Joe Biden, the President of the United States, signed an executive on Monday that reversed a controversial ban by former president Donald Trump on transgender people serving the American military, a move cheered by LGBT or GLBT community advocates that achieves a campaign promise. Flanked by Kamala Harris, Vice President, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lloyd Austin, the Defense Secretary, the president signed the executive order in the Oval office.
Biden tweets that it is simple: The United States is safer when everyone is eligible for any designation he wants to do. In 2016, former President Barack Obama allowed the trans community to serve openly, and transition genders to receive medical care facilities, but Trump froze their recruitment while allowing trans-serving personnel to remain.
Today, I repealed the discriminatory ban on transgender people serving in the military. It’s simple: America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 25, 2021
When Republican President Trump announced the ban in 2017 on his Twitter account, he said that the U.S. military needed to focus on an overwhelming and decisive victory without the burden of the tremendous medical costs and disruption of transgender military personnel. Former military Surgeons General said at that time that the transgender ban by Trump hurt military readiness.
How many Trans members are serving in the U.S. Military?
The Defense Secretary stated that he supported the Biden move and would instantly take action to ensure the eligibility of transgender individuals to enter the military. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the former Republican president’s policy of 2019 could stand while it faces separate lawsuits in lower courts. Around 1.3 million active military personnel are serving in the American military, according to the statistics of the Department of Defense. Whereas, there are no official data shows on the number of trans personnel serving the military. But a United States policy research institute, the Rand Corp, projected in 2016, almost 2450 active service members were transgender.
Source: Web
According to Alphonso David, the world’s greatest military will again value readiness over partiality and qualifications over discrimination, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender civil rights organization in the U.S. However, the fact that any president of the country can decide whether transgender people can give their military services is problematic. Any fit American should have the right to serve.
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Chair of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, said that they must make sure that future presidents of the country don’t regress on the values of equality and inclusion. He intended to add a provision to the 2021 defense policy bill to secure a lasting nondiscrimination policy for the U.S. armed forces. A transgender man, Nic Talbott forced to drop out of the Training Corps of the Army Reserve Officers because of the Trump ban. He said on Monday that Biden’s decision had given him and other transgender people a valuable opportunity to join the American military once again.
