Biden Pentagon Orders Military Chaplains To Bless Putting Male Soldiers In Female Showers And Bedrooms

The Federalist ^ | 02/24/2023 | Elaine Donnely

[SeekAndFind]

Why should a tank commander at Fort Hood have to deal with pronouns instead of training his troops to fight an enemy force?

The nation is worried about serious national security threats, including Chinese spy aircraft, but the U.S. Department of Defense seems pre-occupied with misplaced priorities. “Woke” policies are taking leftist ideologies to extremes with enforced compliance, even if it hurts the institution.

Since January 2021, Defense Department officials have expanded woke transgender mandates in significant ways. A comprehensive policy analysis titled “Biden Pentagon Quietly Expands Woke Transgender Policies in the Military,” summarized here, compares Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin directives to the 2016 transgender policies of Barack Obama and Ashton Carter.

As in the Obama years, the Biden/Austin policy fully embraces the idea that individuals can change their “sex assigned at birth to a different gender role.” Department of Defense Instruction 1300.28, updated on Dec. 20, 2022, has changed the official vocabulary of this pseudo-science, using the phrase “self-identified gender” instead of “preferred gender” throughout.

The DOD Instruction stipulates that if a person “self-identifies” as a person of the opposite sex, and if the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) changes a person’s bureaucratic “gender marker,” a man claiming to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and vice versa.

Military commanders, doctors and nurses, chaplains, and military men and women at all levels must endorse and act on this ideological belief or suffer career penalties if they don’t. Alleged “biases against transgender individuals,” which are prohibited, could include anything from “misgendering” people with the wrong pronouns to expressions of concern about medically questionable hormone treatments or surgeries for adults or military-dependent children.

Individuals who are confused about gender identity deserve compassionate counseling, competent medical care, and complete information about the serious risks and irreversible consequences of “gender-affirming” treatments that do not change biological sex. Instead, a self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria permits only one course of treatment, pushing the service member toward life-changing, often-irreversible transgender “transition,” without an independent “second opinion.”

Commanders are directed to consult with designated “experts,” called Service Central Coordination Cells. The SCCCs have no responsibility for military operations or any obligation to put the needs of the patient first.

Biden’s regulations do not protect or even mention rights of religious liberty for chaplains and people of faith. Nor do they provide options for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who object to transgender ideology on moral or ethical grounds.

Once a military doctor approves, transgender transition can be deemed “complete” with or without surgical alteration of healthy body parts. At that point, as the DOD Instruction states several times: “[S]ervice members will use those berthing, bathroom, and shower facilities associated with their gender marker in DEERS.”

This policy denies human biological realities and violates minimal expectations of personal privacy and modesty between men and women. Human dilemmas are discussed in PowerPoint training slide “vignettes,” such as a “female to male” soldier announcing a pregnancy.

Vignette 8 portrays a soldier who transitioned from male to female, without “sex-reassignment surgery,” who wants to use female-designated showers. Another scenario describes a female soldier who is experiencing tension with a “transgender female” roommate.

This is a trick question, since both the discomforted female soldier and a commander who tries to find a solution likely would be accused of “biases against transgender individuals.” Why should a tank commander at Fort Hood have to deal with pronoun etiquette and sticky scenarios instead of training his troops to fight an enemy force?

The latest DOD Instruction admits that some service members who have “completed a gender transition” may not have “resolved the gender dysphoria.” Without any estimate of costs or consequences, additional medical procedures are authorized “If a return to their previous gender is medically required.”

Biden/Austin directives specifically involve the military service academies and Reserve Officer Training Corps (contract) programs, inviting controversies like those affecting civilian female athletes who have lost competitions against biological men.

Revised rules also permit cross-dressing and other “transitioning” behaviors while in “on-duty status.” Previously, time off for “real life experience” (RLE) living as a person of the opposite sex could only occur off-base and off-duty, often for weeks or months. Whether intended or not, the revised policy’s approval of on-base cross-dressing likely will increase “LGBT Pride” celebrations featuring drag queen performances and “family-friendly” story hours for children at military bases worldwide.

