It’s Off To Court We Go

Trump’s military ban is heading to the Appeals Court in Washington DC and I came across this article from NBC News about the case.

Trump's transgender ban is headed to court, along with the dehumanizing claims he makes to support it
The people who serve our country deserve better than the president's insults.
NBC News
By Robert S. Chang, founding executive director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law
December 10, 2018

With the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled to hear oral arguments on Monday in the Doe v. Trump legal challenge to the transgender military ban, Trump's Justice Department is expected to make arguments diminishing the humanity of transgender people and insulting their willingness to put their lives on the line to defend this nation.

Though the Trump administration has falsely called service by transgender people a matter of national urgency — even going so far as to attempt a leapfrog of normal legal process by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in prematurely — the only response from the court should be to affirm the equal dignity of transgender Americans and their right to full participation in American life, including the right to serve their country with honor. The proposed transgender military ban (endorsed by a commander-in-chief who did not serve when he had the opportunity) is a slap in the face to those transgender persons who have served, who are serving, or who want to serve.

By banning transgender people from serving in the military, the Trump administration denigrates honorable service of transgender people who have already fought and died and sacrificed alongside their fellow soldiers.

The author go on to say it is dehumanizing and counterproductive in that it forces servicemembers who are highly trained out of the military.

Besides which, the administration’s reasoning for the ban and claims about “unit cohesion” are stale and recycled, having been previously discredited time and again when used against people of color, women and gay men and lesbians.

Let’s face it what Trump wants to do is discriminatory and has been used against every marginalized community. It was wrong then and is wrong now. Furthermore, all of our NATO allies let trans people serve in their militaries.

Frederick Douglass once said, in exhorting his fellow African Americans to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War, that whoever “fights the battles of America may claim America as his country — and have that claim respected.” Transgender soldiers are already serving in the U.S. military, fighting the battles of America; their service and sacrifice establishes clearly their claim on America. Enabling discrimination against them calls into question our own commitment to the values we claim that America represent.

We need to end this discrimination by voting! We have to let our voices heard, we cannot sit by and do nothing, and we must be pro-active.