Trump's Trans Military Ban Is Worse Than "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

[Initech]

Media reports about President Trump’s transgender military policy, which he formalized in a directive late last week, have cast the new rules as something less than an outright ban on transgender service. The Associated Press reported that the policy “gave the Pentagon the authority to decide the future of openly transgender people already serving” and that the president “appeared to leave open the possibility of allowing some transgender people who already are in uniform.” A New York Times headline blared that Trump had given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “wide discretion” over the transgender ban. Indeed, some observers, including supporters of LGTBQ equality, seem to think the policy really isn’t so bad.

In reality, the new Trump policy is the worst of all possible worlds, in part because, like “don’t ask, don’t tell” before it, it’s been designed to be hard to fight in both the court of law and the court of public opinion. Like DADT, it will lose, but not before inflicting serious damage on both trans individuals and the military force-wide.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/08/29/why_trump_s_military_trans_ban_is_worse_than_dadt.html