By Jeremiah Ancheta
The United States has a long history of changes concerning transgender people being allowed to serve in the military. Transgender people were banned from serving in the military for over 50 years. It was only in the last five years when this ban was lifted, only to be revoked again the following year, with another reversal earlier this year. This article explores the history of policies concerning transgender people in the United States military.
In 1960, former U.S. President Eisenhower put into effect Executive Order 10450. The order stated that “the interests of the national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character.” As such, it was permissible for people to be terminated or denied from being in the military insofar as they were not deemed “reliable, trustworthy, or of good conduct and character.” The order explicitly states what qualities don’t count, citing “sexual perversion” as one of those qualities.
According to Outserve-SLDN, “scholars today note that this [sexual pervesion] was applied, at least as early as 1960, to ban transgender individuals from serving as well. In other words, the U.S. Government deemed transgender people as not being reliable and trustworthy or as people with good conduct and character, just for being being transgender. This policy remained in place for over 50 years.
In June of 2016, the Obama Administration made a revolutionary decision when they “officially ended the US military’s ban on openly serving transgender troops.” In support of this decision, Defense Secretary Ash Carter stated that “only soldiers’ qualifications for service should be relevant to the military, not their gender identity.”
In a series of now deleted tweets from July 2017, former U.S. President Donald Trump stated on Twitter, “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 U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” After nearly two years of dealing with lawsuits, the transgender military ban would officially go into place in April of 2019.
In support of this stated reason that transgender personnel would burden the military with “tremendous medical costs,” Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler said that “this policy hurts our military’s readiness and will take over a billion dollars from the Department of Defense’s budget. However, a 2016 study by the Rand Corporation debunked this claim, finding that “related health care coverage to transgender personnel indicated that active-component health care costs would increase by between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually, representing a 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase in active-component health care expenditures.” In other words, transgender related health care would cost millions rather than billions as stated by Hartzler. Furthermore, the study states that “even upper-bound estimates indicate that less than 0.1 percent of the total force would seek transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy.” Finally, the 2014 fiscal year showed that the Department of Defense spent $49.3 billion on all health care costs for military personnel, which was 586,804% greater than transition related care in the military.
These findings show that the 2017 transgender military ban was unjustified, and transgender folk were denied a right that other Americans had due to false premises. Despite these findings, the transgender military ban would still be in place for a couple of years.
Fortunately, this ban was revoked earlier this year. On January 5, 2021, just five days after being inaugurated as the President of the U.S., “Joe Biden signed an executive order to repeal a Trump-era ban on most transgender Americans joining the military.”
With Biden’s recent decision in reallowing transgender personnel in the U.S. military, transgender people are one step closer towards achieving equal rights when it comes to serving our country. Cloud Dancers wholly supports this decision and we hope that this policy remains in effect indefinitely.
According to the NCTE, “It’s estimated that over 134,000 American veterans are transgender, and over 15,000 trans people are serving in military today.” Today on Veterans Day 2021, we salute all our current and former military members, including our late founder, Robina Asti, who served in World War II. Robina was a pioneer of the LGBTQ+ community, who fought against transgender discrimination after her time serving in the military. Here is a video by ABC News highlighting Robina’s story.