Pentagon’s transgender acceptance hit snags

The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is having trouble coming to a consensus how about how to integrate transgender soldiers into the ranks;

Peter Levine, who recently took over as the Pentagon’s acting personnel chief, said that Carter remains committed to pursuing the change, but added that it will likely take “months, but not large numbers of months” more to finalize details.

“If there was consensus on it, yeah, we would have done it,” Levine said. “But obviously there are different views from different officials in the services.”

He added: “We’re going to work through that . . . and we’re going to do it expeditiously so that we can do it in this administration. But it’s important that we not only do it, but do it right.”

I have no doubts that they’ll cram this down the uniformed services throats in the next eight months – they have to, the social justice warriors demand that it happen – it’s more important than defeating ISiS or the Taliban.

Some of the problems that face the military are in that picture of Staff Sergeant King above. He’s already serving as a woman – and he needs a GD haircut. Why have uniform standards if they’re not going to enforce those standards across the board?

While official Pentagon policy still forbids openly transgender personnel, [King’s] commanders have been supportive, [King] said. King even purchased a female dress Army service uniform, anticipating that [King] would be able to wear it soon.

“I made a decision that owning that uniform was important to me, and I believe that our leadership is going to do the right thing,” [King] said.

King’s sergeant major needs to be taught how to enforce current military standards – not only for letting a biologically male soldier to walk around with hair like that, but also for letting King talk to the Washington Post about it. It shows, though, that transgender people really don’t care about their service, they only want acceptance of their lifestyle – a lifestyle that many still consider deviant.

In one case, Army Sgt. Shane Ortega, a transgender man, was required last summer to go to a uniform shop where he was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii with a senior enlisted soldier to obtain a female dress uniform in order to meet Army officials at the Pentagon to discuss transgender policy concerns, according to Ortega and Army officials.

Ortega said the incident showed “a real lack of leadership and a lack of human compassion” and demonstrated the level of discrimination and ignorance in the military about transgender people is huge.

“I had to go through this experience at a public time … and try on this uniform in a public space and basically be humiliated because everyone in the space is going to go, ‘Why is this male soldier trying on this female uniform?’ ”

Tough. The military isn’t a social experiment, and you knew the standards before you signed. If you don’t like the required standards of behavior and conduct, you can always leave. But, then, the goal here is to cram this down decent society’s throat.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Category: Big Pentagon