Trump’s ban on transgenders popular with military

Trump’s announcement was welcomed by troops. A Military Times/Institute for Veterans and Military Families poll of 1 664 active-duty troops conducted on a voluntary and confidential basis last December found significantly more respondents believed allowing transgenders to be hurtful more than helpful.

The Washington Examiner reported that the poll found that 41 percent of active-duty troops believed the policy hurt military readiness, while only 12 percent said it helped.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military,” Trump said. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgenders in the military would entail. Thank you.”

Last June, the Department of Defense announced that transgender men and women could no longer be discharged from the military on the basis of their gender identity.

According to a RAND Corporation study, there are between 1 320 and 6 630 transgenders currently serving in all branches of the US military.

It was not immediately clear what would become of those who have been serving over the last 13 months.

The RAND study indicated that countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and Israel allow all soldiers to serve, and said that “in no case did the RAND team find evidence of an effect on operational effectiveness, operational readiness or cohesion”, but did not cite the poll indicating how unpopular former president Obama’s pro-transgenders policy was.

Vice President Mike Pence was behind the recent vote to ban costly medical treatment for transgender service members, which failed narrowly last month in the House of Representatives.

Politico reported that conservative lawmakers then went directly to the president, who went beyond what Republican legislators had demanded, as their proposed bill did not feature a ban on all transgender service members.

At a White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was challenged by a hostile mainstream media on why Pentagon chiefs had not been in the loop when the president tweeted his ban.

The Williams Institute, said in a report from 2014, that approximately 15 500 transgender men and women are serving and that an additional 134 300 trans Americans are veterans. This suggests that some 21.4 percent of all openly transgender Americans are in the military or have served in the army, while the average adult American service rate is only 10,4 percent. Transgender Americans are estimated to be twice as likely to join the military.

Facebook meanwhile is complaining about words such as “tranny” and “cross dressers”. A Facebook representative told Infowars that “gender identity” is a “protected characteristic” although the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlines protected classes, does not include transgenders.

“We don’t allow hate speech on Facebook, which means we delete posts that attack people based on protected characteristics like race and gender identity,” the Facebook representative wrote. “Slurs, like the word tranny, are considered hate speech unless they are being used self-referentially.”

Facebook already controls speech, which means they control public opinion with over 1,39 billion users, larger than the population of China.