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| Will President Obama allow an unscientific ban on trangender service to stand? |
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Sunday
that the ban on transgender service members should be “reviewed” and
that “every qualified American who wants to serve our country should
have an opportunity” to do so. Although military spokespeople have said before
that the policy is regularly under review, the remarks by the Pentagon
chief, in which he said he was “open” to reassessing the policy and
reiterated that service members should be judged by their performance
abilities, appear to signal a new level of commitment to reconsidering
the trans ban.
The question is how long this will take, what the review will find,
and what force will ensure that it really happens, so that each Pentagon
leader doesn’t just run out the clock, locking in the status quo.
The most obvious answer to this last question is a force who has been
oddly absent: the commander in chief. President Barack Obama has said
nothing about his position on the transgender ban, although he was eager to tout the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as one of his important accomplishments. When asked by the #Washington Blade whether the president would direct the Pentagon to end the trans ban, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney punted, saying, “I don’t have anything on that. I’ll have to direct you to the Pentagon at this point.”
It may seem reasonable, at first blush, for the president to avoid
weighing in on a touchy cultural issue at this point in his tenure. His
second term is floundering, and it could open him up to criticism if he
seems to be taking on small-bore social issues while the economy and
world events appear to spiral out of control.
But that assessment is incomplete. For starters, transgender equality
may seem like a small-bore issue, (though not, obviously, to
transgender people); but with literally no reason beyond prejudice to
let transgender Americans suffer in silence as they honorably defend out
nation, it’s increasingly becoming a blemish on the president’s record,
and on our country’s soul, to do nothing.
What’s made this point so obvious in recent weeks is the utterly
silly talking points the Pentagon has adopted in response to an expert report
co-authored by a former surgeon general, finding that “there is no
compelling medical reason for the ban.” (The report was sponsored by the
Palm Center, where I am a consultant.) Since the report’s release in
March, the Pentagon has been churning out robotic responses
to press inquiries on the policy, murmuring meaningless meanderings
about the “austere environments” of military life that could make some
medical care difficult to access.
Never mind that the military already supplies complex medical care in
the field—equally or more burdensome than what many transgender people
require—to tens of thousands of service members, including to those who
require the very same medications that are said to disqualify trans
members. Never mind that there are already an estimated 15,000
transgender people serving in uniform and that the ban just makes it
harder for them to access the care they need since they can’t come out.
And never mind that the recent report estimated that the number of
service members likely to have medical complications from
gender-confirming surgery if the ban were lifted is a whopping 10.
Hagel’s remarks on Sunday, though offering an opening for review,
continued to echo the robotic Pentagon talking points that consist of
vague and groundless assertions. This is a medical issue. Austere locations are involved. Adequate health care may not be available.
We may hope that the Pentagon really does review the policy in a timely
manner, and that when it does, it will quickly come to see that this is
not, in fact, a medical issue, any more than simply operating any large
institution is a medical issue.
But ultimately it’s the job of the strangely silent president to push
this issue forward. President #Obama has made it crystal clear that he wants a nation that listens to scientific consensus on critical policy issues.
Yet his Pentagon chief is parroting platitudes about trans service that
are profoundly unscientific. The president is responsible for whether
his administration speaks—and acts—on the basis of science. He should
tell his country where he stands on transgender service and explain how
he reconciles the continuation of a bad policy that he controls with a
medical and scientific consensus that has determined that it’s time for
it to go.
Source: Slate
Source: Slate
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