Tag: transgender military

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Podcast: Madonna, Record LGBTQ Congress Members, More Kevin Hart Debacle, Brazil

In this episode of The Randy Report podcast:

• The new Congress is sworn in with a record number of LGBTQ lawmakers

• Donald Trump scored a victory in court this week regarding his proposed ban on transgender military service members

• Comedian Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets & jokes landed him on Ellen DeGeneres’ couch

• Brazil’s new president attacks LGBTQs on day one

• And Madonna surprised the crowd at the iconic Stonewall Inn on New Year’s Eve

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report.

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Appeals Court Sides With Trump Administration In Trans Military Ban

A panel of three judges in the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to overturn an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly which prohibited the implementation of the anti-trans policy.

Donald Trump has scored a win in his fight to ban transgender people from the U.S. military as a federal appeals court ruled in his favor today, reports The Washington Post.

A panel of three judges in the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to overturn an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly which prohibited the implementation of the anti-trans policy.

It’s important to note that three other judges have ruled against the trans ban and those injunctions remain in place nationwide. And so, trans soldiers will continue to be able to serve in the U.S. military for now.

In fact, today’s ruling indicates the D.C. Circuit Court may have more to say about the ban later as the five-page decision handed down today only addressed Kollar-Kotelly’s injunction saying she technically “made an erroneous finding that the Mattis Plan was not a new policy” because she failed to note certain nuances about the plan issued by former Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“The government took substantial steps to cure the procedural deficiencies the court identified in the enjoined 2017 Presidential Memorandum,” the order says. “These included the creation of a panel of military and medical experts, the consideration of new evidence gleaned from the implementation of the policy on the service of transgender individuals instituted by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter (‘the Carter Policy’), and a reassessment of the priorities of the group that produced the Carter Policy.”

While Donald Trump’s July 2017 tweets were a blanket ban on transgender service members, the Mattis Plan would ban “transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service.”

The newly-tweaked policy would allow trans troops to remain in service if they “have been stable” in their biological sex for 36 months and do not seek hormone treatment or gender reassignment surgery.

Transgender advocates say gender dysphoria is a literally a defining characteristic of being transgender, and so the Mattis Plan still represents a full-fledged ban.

LGBTQ advocacy groups the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) quickly denounced the ruling in a joint statement.

“Today’s ruling is a devastating slap in the face to transgender service members who have proved their fitness to serve and their dedication to this country,” said NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter. “We will keep fighting this cruel and irrational policy, which serves no purpose other than to weaken the military and punish transgender service members for their patriotism and service.”

“Today’s decision is based on the absurd idea that forcing transgender people to suppress who they are in order to serve is not a ban,” said GLAD Transgender Rights Project Director Jennifer Levi. “It ignores the reality of transgender people’s lives, with devastating consequences, and rests on a complete failure to understand who transgender people are. It is also destabilizing to the military to so dramatically reverse a policy that has been in place for over 2 years that senior military officials acknowledge has operated with no problems.”

A 2016 study by the RAND Corporation found that allowing the estimated 2,000-11,000 active-duty transgender troops to remain in the military would “have minimal impact on readiness and health care costs” for the Pentagon.

The research estimated health care costs for trans soldiers would cost only $2.4 million to $8.4 million a year, which represents a tiny 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase in spending.

Additionally, the study concluded there would be “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness” in the U.S. military should trans soldiers be allowed to continue serving.

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Trump Administration Asks SCOTUS To Allow Trans Military Ban Before Review

The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service members to go into effect while waiting on SCOTUS to decide whether or not to even take the case up for review.

The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service members to go into effect while waiting on SCOTUS to decide whether or not to even take the case up for review.

Apparently, the United States is in a state of emergency regarding the few thousand transgender people currently serving with honor in the U.S. military.

I know – it doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s go back a bit, shall we?

In July of 2017, President Trump surprised American military leaders and the world when he announced his plan to ban trans military service members after “consultation with my Generals and military experts” due to the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of transgender service members.

Remember, this is the guy who told Americans during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would ‘fight’ for the LGBTQ community.

Riiiiight.

Conservatives loved the idea; Liberals and LGBTQ activists were outraged.

In the ensuing months, numerous injunctions were ordered by judges blocking the implementation of the policy, and for good reason.

Not only has The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a statement saying there is ‘no medically valid reason’ for banning transgender people from serving in the United States military, but all four service chiefs (Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force) have testified they’ve seen no negative effects from transgender military personnel serving the country they love.

According to a 2016 RAND Corporation study, there are an estimated 1,320 to 6,630 transgender individuals out of the 1.3 million service members on active duty.

That same study estimated the cost of health care coverage for transgender personnel could range from $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year, which is about one-fifth of what

So, we can afford dick pills, but not trained trans soldiers…?

Then, earlier this month, Department of Justice Attorney Brinton Lucas told the D.C. Circuit Court that if the Trump policy were to be implemented, transgender troops would not be “discharged on the basis of their transgender status.”

