Transgenders in the military have been a serious bone of contention during the past few years. On Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied a Trump administration request to lift her injunction against the proposed Trump administration ban on serving. Or, as it was known previously: Return to What the Rules Were Before the Obama Administration Decided Social Engineering Was Better Than Actually Having an Effective Military.

When Trump announced the new policy/reversal of the last minute Obama policy on Twitter last year…

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military,” Trump wrote. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…

….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

…and directed the Department of Defense draft the new policy by March 2018, heads exploded and the lawsuits began flying almost immediately. There was also the question of how many service members were going to be affected by the change, since NO ONE had a clue...

Friday’s memo requires US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to determine in the coming months how to handle the futures of the estimated 1,320 to 15,000 transgender people currently serving in the military.

WHOA, dawg! There’s a big old number problem there, right? Estimates of transgenders varied wildly, depending on what side of the argument you were on.

When the DoD policy came out, the administration argued it wasn’t an outright ban.

President Donald Trump announced on March 23 that he would endorse a plan by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people who experience a condition called gender dysphoria. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter, citing concern over military focus and medical costs.

…The administration argued that the new policy, which also bars anyone who requires or has undergone gender transition, was no longer a categorical ban.

In April, a federal judge in Seattle *inserteyeballroll* saw that differently – as did courts in Baltimore, D.C., and Riverside, CA – ordering the administration to let transgenders serve, regardless of where they stood in their gender condition, and to “prepare for trial.”

“Because transgender people have long been subjected to systemic oppression and forced to live in silence, they are a protected class,” Pechman wrote. “Therefore, any attempt to exclude them from military service will be looked at with the highest level of care.”

Because “feelz” and “activist.” This mess is headed to the 9th Circuit.

Fast forward to today’s pile-on.

This particular federal edict issuer felt it behooved her to take a swipe at the basest cruelty of forcing someone in a “volunteer” service to, well…

Kollar-Kotelly disagreed. The new policy effectively implements the original ban “by targeting proxies of transgender status, such as ‘gender dysphoria’ and ‘gender transition,’ and by requiring all service members to serve ‘in their biological sex,’” she wrote in Monday’s ruling.

Yup. Serving in your BIOLOGICAL sex. BIOLOGICAL. Almost a dirty word any more. So she wasn’t budging.

She ordered the Pentagon to revert to the Obama-era norm that would allow transgender people to serve openly.

The “norm.” You crying yet?

One thing this D.C. judge DID leave in place is very important and at the crux of the most compelling argument against transgenders serving in the military:

A moratorium on the Defense Department paying for gender reassignment surgery was upheld.

And it’s just a crying shame these judges have no clue what actually being in a deploying unit means, as opposed to watching Forrest Gump.

Let me explain, because it’s NOT as simple as “Boom, carved you a vagina. Go buy a skirt.”

First and foremost, this is entirely elective. You are not going to die if you don’t get to be a boy/girl. It’s not cancer surgery, diabetes, asthma or a war wound. It’s ELECTIVE.

A transitioning transgender has to undergo at least a YEAR of counseling prior to surgery. That means that individual is lost to their unit for all that time. That person also has to have intense hormonal therapy for that year. Your body thinks it’s the exact opposite of what you want to be. You have to force it to change. What happens if you are in the field and the pills don’t come? You start reverting. Guess what. You’re not deploying. Again. You are a loss to your unit.

And all of this? The government is supposed to pay for. The therapy, the continual hormone therapy, the $50-130K ELECTIVE surgery and all the time lost by that troop. With no guarantee that the troop comes out hunky dory, and is actually a viable service member. As well, there are repeated studies showing transgenders have higher suicide rates and personality disorders. For example:

Lady Gaga gave a helpful assist last year to the “Why Transgenders Shouldn’t Be in the Service” argument while trying to do the exact opposite:

But guess what, again?

It doesn’t stop there.

Once that Navy, AirForce, Army or government contracted surgeon puts a government paid-for scalpel to that troop? Every single thing ingested or listened to on a shrink’s couch for the REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIFE becomes the VA’s problem, whether they stayed in for two years or twenty. When that woman now man breaks down humping packs in Afghanistan, or even up and down hills on Camp Pendleton – because, for all the testosterone, “he” STILL HAS A WOMAN’S BONE STRUCTURE – you get to pay for it. Tilted pelvises hate humps.

What about all the years to come of the tremendous hormone doses these folks have to ingest to stay the sex they’ve chosen? When cancers start emerging?

You get to pay for it. For the rest of their life. As if it were a war wound. A battle scar.

As I said once before when discussing this, when we’re talking about cutting married military couples’ housing allowances to save money, when my son is posted to a foreign country, and is told he has to buy his own vehicle because the AirForce can’t find a van to get them the 40 miles from where they have to live to where they work, when a World War II or Afghanistan veteran can’t get into the VA to save his life now?

Transitioned transgenders are a rated disability upon discharge, with lifetime medical care.

No. There’s no place for elective surgeries in this military. There’s no place for almost half a four year enlistment to be eaten up by an elective procedure, when the rest of your unit is pumping every 12 or 18 months. There’s no place in expensive technical schools for a skill to be learned that then sits on office duty because “medical hold.”

You don’t go in the service for what it can do FOR you. YOU are supposed to be doing something FOR the service. FOR the country.

And, in turn, it does things for you that are beyond imagining and a rare privilege to be part of.