When problems ensue, how will we know? In 2018, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified that problems with transgender policies were not being reported up the chain of command because they were considered “personal and private.” Doubling down in December 2022, the DOD released a new instruction, DODI 6400.11, which restricts (without high-level permission) the release of information about “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “transgender-related information,” and “incidents of harmful behaviors.”

Every year, the Pentagon releases non-personal statistics on sexual assaults, in excruciating detail. Why are officials restricting access to data on “incidents of harmful behaviors” and “transgender-related information”? Congress needs to find out.

A recent independent, high-tech survey on the politicization of the military done by the Heritage Foundation found that among active-duty respondents, 80 percent said the “changing of policy to allow unrestricted service by transgender individuals” has decreased their trust in the military. Sixty-eight percent of active-duty responses reported seeing a “growing politicization,” which is affecting their decision to encourage their children to join the military.

In view of current recruiting problems, the 118th Congress should renew previous demands for information on woke policies. Congress also should consider mandating that all Defense Department agencies and educational institutions return to recognizing scientific realities of biological sex, not “self-identified gender.” That idea and more are incorporated in legislation just proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. James Banks, R-Ind., called the Ensuring Military Readiness Act of 2023.

Servicemen and women deserve reality-based health care programs, with protection for the rights of doctors and nurses whose medical ethics or religious convictions differ from transgender ideology. Women also deserve separate-sex athletic teams and reasonable privacy in female-only living facilities.

White House and Pentagon leaders who try to deny, dissemble, or withhold information on the existence or results of woke policies in the military are undermining their own credibility. Americans are awake and aware, and they will hold lawmakers accountable for woke-ism that weakens our military in an increasingly dangerous world.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense.

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Elaine Donnelly is President of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that reports on and analyzes military and social issues.

[Steely Tom]

“Normal” vs. “Crazy.”

[Degaston]

The Military’s mission is getting distraction.

[yldstrk]

The Democrats have gone completely insane.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Cpl. Klinger is on the way

[Track9]

The field of psychotherapy has completely failed and has now metastasized into a rubber stamping agent for psychopathic NWO fascists.

[JPG]

The focus of the US military should be other than this insanity. What the heck is going on?

[jagusafr]

And they’ll do the same thing they did with the homosexual issue back in the day: send out a survey that’s blatantly biased in the direction the brass wants it to go, then say, “See? Nobody else minds, just you homophobes...”

Colonel, USAF JAGCR (ret)

[ClearCase_guy]

I do understand that the military has been having trouble recruiting. So they may not be picky. But my understanding is that as recently as within the past 10 years, people who wanted to join up were sometimes turned away because they were taking prescription medicine for simple medical issues. I could be wrong, but I believe the thinking was something like: “We could send you out on deployment, you end up in a difficult situation, you don’t have your medicine, it cannot easily be re-supplied to you and one way or another you become a liability to your squad mates. So we can’t let you join.”

But now, if you are transitioned and taking hormones and all sorts of crazy shit, that’s just fine. We can change the entire military structure just to accommodate you and your precious medical needs.

[SaxxonWoods]

The government will tell religions what their approved doctrines are from now on.

[daniel1212]

Added to the list of the nature of the progressive USS (United States of Sodom) with its Wokeducation goals and in which an increasingly "Wokelitary" is called to defend:

Military.com, 2020: Here's the Marine Corps' Plan to End Gender Segregation at Boot Camp. The Marine Corps was tasked with explaining its short- and long-term plans for integrating recruit training, which was mandated by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Signed into law in December, 2020. “Gender integration at Marine Corps Recruit Training remains a top priority." “The outcome the Marine Corps desires for gender integration is for every male recruit to train alongside a female recruit within the same company.”” All-male recruit companies trained solely by men will be made “obsolete,”

Top Marine stresses need for more female infantry officers, research on 1-year paid maternity leave 2/25/2020, 5:18:38 PM · by jazusamo · 87 replies The Washington Times ^ | February 25, 2020 | Douglas Ernst The nation’s top Marine, Commandant Gen. David Berger, took to social media Tuesday morning to stress the service’s “most important matters.” Yet to get an abortion=murder their child, Navy service members are to be reimbursed for travel expenses and if they need to go to a different state they can be provided with up to three weeks off, with pay.