(Wait for it…)

But, they would have to identify as the biological sex assigned to them at birth meaning they would have to stop any transition-related medical treatment – treatment that every major medical association has deemed necessary and life-saving for trans people.

Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, the Trump administration bypassed the appeals court process and requested the Supreme Court review the case before the circuit level courts even issue their opinions.

This isn’t a very popular approach as SCOTUS doesn’t like to review a case before it has made its way through the lower courts.

The high court likes to have cases work their way through traditional channels so they have the benefit of the opinions of lower court judges by the time cases reaches SCOTUS.

This week, the Trump administration filed emergency briefs asking the high court to allow the transgender ban to go into effect until SCOTUS can review the case in 2019.

According to Think Progress, the emergency briefs claimed waiting any longer to boot transgender military service members poses “too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality” and it would be “contrary to the Nation’s interests.”

But such arguments have gained little traction in the past.

For example, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal ruled in September that “loss of unit cohesion” was the same argument used to keep Black people, women, and gay people from joining the military.

“The military has repeatedly proven its capacity to adapt and grow stronger specifically by the inclusion of these individuals,” wrote Bernal as he dismissed claims that including trans people would generate any different outcome.

It’s worth noting that the emergency briefs filed this week object to numerous motions for discovery filed in the cases. It seems the Trump administration wants to claim that all documentation related to how the ban was developed would fall under executive privilege.

What they really mean is that if those documents came to light, the American public might discover that Vice President Pence (a known homophobe) and his virulently anti-LGBTQ friends were instrumental in pushing the new ban through.

Should the Supreme Court allow the policy to be implemented before the case reaches SCOTUS, thousands of transgender soldiers could be discharged for being who they are.

This short video from the New York Times introduces just a few of the trans soldiers who are at risk of being discharged.

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Podcast: Marriage Equality In Taiwan & Bermuda, Threats Against Boston Bars, 1st Same-Sex Kiss On Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

In this week’s podcast:

* A teenager is arrested for making threats of violence to two gay bars in Boston

* Taiwan overwhelmingly says ‘no’ to amending their civil code to include marriage equality

* The Trump administration is trying to take it’s ban on transgender military service members to the Supreme Court

* The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade made history with its first same-sex kiss

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report

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Trump Administration Leap Frogs Over Appeals Courts, Asks SCOTUS To Rule On Trans Military Ban

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and review its long-intended ban on military service by transgender Americans.

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and review its long-intended ban on military service by transgender Americans.

According to The Washington Post, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco has filed a request asking SCOTUS to bypass traditional legal processes and rule on the challenges to the ban which have held the proposed policy to be unconstitutional.

In July of 2017, Donald Trump surprised many, including members of his own administration, with an abrupt announcement proposing the ban on transgender service members.

At the time, Trump tweeted that he had consulted with his “Generals and military experts” before announcing the ban.

But in March of this year, more than 20 retired generals and admirals signed on to a letter opposing such a ban.

“The administration’s announcement on the treatment of transgender service members is a troubling move backward,” the 26 officers wrote in their statement via the Palm Center, which researches issues of gender and sexuality.

“There is simply no reason to single out brave transgender Americans who can meet military standards and deny them the ability to serve.”

Additionally, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association both say claims by Secretary of Defense James Mattis indicating trans soldiers diagnosed with gender dysphoria cannot effectively serve in the military are false.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted an injunction that blocked implementation of the ban in October 2017.

This past August, she rebuffed a request by the Trump administration to lift the injunction after some of the proposed language had been amended.

Kollar-Kotelly was not convinced saying discharging trans soldiers and denying enlistment would most likely to be found discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Oral arguments are scheduled to be heard at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on December 10 regarding Kollar-Kotelly’s order that blocked the ban.

It’s highly unusual to approach the Supreme Court before exhausting the available appeals court processes.

“Trump’s lawyers fail to understand that the government is not entitled to play leapfrog whenever it loses in federal court,” says attorney Joshua Matz, who filed an amicus brief in the case. “If the department’s battery of ‘emergency’ petitions were granted, they would immediately overload the Supreme Court docket with politically fraught challenges to Trump administration policies.”

In addition to Kollar-Kotelly’s injunction, judges in three other states – California, Maryland and Washington – have also enjoined the bans implementation thanks to challenges filed in those states.

In related news, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider whether to grant review to another case regarding protections for transgender Americans at the high court’s November 30 conference.

According to BloombergLaw.com, the issue in question in that case concerns whether trans discrimination in the workplace constitutes discrimination based on sex, which is illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Opponents say transgender status is not related to the issue of ‘sex.’

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News Round-Up: July 27, 2018

Some news items you might have missed:

• Paleontologist and InstaHunk Francesc Gascó (above) is hot. That’s all I got. Happy Friday!

• A new study by AARP of over 1,700 gay men in the U.S. found most gay men over 45 are single.

• Folks were surprised when the Stonewall Democratic Club in NY chose to endorse Gov. Andrew Cuomo instead of out lesbian challenger Cynthia Nixon.

