Like most areas of society, the U.S. armed forces are experiencing the effects of transgenderism, and critics say military preparedness has suffered as a result.
He cited Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said, “I also believe we should avail ourselves of the best possible talent in our population, regardless of gender identity. We would be rendering ourselves less fit to the task if we excluded from our ranks people who meet our standards and who have the skills and devotion to serve in uniform. This is the right thing to do.”
Other military experts have a different view.
“At the root of the matter is whether someone who identifies as transgender represents a risk or burden that is greater than the contribution that person would make,” retired U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Dakota Wood told The Epoch Times. “Meaning, do the accommodations that must be made by the military system and the potential risks to the force in operational settings outweigh the relative value of conceding to such a person’s desire to serve in uniform?”
Wood, who retired from the Marines in 2005, is the senior research fellow for defense programs at The Heritage Foundation.
Citing the work of Heritage Foundation colleague Thomas Spoehr, director of the foundation’s Center for National Defense and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Wood said statistics show that those who suffer from gender dysphoria are at increased risk of mental health problems.
“Their medical treatment necessarily consumes resources and time that could be spent elsewhere, increasingly important as the military’s medical support capabilities are coming under increased stress,” he said.
Militaries are primarily fighting units, not social welfare agencies, according to Wood. Anyone who needs regular medical care could be at risk if their care is interrupted by military activities.
The rest of the fighter’s unit could also be “placed at unnecessary risk similar to the loss of members due to any other injury or wound.”
“Except in the case of a transgender service member, it would be the result of a personal choice rather than a wound inflicted by an enemy or an injury subject to some military operations,” he said.
The military gives rigorous physical exams to potential recruits, Wood said. Disqualifying conditions include asthma, severe allergies, very poor dental conditions, and physical deformities.
“A desire to serve is not the same thing as the ability to serve when military effectiveness in the most strenuous circumstances is the prevailing requirement,” he said. “There are many ways to serve the country and one’s community. There is not a de facto ‘right’ to serve in the military.”
Recruiting is also a problem, according to André Van Mol, a board-certified family physician, co-chair of the Committee on Adolescent Sexuality at the American College of Pediatricians, and co-chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Task Force at the Christian Medical & Dental Association.
“As a former Navy medical officer, I see problems with both recruitment and effectiveness for a military that has been legislated and ordered into an ideology that has little to do with fighting and winning wars or advancing readiness and safety,” Van Mol told The Epoch Times.
A military requires cohesion and uniform standards, he said, and controversial gender identity policies undermine that goal.
“It must have equality of opportunity and rewarding of achievement, rather than primacy of identity politics,“ Van Mol said. ”And it requires mutual respect, which women in the military likely will not recognize [when] trans females with male genitals [are] in their showers and other private spaces. Armed forces which no longer enforce freedom of speech, conscience, religious practice, and medical judgment will do poorly recruiting from a population that values a First Amendment.”
“Recruiting struggles are an amalgamation of issues, most notably the military being out of the minds of young Americans as a job opportunity with no widespread call to arms like the one after 9/11,” according to the publication.
Regarding the added medical costs for transgender individuals, Van Mol said not only are there initial costs to the military but also to the Veterans Administration (VA) for surgeries and lifelong hormonal therapy.
“There are also costs from complications of both the hormones and the surgeries, the compromised physical readiness of said service member from several factors, and the decreased availability of already time-challenged military and VA physicians, surgeons, and mental health specialists who will have to care for the many needs of trans-identified service members,” he said.
“This is more than financially costly; it compromises military readiness.”
