LGBT Group Asks Obama to Allow Transgenders in Military Through Executive Order

CNSNews ^ | March 14, 2014 | Penny Starr

[jazusamo]

(CNSNews.com) – The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force seized on an advocacy group's report on transgender military service Thursday to call on President Barack Obama to issue an executive order allowing transgender men and women to serve in the military.

“We commend the commission for stating independently what we all know: there is no compelling medical reason to exclude trans people from serving their country, and transitions would place almost no burden on the military,” Rea Carey, executive director of the task force, said in a press release . “The President should sign an executive order to lift the transgender military service ban.

“It’s time to finish the job on repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ once and for all,” Carey said.

The report was compiled by what an “independent commission,” headed by former Clinton-era Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who was asked to step down after recommending schools teach children about masturbation as a way to avoid spreading AIDS, according to the Associated Press.

“The five-member panel, convened by a think tank at San Francisco State University, said Department of Defense regulations designed to keep transgender people out of the military are based on outdated beliefs that require thousands of current service members either to leave the service or to forego the medical procedures and other changes that could align their bodies and gender identities,” the AP reported.

"We determined not only that there is no compelling medical reason for the ban, but also that the ban itself is an expensive, damaging and unfair barrier to health care access for the approximately 15,450 transgender personnel who serve currently in the active, Guard and reserve components," the commission stated.

"Medical standards for enlistment are generally designed to ensure that applicants are free of conditions that would interfere with duty performance, endanger oneself or others, or impose undue burdens for medical care. The regulations, however, bar the enlistment of transgender individuals regardless of ability to perform or degree of medical risk," the commission said in its report.

"Unlike other medical disqualifications, which are based on modern medical expertise and military experience, the transgender enlistment bar is based on standards that are decades out of date," the report added.

The report compared sex-change surgery and other treatments transgenders undergo to health care services that are routinely provided for all troops.

"The prohibition on medically necessary cross-sex hormone treatment is inconsistent with the fact that many non-transgender military personnel rely on prescribed medications, including anabolic steroids, even while deployed in combat zones, and is based on inaccurate understandings of the complexity, risks and efficacy of such treatments," the report said.

"Regulations that prohibit transgender service members from obtaining medically necessary gender-confirming surgery are harmful to the service members and inconsistent with policy concerning other reconstructive surgeries that service members are allowed to have," it added.

"I hope their takeaway will be we should evaluate every one of our people on the basis of their ability and what they can do, and if they have a condition we can treat we would treat it like we would treat anyone else,"

Elders told the AP. But Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent, nonpartisan public policy organization focused on military/social issues, told CNSNews.com that the Palm Center is an “LGBT advocacy group,” not an “independent commission” acting outside of the center and its purpose.

Founded in 1998 as the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, the group changed its name to the Palm Center in 2006 in recognition of a $1 million endowment from the Michael D. Palm Foundation.

“It’s a longstanding view or opinion on this issue from a small group of people,” Donnelly said.

She said the lobby for transgender military service is also driven by the idea that sex reassignment surgery, hormone therapy or other treatments would become a military benefit.

“The paramount goal is self-interest,” Donnelly said, adding that the change to military law would be “yet another social experiment.”

According to AP, “the commission argued that facilitating gender transitions ‘would place almost no burden on the military,’ adding that a relatively small number of active and reserve service members would elect to undergo transition-related surgeries and that only a fraction might suffer complications that would prevent them from serving.”

“[The report] estimated that 230 transgender people a year would seek such surgery at an average cost of about $30,000,” AP reported.

However, the Department of Defense is not planning any changes.

"At this time there are no plans to change the department's policy and regulations which do not allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military," the AP quoted Navy Lt. Cmdr. and DoD spokesperson Nate Christensen as saying.

Among the countries that allow transgender service members are Australia, Canada, England and Israel, according to AP.

[ConorMacNessa]

Look at this kind of bull-hockey and tell me that Obama is not deliberately tearing our Beloved Nation apart, day by day, bit by bit. He's obviously taking our military down and bringing on his own Storm Troopers to take their place.