• Did Donald Trump use the Pulse Nightclub shooting massacre to cover up Don Jr.’s meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian government attorney turning out to be a dud?

• Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus called Donald Trump’s proposed transgender military ban “the dumbest government policy you could possibly pursue, and it weakens us and hurts our military.”

• The world famous Nob Hill Theater, the world’s oldest male strip club, is closing.

• Recording artist Lizzo has released a new single and music video, “Boys.” The video premiered on Out.com who declared, “’Boys’ feels remarkably fresh — a fitting clapback to any stragglers who still feel women can’t express sexuality and lust.” Check it out below.

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Bipartisan Group Of Lawmakers Look To Protect Trans Military Service Members

gay-military.jpeg

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is looking to protect transgender military service members with a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The amendment, if adopted, would codify the Obama-era open-service policies into law, thus blocking Donald Trump’s proposed ban of trans service members.

The amendment to the NDAA was drafted by Democratic Reps. Jackie Speier (Calif.), A. Donald McEachin (Va.) and Susan Davis (Calif.) and moderate Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), whose son is transgender.

The House Rules Committee, which will determine which amendments will actually get a vote on the floor of the House, is set to meet Monday and Tuesday this week.

As you may recall, Donald Trump surprised folks when he tweeted from out of nowhere that he wished to place a ban on transgender service members in the U.S. military.

In August of last year, Trump told reporters that he was “doing the military a great favor” by attempting to ban trans service members.

In October, a federal judge effectively blocked Donald Trump’s proposed ban on transgender service members in the military saying the ban was “driven by a desire to express disapproval of transgender people generally.”

Last month, top military leaders of the Navy and Marine Corps said they have seen no evidence of morale, discipline or unit readiness problems with transgender troops now serving openly in the military.

Trump’s ban is currently in legal limbo as four different federal courts have placed a hold on the executive order.

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News Round-Up: May 9, 2018

LA stuntman Trevor LaPaglia knows how to finish things like a boss
(image via Instagram)

Some news stories you might have missed:

• This was a looooong day. LA stuntman Trevor Lapaglia (above) shows how to finish a tough day like a boss.

• Out actor Mario Cantone explains why he’s not in the current Broadway revival of The Boys in the Band. (Tip of the hat to kenneth-in-the-212)

• With almost 15,000 transgender service members in our military, Rolling Stone did a deep dive into what it’s like to be trans and serve while our Cheeto-In-Chief attacks them on a regular basis.

• The housing crisis in London is so extreme homeless gay men are checking into gay saunas over night just to have a place to sleep.

• A teacher in Texas who was twice voted teacher of the year and received “exemplary reviews” found herself on “administrative leave” because she was accused of promoting a ‘homosexual agenda.’ Now she’s suing.

• TV’s wonder producer Ryan Murphy is donating all of his profits from his upcoming FX series Pose to LGBTQ charities.

Pose premieres June 3 on FX. Watch the trailer, which dropped last week, and then make sure you tune in 😉

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Navy & Marine Corps Leaders: No Problems With Transgender Soldiers

Donald Trump says he “consulted” with his military experts and generals about transgender military service members.

Well, here’s what the folks in charge really have to say.

From the Associated Press:

The top military leaders of the Navy and Marine Corps tell senators that so far, they’ve seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops now serving openly.

Gen. Robert Neller is Marine Corps commandant. Neller says that some of his commanders have said there are no problems at all. He says others say they’re spending “a lot of time” with transgender individuals as they work through medical requirements involving the transition from birth gender to preferred gender.

The Pentagon in 2016 lifted the ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military. President Donald Trump has pushed for a ban, but that directive is being challenged in numerous court cases.

Additionally, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft told lawmakers he is committed to allowing transgender members to continue to serve until he is compelled to do otherwise.

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AMA Slams Trump’s Transgender Military Ban: “There Is No Medically Valid Reason To Exclude Trans Individuals”

In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the largest medical organization in the United States declared “there is no medically valid reason — including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — to exclude transgender individuals from military service.”

The American Medical Association went on to say that the recent report by the Penatgon evaluating accommodations for transgender soldiers “mischaracterized and rejected the wide body of peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness of transgender medical care.”

AMA CEO James Madara also slammed the idea that medical costs for trans military service members would be prohibitive.

“The financial cost is negligible and a rounding error in the defense budget,” Madara wrote. “It should not be used as a reason to deny patriotic Americans an opportunity to serve their country. We should be honoring their service.”

A government-funded study by the RAND Corporation estimated paying for the transition-related healthcare of transgender troops would cost between $2.4 million and $8.4 million each year, a less-than-1 percent increase in active-duty healthcare costs.

The Trump administration announced plans last month to carryout Donald Trump’s proposed ban on transgender service members.

According to a memo from Mattis delivered to the White House, most trans people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria — including those who required medical treatment or surgery — will be barred from serving in the military.

The ban is currently on hold thanks to four separate court-ordered injunctions.