Today's Post

Normally I search the news for topics to write about but all that is in the news lately is about California’s new law for trans-student. It is either about the conservative response or the liberal response to the conservative response. So it took a little searching to find today’s topic.

While the U.S. military struggles with transgender solders other nationals around the forge ahead with diversity.

Transgender: Israel drafts first sex-changed female soldier
The Washington Times
Date: 15 August 2013
Posted By: By Cheryl K. Chumley

For the first time in the nation’s history, Israel has drafted a transgender female soldier — a teenager who is currently undergoing sex change surgery to be a girl.

Breitbart reported the action, based on various blog reports.

The transgendered draftee reported for duty at a base near Tel Aviv this week, Breitbart reported. She immediately advised doctors there of her surgery for gender-change. And the military’s response: So what?

So what! Here in the U.S. she would have been discharged from the military. Mother Jones has an article about trans-servicemembers…

The Pentagon's Transgender Problem
New studies suggest that transgender civilians are twice as likely to enlist, and transgender veterans are 20 times as likely to commit suicide.
By Adam Klasfeld and Brett Brownell
Aug. 15, 2013

Transgender soldiers and sailors largely fly under the radar, but they are hardly uncommon. In a recent survey (PDF) by the Harvard Kennedy School's LGBTQ Policy Journal, 20 percent of transgender people contacted said they had served in the military—that's twice the rate of the general population. A 2011 study estimates there are nearly 700,000 transgender individuals (about three people per thousand) living in the United States. Meanwhile, the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) is scheduled to release a report today, which draws from Department of Veterans Affairs data, showing that the number of veterans accepting treatment for transgender health issues has doubled in the past decade. (While viewing the full report requires a subscription, an abstract should be available online as of today.)

These two new peer-reviewed studies indicate that, beyond being discriminatory, the military's current policy starves the armed services of some of their likeliest recruits, and puts transgender people who serve at greater risk of discrimination, homelessness, and assault than those who don't.

In typical military fashion, the military commissioned a three year study to study “the problem.” By that time we will have a new president and the president may not be a Democrat and the conservatives I don’t think will initiate any changes in military policy.