Transgender soldiers

The LGBTQ faction continues the political fight for acceptance.  For those not familiar with the abbreviation, it stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer" (although some later variations have additional letters suffixed for "questioning, intersex", and on and on and on). 

Back in 2011, President Obama jumped headfirst into this battlefield with his so-called "Don't ask, don't tell" directive for military troops.  Then President Trump, shortly after his inauguration, issued a "directive" - via Tweet, mind you - that transsexuals shall not be allowed to serve in the military.  Like all of his "directives", it was not a decision reached via study, research, consultation, or deep philosophical ideologies.  Rather, it was all just a political bonus tossed out to the Evangelical Christian faction of his base, who will reflexively support anything that is anti-gay or related.  This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban may proceed - at least for now.   And so the battle rages on.

So, regarding transsexuals - and all the other subgroups of the LGBTQ faction - the question before us is:  do they make good soldiers?  Those who are against having them in the military argue that their very presence hurts morale and diminishes the ability to fight a war.  Their advocates argue that this is all nonsense, that in fact LGBTQs are not inferior in any way; and besides, in many European nations, they serve right alongside all the other soldiers with no problems.  Well, the proponents fire back:  Europe is not the USA!  And on and on and on we go.

As for me, I am really not qualified to weigh in on this matter.  I've been a red-blooded unambiguous heterosexual male my entire life (and a darn good one!), so I cannot really comment on their fitness for military duty.  Meanwhile, I absolutely do not care what gender one prefers, either in self-identification or in choosing a sexual partner.

However, the good news is that there is a simple and logical solution to this dilemma.  The reason that it is even a political controversy is because we have escalated this issue up to high-level government officials, both elected (the President) and appointed (the Supreme Court).  But the proper place to resolve questions like this is within the military itself.  Let the generals weigh the pros and cons of having known LGBTQs within their ranks.  After all, we pay these top brass guys and gals big bucks to make these kinds of tough calls.

Military brass can base their decisions, not on identity politics, but rather, whether or not this improves their fighting capability.  By decentralizing decisions such as this, then the military can experiment with different policies regarding troop qualifications, and figure out what works best and what doesn't.  It is quite possible that they might change their minds a few times before the dust settles.

The Federal Government's role should be to decide what wars the military shall fight, and how much money they have to spend.  Anything beyond that is just micro-management.  Focus on the big picture, and delegate the details.   (Of course, they presently attempt to fight way too many wars and spend way too much money, but that's a different topic for a different column.)

Meanwhile, if the LGBTQ community really wants broad public acceptance, then they need to realize that the respect thing goes both ways.  When Colorado baker Jack Phillips told two gay men planning a wedding, no thank you, I do not want your business, then the prospective customers should have just walked away and found someone else to bake the damn cake.  No, that didn't happen.  Instead, they made a huge stink out of it, and hired a lawyer to sue him and sic a bunch of government goons on him.  You revealed your true colors, there, gay community.