The Freedom From Religion Foundation denounces President Trump’s executive order banning transgender Americans from serving in the military as a sop to Christian nationalists — and as a move undertaken at the expense of human dignity and America’s security.
The previous Trump ban, which President Biden repealed in 2021, barred transgender people from joining the armed forces but allowed those in service to keep their jobs. This order, which describes transgender identity as a “radical gender ideology” and gives the Department of Defense 30 days to develop rules, is worded in such a way that it appears it will evict all currently serving transgender service members. The order demeaningly alludes to transgender military members as not being “mentally and physically fit for duty.” It is gratifying to see that transgender service members are already challenging the ban.
The order reads: “Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” These are standards that the newly approved Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, an ardent Christian nationalist with a history of drinking and womanizing, does not meet, even if he thinks he’s “redeemed.” Hegseth notoriously complained about “effeminate” leadership in the military and said, “The next commander in chief will need to clean house.”
The executive order piously continues, “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” The new policy would also appear to bar openly nonbinary service members as it declares that the policy of the U.S. government “is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
The ban has already elicited a strong congressional response.
“Kicking nearly 15,000 service members out of the military solely because of their identity would be catastrophic to our military readiness and recruitment,” says U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus’s Transgender Equality Task Force. She and Rep. Eric Sorenson, D-Ill., introduced the Ensuring Military Readiness Not Discrimination Act in anticipation of the ban.
The U.S. military fell short by 41,000 recruits last year in its recruitment goals. An executive order evicting transgender individuals therefore undermines American security. Medical costs for transgender military, which the order alludes to as one reason for the ban, are low compared to many other costs. Defense Health Agency data shows that the military spent $15 million over five years on surgeries, hormones and psychotherapy for transgender personnel, or about $3 million per year. In contrast, the Department of Defense spent nearly $300 million on erectile dysfunction medications, such as Viagra, for military retirees between 2011 and 2015.
Trump vowed repeatedly to “stop the transgender lunacy” on “Day One” of his presidency. “With the stroke of my pen, on day one, we’re going to stop the transgender lunacy,” Trump said at a Turning Point USA (Christian nationalist) rally in December. “And I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools. And we will keep men out of women’s sports.”
Lambda and Human Rights Campaign, which FFRF gave $50,000 to last fall as the 2024 recipient of the Henry Zumach Freedom From Religious Fundamentalism Award, have also vowed to block implementation of what they call “yet another discriminatory and dangerous attempt to bar patriotic transgender military service members from serving openly in the U.S. Armed Forces.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 40,000 members. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