I drive into the heart of our Nation's Capital every morning, and more and more I see Homeland Security SUV's and Secret Service units posted on street corners and elsewhere. I see no reason for DHS goons to be patrolling Beach Drive and Rock Creek Parkway absent a specific terror alert.

Sorry if I've gone off-topic. The LBGT's are just as much of a threat to our Nation and way of life as anything else we're facing now. I don't need Secret Service and DHS goons looking over my shoulder as I drive to work through a park, The Park Rangers are bad enough - they had no problem shutting us out of our open-air Memorials last October.

Enough is enough. I stand for the USA and the basic Freedoms given to us by our Almighty Lord and by the dint and sacrifice of our forebears. None of them, to my knowledge, had any doubts about their gender.

America demands Justice for the Fallen of Benghazi!

O stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient to their command.

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[Reddy]

“The prohibition on medically necessary cross-sex hormone treatment is inconsistent with the fact that many non-transgender military personnel rely on prescribed medications, including anabolic steroids, even while deployed in combat zones, and is based on inaccurate understandings of the complexity, risks and efficacy of such treatments,” the report said.”

Wouldn’t the service members who are on medication be on those treatments for MEDICAL REASONS, not because they WANT to be?? A male taking female hormones or vice-versa is not medically necessary to maintain corporeal life.

[chris37]

We should allow pedophiles too, and flashers, and people who like beasts, and every other type of human debris too.

NO STANDARDS!

WHUTEVA!

That’s what America 2014 stands for ;/

[S.O.S121.500]

Had Enough Yet ?

[TigersEye]

Don’t forget the hermaphrodites. They’re gonna need hermaphrodites.

[Smokin' Joe]

Will someone please explain to me just how in the Hell these people are going to be able to make critical decisions under fire when they can’t even decide which frigging restroom to use?

[C210N]

At some point we have to call a spade a spade.

These phreaks have been frustrated with a military that votes the wrong way, in spite of all attempts to disenfranchise them over the last few decades. They are just taking a new tack... destroy it from within. This model is working so well in the general society, why not apply within the military as well.

[blueplum]

when the LBGT community leaders come up with a bundle of non-revocable enlistment pledges from 100,000 LBGT folks for a minimum of 6 years enlistment, and provided the same are all capable of passing a military physical, I might listen to them. Until then, it’s nothing more than a sham to get publicity for their lifestyle at the expense of our military.

[ronnie raygun]

It’s time to finish the job........... ready into this it’s not hard

[raybbr]

This is a way for those freaks to get a free operation.

[knarf]

QUEERS ARE ALREADY "ALLOWED" IN THE MILITARY !!!!!

the mulatto bastard will sign one because of the damage it can do until he's ousted.

[jazzlite]

...”I can’t imagine a commander from the platoon level on up having to deal with this crud, as if they don’t have enough problems already just trying to keep his troops alive”...

The commanders will all be replaced to reflect the mindset of the new paradigm. Sexual practices and "feelings" must be #1, you see, because that is what the mind is on 24/7. What will the next move be? Will the recruit be allowed to bring his favorite "pet' along to war. I mean, that is no depth to which this cannot go.

[ExCTCitizen]

TG military will be living in PINK TENTS. Just think of what it will do to our great military. Voters, time for Ted Cruz in 2016!

[maddog55]

The great military died when fags were allowed. Period.

[sayfer bullets]

Been a while since I’ve run across the inspiration for safr guns...and sayfer bullets.

I miss her....

[headstamp 2]

“I bet this tranny surgery and switch over isn’t cheap. This is a scam. When they are allowed in,, Free tranny surgery will be a benefit of enlistment as a “condition” that the military must pay for.

Follow the money.”

We have a winner.

[headstamp 2]

“Until then, it’s nothing more than a sham to get publicity for their lifestyle at the expense of our military.”

It’s also a way to have the government pay for sex reassignment surgery at 30 grand a pop.

[Travis McGee]

[Travis McGee]

[Travis McGee]

Then over half of these psychos try to get changed BACK within a decade. Imagine what a massacre of the plumbing THAT makes.

These psychos should be getting mental treatment, not surgery. A sane future generation will consider “sex reassignment surgery” to have been pure insanity, with the “health experts” part of the insanity instead of part of the treatment.