The Blaze, December 22, 2022: Marines told to stop using ‘sir,’ ‘ma’am/mater’ to avoid ‘misgendering’ superiors The University of Pittsburgh received $2 million to conduct the study, which examined gender-integrated recruit training in military settings. "The Army, Navy, and Coast Guard effectively de-emphasize gender in an integrated environment," the report claimed. Marine Corps leaders are reportedly not convinced that transitioning to gender-neutral salutations would be as simple as the 739-page report suggests.

Biden Pentagon Orders Military Chaplains To Bless Putting Male Soldiers In Female Showers And Bedrooms, The Federalist : if a person “self-identifies” as a person of the opposite sex, and if the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) changes a person’s bureaucratic “gender marker,” a man claiming to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and vice versa... Revised rules also permit cross-dressing and other “transitioning” behaviors while in “on-duty status.”... regulations do not protect or even mention rights of religious liberty for chaplains and people of faith. Nor do they provide options for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who object to transgender ideology on moral or ethical grounds.<

Pentagon study finds rising suicide rates in military 9/27/2019, 12:49:01 AM · by fwdude · 26 replies The Hill ^ | 09/26/19 | Ellen Mitchell Suicide rates in the military were higher in 2018 compared to the previous five years despite efforts to prevent such deaths, according to an annual Pentagon report released Thursday. A total of 541 active duty, National Guard and Reserve troops committed suicide last year, the Department of Defense Annual Suicide Report found.

Heritage Index Rates Navy, Marines ‘Marginal’ In Ability to Counter Current Threats 11/4/2019, 11:30:14 AM · by robowombat · 25 replies USNI News ^ | October 30, 2019 8:01 PM | John Grady Heritage Index Rates Navy, Marines ‘Marginal’ In Ability to Counter Current Threats By: John Grady October 30, 2019 8:01 PM The Navy and the Marine Corps have been assessed as “marginal” in their ability to meet the challenges from rival powers in Beijing and Moscow, as well as regional threats coming from Tehran and Pyongyang, according to annual report on U.S. military strength from The Heritage Foundation

Pentagon Report: China Now Has World’s Largest Navy as Beijing Expands Military Influence 9/2/2020, 7:28:08 PM · by Retain Mike · 8 replies US Naval Institute ^ | September 1, 2020 5:31 PM | John Grady

Countering this is the news of, The Pentagon Forming a Diversity and Inclusion Office, and

allowing transgenders to serve in the military,

and with the Pentagon even ensuring free gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel,

with Army mandatory training now including training Army personnel to know what to do in such scenarios as when a soldier who was "assigned" a biological gender at birth says he/she identifies as another gender, and lives as such in off-duty hours, but is not requesting to be treated as such while on duty, versus if such later requests to be identified as according to their chosen gender during duty hours, and/or experiences increased distress relating to his/her gender identity;

while apparently as part of the Naval Sea Systems Command Inclusion & Engagement Council’s Diversity Team's video series called “NAVSpEAks,” the Navy posts video on "the importance of using correct pronouns as well as polite etiquette when you may not be sure of someone's pronouns"

and the Air Force being with WOKEism in creating 'LGBTQ' and 'Indigenous Nations Equality' Focus Groups,

and also authorizing the use of gender pronouns in signature blocks,

and hosting a drag show at festival at Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) on July, 2022, which also includes a poem on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,”

while the Army arms itself with a woke recruitment ad featuring lesbians at a gay wedding and an LGBTQ pride march,

and the CIA funds a 'cisgender millennial with anxiety disorder' campaign, and with the

