President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he had signed a series of executive orders related to the military. One of those orders bans transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
The order is already being challenged in court by those arguing that the move is a form of discrimination.
The president took action on former President Joe Biden’s order allowing transgender people to serve in the military. But the recent executive order takes it a step further.
The order notes that “the Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion.”
It further states that “it is the policy of the DoD to ensure that service members are ‘[f]ree of medical conditions or physical defects that may reasonably be expected to require excessive time lost from duty for necessary treatment or hospitalization.’”
Various mental and physical health conditions are “incompatible with active duty, from conditions that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization,” according to the document.
Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.
For the sake of our Nation and the patriotic Americans who volunteer to serve it, military service must be reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty. The Armed Forces must adhere to high mental and physical health standards to ensure our military can deploy, fight, and win, including in austere conditions and without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions.
Several advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration over the new executive order, according to Newsweek. The same attorneys who challenged the president’s 2017 ban on transgender individuals in the Armed Forces is filing this current complaint.
Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, slammed the order, saying that “the government can’t base policies on disapproval of particular groups of people” and that “animus-based laws are presumed to be invalid and unconstitutional.”
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) CEO Allison Jaslow released a statement condemning Trump’s executive order. She characterized it as “backward, harmful and contrary to American values” and “bad for our national security if we want to be a nation that still fights its wars with volunteers.”
She further argued that “No American who is willing and able to wear the uniform should be getting turned away by a recruiter, or worse, being booted from the military after years of their service and sacrifice, and significant investment by the US taxpayer into their training to be a warfighter.”
Trump’s executive order does not indicate whether it will apply to transgender individuals currently in the military or only to others who might seek to enlist in the future.