On Jan. 22, the Supreme Court of the United States allowed a ban on transgender service people in the military to take effect.
The ban was first proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump via Twitter in 2017, and has since been heavily contested by LGBTQ+ activists and transgender people inside and outside of the United States.
Like most of Trump’s actions since running for president, this ban is a clear display of bigotry and intolerance to an already marginalized group and is justified by the bare minimum of what could be considered an argument.
Let’s discuss why Trump’s justification for the ban doesn’t hold water. On July 26, 2017, Trump’s since-deleted tweets said, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
So, Trump believes that transgender persons should not be allowed to serve in the military on the basis of their cost to the system, with regards to the military’s finances and the cost to their potential “victory.”
The issue of finances is settled by the Rand Corporation—a nonprofit which offers research and analytics into the armed forces—which put out a study in 2016 estimating the cost of transition-related medical treatment. It estimated that annually, the military would spend somewhere from $2.4 million to $8.4 million on treatment, depending on how many military members would be eligible for the treatment and how far medically each would want to go.
While a few million dollars sounds life-changing for any one of us, in comparison to the U.S. military’s budget of $590 billion in 2017, $8.4 million amounts to a drop in a bucket—more accurately, a fraction of a drop. For comparison, the military spends approximately $84 million annually on erectile dysfunction medicines for the troops.
For whatever transphobic reason, conservative politicians have decided that a non-essential medication which allows people to have sex is a necessary expenditure, while even allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military is a costly burden.
Setting aside the minimal “cost” of covering treatment for transgender individuals, Trump apparently believes that the very presence of transgender troop members would cause “disruption” in the military to such an extent that “decisive and overwhelming victory” would be unattainable. To this, I legitimately ask how banning about 9,000 trained, active service members would bring the U.S. closer to victory. Even disregarding the matter that transgender people are not a burden and do in fact deserve rights—which is depressingly still a position I still have to argue—this ban only serves to hinder people who have fought and continue to fight for their country.
“If the military can bar someone on the basis of gender identity, what stops it from banning any other marginalized groups under the pretence of financial strain or disruption of victory?” – Cameron Surkan, second-year humanities
By definition, the ban diminishes the military. Yet, Trump maintains that the financial and strategic gains are worth it.
While Trump’s rationale for the ban is weak at best, his arguments shouldn’t matter even if they were valid—because regardless of the reasoning or justification behind this action, it is a discriminatory ban which sets a dangerous precedent for individual rights in the United States. If the military can bar someone on the basis of gender identity, what stops it from banning any other marginalized groups under the pretense of financial strain or disruption of victory?
This ban is especially horrendous because it is government-sanctioned, which, for many individuals, legitimizes the action. This sends a message to the public that now it is acceptable to discriminate against transgender individuals, which can affect the community in catastrophic ways. The old adage that no one is truly free while others remain oppressed still stands. The ban on transgender individuals only serves to weaken the military—while sending a message that bigotry towards the transgender community is acceptable.