Marines and Navy as well as the Air Force and Army posting messages on social media supporting gay pride and Pride Month,

with the former posting rainbow bullets, and the latter a rainbow colored arm and hand in salute (essentially to the flag of Sodom)

and with the Navy naming a military ship after gay rights leader Harvey Milk, and (now) with a transgender veteran christening it,

along with the Navy's first all gay U.S. Navy helicopter crew,

and with physical fitness assessment failures being now scrubbed from sailors’ records, a clean slate that will allow them to remain in the service,

and lower fitness standards for women in the Army,

while nearly half of female soldiers are still failing the new Army Fitness Test,

and with military generals calling for Increased Diversity and More Women in Combat,

and changing its song to be gender-neutral,

and Forcing Marines to Make Boot Camp Coed,

and feeding cadets cultural Marxist propaganda about gender and masculinity therein,

to its new diversity and inclusion operation from West Point

and for its Special Operations Command ,

while showing a rapid response readiness to engage in online combat with the likes of Tucker Carson and other such enemies

thus nuking Jesus-themed candies on an Air Force bases

as well as the Pentagon ordering a company to stop making faith-based Dog Tags,

and prohibiting service members from “liking” or reposting "extremist" views on social media (depending on all the circumstances involved) as part of its prohibition against actively engaging in extremist activities,

yet allowing turbans and hijabs in the Air Force,

while working to rid the military of “extremism”

such as the head of the US Space Force unit being fired and put under investigation for criticizing Critical Race Theory

And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. (Ezra 9:6)

Also, last I saw, 71% of young people are ineligible for the military. The Army dropped grenade throwing as a requirement to graduate because new recruits could not throw far enough. “We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 [82 feet] to 30 meters." Also, there is the Intellectual Decline of the Army Officer Corps. The size of the U.S. military in 2017 was half of what it was in 1990, and in general I think many signed up for the benefits rather than patriotism. 16% were women and racial and ethnic minorities made up 43%, and a poll from the Military Times and Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families conducted in July 2020, 49.9 percent of 1,018 active-duty military respondents had an unfavorable view of the president, compared to about 38 percent who had a favorable view. That poll showed Biden with a 4-percentage-point lead over Trump

Fewer Americans want to serve in the military. Cue Pentagon panic 4/10/2019, 6:55:46 PM · by GuavaCheesePuff · 70 replies The Guardian ^ | April 10, 2019 | William M. Arkin.official military polling shows that fewer and fewer young Americans consider the military as a career or as a transitional step – only some 12.5% – the lowest number in a decade.

[himno hero]

What? Do you have a problem with a Bill Murray/animal house for the remnants of a military? It’s all about the destruction America.
Financially
Morally
Militarily
Physically

Obama spearheaded the last leg of the Marxist Muslim agenda.

[StAntKnee]

Once again. The Babylon Bee is going to have to up its game.

[sjmjax]

Makes me think of a scene from “Starship Troopers”.
Heinlein was a prophet.

[Jan_Sobieski]

The Democrats have gone completely insane.

The “uniparty” is completely insane

[Mr. N. Wolfe]

Senate Armed Services Committee

Subcommittee on Personnel (Minority Members)

Rick Scott R-FL (Ranking Member)
Mike Rounds R-SD
Dan Sullivan R-AK
Ted Budd R-NC

[daniel1212]

I do understand that the military has been having trouble recruiting. So they may not be picky. But my understanding is that as recently as within the past 10 years, people who wanted to join up were sometimes turned away because they were taking prescription medicine for simple medical issues. I could be wrong, but I believe the thinking was something like: “We could send you out on deployment, you end up in a difficult situation, you don’t have your medicine, it cannot easily be re-supplied to you and one way or another you become a liability to your squad mates. So we can’t let you join.”

Seventy-one percent of young people are ineligible to join the military, according to 2017 Pentagon data. The reasons: obesity, no high school diploma or a criminal record...According to one report, 52 percent of employers in Pennsylvania find it challenging to hire people with adequate skills, training or education. - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/14/military-service-most-young-people-dont-qualify-careers/3665840002/

You can much blame that on the demise of Biblical Christian faith when tested by prosperity and the massive numbers of abortion, coupled with contraception and work outside the homestead for women, which significantly decreased birth rate, esp. among the demographic most likely to enlist, and has decreased more in the recent past, with the % per pop. size of military being half of what it once was:

Millennial women are having babies at a slower rate than any previous generation of women in American history. Between the year 2007 and 2012, the rate at which African American women in their 20s had children dropped by 14 percent. The rate at which Caucasian American women in their 20s had children dropped by 11 percent. The rate at which Hispanic American women in their 20s had children dropped by an astounding 26 percent. - https://defendernetwork.com/lead-story/intelligent-reasons-millennials-arent-kids/

