Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate with bipartisan support to block President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military. Now your help is needed to get additional sponsors for these bills and protect the many transgender service members—and their families—serving with honor and bravery.
As I have written before, many transgender service members are also parents. If they are forced out of the military, they may struggle to provide for their families, especially in states where there are still no protections against employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The ban will also impact service members and their spouses who are not trans themselves, but are raising transgender or gender-creative children. Children are less likely to thrive in an environment that condemns their identities. And parents or not, there is no evidence that the presence of transgender troops causes any harm to unit cohesion, discipline, or morale. All four service chiefs have agreed.
Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Jack Reed (D-RI), along with Representatives Jackie Speier (D-CA), Anthony Brown (D-MD), Susan Davis (D-CA), John Katko (R-NY), and Joseph Kennedy, III (D-MA), were the original co-sponsors of the bills (S.373 and H.R. 1032) in their respective chambers. In order to help these bills pass, however, they need more co-sponsors. E-mail your members of Congress today through this simple form (or call their offices) and tell them to support this legislation.
If you need more convincing—or simply inspiration—watch or read this piece by HRC’s Charlotte Clymer, a military veteran and transgender woman. Among her other roles was carrying caskets in Arlington National Cemetery. “Every casket and transfer case I carried was covered by an American flag,” she says. “No one at Dover Air Force Base or Arlington National Cemetery asked if those we buried were secretly transgender. It didn’t matter then, and it certainly doesn’t matter now.”
