On Friday the United States armed forces will impose restrictions on the service of patriotic Americans. Friday, April 12th the U.S. military will allow transgendered soldiers who have declared not to be cis-gendered to stay as long as they go back into the “footlocker.” The military will also ban anyone who has already revealed to be transgendered from enlisting.
Like most of the zigzagging roads of his dead-end logic, the Trump administration claims this will have no effect. Quoting a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, “this is not a ban” and “it does not allow discrimination.”
On the surface that sounds within the bounds of reason until you read the follow-up, …But it will require the military to discharge service members who appear transgender or act transgender by failing to meet grooming, uniform, and other military standards for their birth sex. That would be the equivalent of a sign on a Neshoba County, Mississippi water fountain in 1950 reading, ‘coloreds allowed to drink from this fountain as long as you don’t act colored.’ The absurdity of saying we will accept you as long as you hide is ridiculous.
We have hit this discriminatory Stonewall in our past. In 2010 former President Barack Obama proposed legislation to permanently remove the antiquated don’t ask, don’t tell policy instituted by the Clinton administration. The recent darling of the moderate Democrats and “traditional Republicans, John McCain, was adamantly opposed. Part of his opposition was political; he was fighting the image of being ‘reasonable’ during his campaign to retain his Senate seat in Arizona. McCain would later recant some of his opposition and admit in defense of an out colleague [ Rep. Jim Kolbe] that it had not, “caused much of a ripple.”
The LGBT community had a long and tumultuous relationship with the late Senator McCain, but the conclusion was that McCain was wrong, he knew it and admitted it.
The opposition arguments used in 1993 when DADT was first offered as a compromise by Bill Clinton and updated to allow open service by President Obama in 2010 are being used by President Trump with a few inane twists. Morale, readiness, logistics, and accommodations were the buzz words to ban gays and alternative lifestyles from service. Mr. Trump, of course, has gone to the irrational extreme and opined that transgenders will join up to use the military for free sex reassignment surgery, as well as other costly care-related complications.
The dismantling to what has been referred to as “norms” in procedural government are becoming the new normal for a President with no decency. The revelation that the fired former Director of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, refused to break the law after being ordered by him [Trump] to refuse asylum into the United States for legitimate reasons by immigrants, is just one example.
At some point, Americans have to take to the streets for a long and sustained protest to retake the country from a madman. Not pre-scheduled weekends of what seems more like carefully planned sunbathing with wide-brimmed hats and cooling towels, but day after day, standing shoulder to shoulder, sweating and freezing in front of the White House screaming at the top of our lungs, “Let America, be America Again!”
Vote in 2020 for Change