Since 1950, the worldwide fertility rate dropped from an average of 4.7 children to 2.4 children. he US birth rate fell by 4% from 2019 to 2020, the sharpest single-year decline in almost 50 years, As Christine Percheski, associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, told Insider, the declining birth rate is "about women having access to education and employment opportunities. It's about the rise in individualism. It's about the rise in women's autonomy and a change in values." - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-millennials-birth-fertility-rate-declining-fewer-babies-2022-1#its-a-new-world-of-opportunities-for-women-which-has-prompted-them-to-seek-other-paths-to-fulfillment-1

According to a new report that raises the possibility that a major shift in the ages when women tend to have kids is on the horizon. ..Until the 1980s, for as long as records were kept, the highest fertility rates worldwide were among women ages 20 to 24, Astone said.

That shifted in the United States and Europe sometime in the 1980s, when women ages 25 to 29 became the most fertile, she said.... We calculate that in 2012, women in their twenties had births at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women, by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history,”... “If these low birth rates to women in their twenties continue, the U.S. might eventually face the type of generational imbalance that currently characterizes Japan and some European countries, but it is too early to predict or worry about that eventuality.” - https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/27/baby-bust-millenials-birth-rate-drop-may-signal-historic-shift.html

But there was a time—1850 to be precise—when huge households, chock full of tykes, were common and considered “right.” US Census data from 1850 show that families with six to nine kids were common.... the culture dictated that a woman’s place was in the home, and her fulfillment was found there, where she served her husband and raised her children. In his 1983 book Family and Divorce in California, 1850-1890, University of Oklahoma historian Robert Griswold cited an article published in the San Mateo Gazette in the mid-19th century that states, “Woman is set in the household and man is sent out into the world.”..Family size in the US peaked between 1860 and 1920 because infant mortality rates were declining while large families were still valued, according to Northern Kentucky University sociologist Joan Ferrante’s 1992 book Sociology: A Global Perspective. Even a woman of modest means could “be happy in the love of her husband, her home, and its beautiful duties without asking the world for its smiles and favors,” the article argued...

Women, Ferrante writes, “The mother’s median age at the time of her last child’s birth was 40 in 1850; by 1940 it had fallen to 27.3.” .. In 1980, less than 0.5% of all households had eight or more children; - https://qz.com/reparations-slavery-uk-trevelyan-grenada-1850156017

1890 (June) Avg. pop. per house-hold 4.93

1930 (Apr.) 4.11

1960 (Mar.) 3.35 - https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/us-households-size-1790-2006

By Robert Pear, Special To the New York Times April 15, 1987 The average number of people per household in the United States declined last year to 2.67, the least ever recorded, the Census Bureau reported today. - https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/15/us/average-size-of-household-in-us-declines-to-lowest-ever-recorded.html

The average household was 5.79 people in 1790, which has significantly decreased to 2.58 in 2010. - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-household-size-by-state

Dec 12, 2022 — The average American household consisted of 2.5 people in 2022. - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/

The United States ended the draft for military service in 1973, transitioning to the all-volunteer force that exists today. At that time, the active component of the military, excluding the coast guard, comprised 1.9 million men and women, or about 1 percent of the population. Now, there are about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, or less than one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. population.

Another way of analyzing this data is to look at representation ratios, which show recruits as a share of a jurisdiction’s residents between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. ...South Carolina had the highest representation ratio, at 1.5, meaning it contributed 50 percent more than its share of the country's eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old population. Florida, Hawaii, Georgia, and Alabama round out the top five. On the other end of the spectrum—jurisdictions that contribute fewer recruits than their share of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, or those with ratios less than 1.0—are Washington, DC ]lowest at 0.3], North Dakota, Massachusetts, Utah, and Rhode Island. - https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military

[FlingWingFlyer]

I just read that the Demented Pedophile, aka “Da White House” has announced that “da mass killings” will continue until we allow him and his Brandon Administration to confiscate our firearms. FJB. What a guy.

[Political Junkie Too]

If "order" is used correctly in headline, wouldn't it be an illegal order because it violates the first amendment free exercise of religion clause?

-PJ

[Sam Gamgee]

Main beneficiary of all this is China.