How We Can Truly Serve Our Country--And World

I have written about Chuck Hagel's declaration that the ban against transgenders in the military should be "reviewed" and that "every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have the opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it."

I have also written, in numerous posts, about my attitude toward legalizing same-sex marriage:  I am glad that it's happening, but I think that the government's role in deciding who can marry should be limited to establishing a minimum age.  And churches or other religious institutions should not be vested with the power to confer legally-married status on any two people.  In other words, the government should do no more than to grant civil unions to any two people of the age of consent who want to be together.  Then, the couples can decide whether they want to marry in a church or whatever.

Why am I mentioning that in the context of transgender people serving in the military?  Well, my attitude about getting rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the possibility of doing the same for the ban on transgenders is very similar:  I'm glad it's happening, but I also think there has to be an even more fundamental change.

I have long believed that the human race will advance only if we get rid of war.  If we don't, we'll die.  All of us.  If anything, we should be discouraging people from joining the Armed Forces and finding ways to put their--our--talents and skills to use to save our planet and better ourselves.  That will happen only when people respect each other's differences and stop exploiting or killing each other over them.  For what is war but the ultimate expression of a person's--or a group of people's--disrespect for the sanctity and individuality of another?

Transgenders should be the first people to understand what I've said in the previous paragraph.  And I think we should be in the forefront of teaching and showing respect for people's differences.  Doing so would preclude joining the military:  After all, what effaces a person's individuality more than becoming part of "the big green fighting machine"?

We need to find better ways of escaping poverty, paying for college or getting a good health plan--and to redefine what it means to "serve" one's country or community.  That said, I want to take this opportunity to remember those who have sacrificed portions of their lives--or their very lives--for what we now think of as service to our country.  As we now know, among them are many transgender people who camouflaged themselves, went "stealth" or however you want to describe their efforts to fit into a country's notion of what it means to serve--or simply have a job. 

What Chuck Hagel Still Needs To Understand

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently said the ban on transgenders serving in the US military "continually should be reviewed.

He hasn't stated that the ban should be lifted. However, he has stated his belief that "every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have the opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it".

So far, so good, right?  Well, it is, except when you consider what he said about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  Letting gays, lesbians and bisexuals serve in the military is all well and good, he opined, but that the issue of transgenders serving is "more complicated" because sometimes we "require medical attention" that can't always be provided in the remote (or "austere", as he put it) locations  in which armed forces members often find themselves.

Now, some of you might say, "He has a point".  And you'd be right.  What if I were in some desolate area of, say, Afghanistan and ran out of my prescribed hormones?  Or, more important, what if the medical supervision needed to ensure safe hormonal therapy wasn't available.  Then, of course, there is the question of what to do if someone in such a setting were to develop complications related to surgery or other aspects of transitioning.

I would like to say that it should be possible to overcome such difficulties.  It probably is, but I couldn't tell you how.  Nor, for that matter, could most health care providers.

At least, most in this country couldn't.  I'm guessing that, perhaps, someone in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada or Israel has answers to those questions:  Those nations allow trans people to serve in their Armed Forces.

But having to consider that question leads to another:  Is transgenderism primarily a medical condition?  Or, at any rate, should it be classified as such?  Almost all current definitions used by health care and insurance providers, as well as researchers and policy-makers, are based on medical and physiological criteria, and the "treatments" are pharmacological and surgical ones.  

While some trans people exhibit physical traits and mannerisms of the "opposite" sex, being trans is as much a state of mind and spirit.  Some would argue, as I would, that a trans person doesn't become trans by putting on the clothes of the "opposite" gender, taking hormones or getting surgery.  Doing such things merely allows trans people to live more easily as their true selves.  At least, it does for some:  There are trans people who don't do any of those things but live as the gender in which they identify, whether or not their physical characteristics and behaviors conform to their culture's ideas about maleness or femaleness, or of masculinity and femininity.

Thus, some trans activists like Pauline Park denounce the "medicalization" of transgenderism.  She, and her fellow activists (including yours truly) believe that people should be allowed to live as the gender to which they identify, whether or not they choose, or are able to, take hormones or undergo gender reassignment surgery.   Some cannot afford the surgeries or even lack medical insurance; others are unable to avail themselves to those options because of other medical conditions.  Still others simply do not want to risk the possible complications of hormones and surgeries.  Ms. Park thinks--as I do--that no one should feel forced to do these procedures simply to have the right to live and work as his or her true self.

But the ability to get coverage for hormones and surgeries--to those employers and insurers who offer it--and the struggle for equality has been predicated on the notion that transgenderism is mainly, if not entirely, a medical condition.  While that may have helped to decriminalize wearing the clothes of the "opposite" gender or remove a little bit (though certainly not much) of the stigma attached to being a trans person, it also limits us.  And it will limit the military, who will deny themselves some talented, intelligent individuals who want to live as the women or men they actually are rather than by the "M" or "F" that was checked off on their birth records.  That is what Chuck Hagel and the military brass need to understand in "reviewing" the ban against transgenders serving in the military.

What The Repeal Of DADT Won't Change

When "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed, I pointed out--on this blog and to people I know--that it wasn't an unmitigated victory for LGBT who are in, or want to join, the military.

For one thing,  I expressed concerns that DADT's repeal could actually make LGBT people in the military more vulnerable to sexual, and other kinds of, harassment than they were when DADT was the official policy.  Under DADT, some gay servicemembers were "flying under the radar," so to speak, and other servicemembers could only make assumptions about the sexual orientation (or, in some cases, gender identity) of other servicemembers.  No one wants to go through the embarrassment and humiliation, not to mention the legal problems, that could stem from assuming that someone was gay and harassing him or her.  With DADT gone, gay servicemembers can be more easily identified--and harassed or worse.

Also, the repeal of DADT did not clear the way for transgender people to serve in the Armed Forces.   One who identifies as such cannot join; anyone who comes to identify as such, and begins a gender transition, after enlisting is not allowed to remain in uniform.

There is still another problem that the repeal of DADT didn't, and couldn't, address:  The culture of the armed forces is not, and probably never will be, tolerant, much less accepting, of people who are not identifiably heterosexual and cisgender.  The very sorts of traits and values valued and promoted by and in the military are not exactly hospitable to diversity in gender expression and sexuality.  Plus, the emphasis on creating "traditional" families (ironic, when you consider that military families have some of the highest rates of divorce) will probably ensure that the military brass won't be welcoming toward LGBT people.  That Pentagon computers block any website they deem to be LGBT-friendly, while allowing unfettered access to such as Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, ought to tell you something about the military commanders' real attitudes toward LGBTs.

Plus, I'm not optimistic about the outlook for LGBT people in the military now that almost everyone expects Senator Chuck Hagel to be nominated as Secretary of Defense. While he says he is "committed to LGBT military families", his track record suggests otherwise.  In 1998, he opposed then-President Bill Clinton's nomination of James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg on the grounds that Hormel was "aggressively gay"--which, according to Hagel, would prove an impediment to doing the job.  He finally apologized for his slur two weeks ago.  But he still hasn't apologized for derogatory comments he made about Congressional Representative Barney Frank.  

I'm waiting to see just how "committed" Sen. Hagel will be to LGBT military families.