment. More than half of my basic training battery were felons and I've served with a number of soldiers who were challenged by the ASVAB and still got promoted, got to go to school, and advance. One of them even went AWOL from AIT and when I saw him again 13 years later, he was my platoon sergeant. Those soldiers definitely knew the right people.

SSG Eric Blue - while you did not share any details in when you served, it is statistically impossible that half of your training battery were felons, and how would you even know their criminal background. We all have our level of challenge with components of the ASVAB, kind of why we took the ASVAB, but there are standards and everyone will be able to get promoted to a point.

You/they missed
10. Major surgeries
11. Mental History, though your article does mention "personality disorder"
12. Medical conditions requiring medications
13. Certain birth defects

Its also a meritocracy. When appointments to key positions are based on anything but merit, the mission and the lives affected, are at a greater risk.

The reason for the draft in the past.

You'd be right in a perfect world, sir. I've served with those who were too fat, too short, lied, and broke the law. Nearly every one of them got to make a full career out of it while I got forced out at 16.5 years. And I ALWAYS did the right thing.

If Trans have not fully transitioned, they are not the other gender. So it would be unjust and lead to problems to put an untransitioned “female” in with the females, “male” with males.

It’s not a matter whether a person is willing to work or have a desire to serve their country. Their special needs are a burden on the military and destabilizing, just as if a bunch of handicapped people were allowed to enlist. Why can’t my husband who can’t walk right enlist?

When it comes to "Progressive thinking", what makes "sense" is not always a required ingredient. Rules and regs. put in place many years ago by the military made sense then and nothing in the ensuing years has changed that.

The operative word is Serve. Hard to serve if un- deplorable while needing special meds when many deployed posts do not have sufficient facilities. This negates the Ability to serve in total. If one can serve fully, without special needs, either medically or mentally than I could be persuaded to reconsider. Our purpose, in my opinion, is to encourage and build on the warrior ethos. If one can do that and carry their weight as a warrior- it begs the question- perhaps?