How one soldier is confronting the military's ban on transgender troops Jacob Eleazer, a 28-year-old Army drill sergeant, learned he was up for promotion this December. For seven years, he’d been an exemplary soldier, rising to the rank of first lieutenant, and now on his way to captain. But there was a problem. Within the confines of his military training center, in western Kentucky, Eleazer still went by his birth name, which was female. Outside his Army base, Eleazer lived as a man, one of 15,450 military personnel who consider themselves transgender but don’t dare come out to their fellow...