Trans Universe

The year was 1993.  Clinton was President.  Gay, lesbian and bisexual people felt they finally had a friend in the White House.  And, even though transgender people officially started the gay movement at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, they only began finding their voices in the equal rights movement in the early 1990’s.  They had very little visibility and vertically no credibility.  We weren’t on anyone’s radar.

In that year, President Clinton wanted to fulfill a promise by making the US military safe for people, regardless of their sexual orientation, but it didn’t turn out the way people wanted.  The now infamous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law came into affect and it did not protect people in the military based on their sexual orientation, if that orientation was something other than straight.  The law gave commanders a chance to hunt down gay, lesbian and bisexual service member in order to weed them out.  Transgender military people didn’t ask to be included, but included they were.

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I just received an “Action Alert” from the Servicesmembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) asking me and others to send a letter to our local newspapers and the national newspapers on stating the need to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) supports this repeal and has since Day One of our existence.  We knew back then that transgender people were being kicked out under DADT, but did not have the proof until this year with the survey we did.

I included the Action Alert SLDN sent me after my comments.  When you click onto their link, it takes you to a place where you fill out various pieces of information and it then sends you to a pre-written letter to send off to those newspapers.  You can change the words in the letter.  If you read down in the letter, you will see near the end it says, “gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.” When I saw that, I added the word “transgender” in that list and sent it out with that minor change.  Afterwards, I sent a response to Aubrey Sarvis at SLDN telling him what I did.

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(Note: Also posted on PFLAG’s blog.)

For years, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been the official witch-hunt policy that gave the US military open-ended permission to ruin the careers of any person they suspect were “homosexuals.” It never had anything to do with whether the person actually acted upon their sexual orientation, or even if the person was really gay or not. It mostly stems from the Department of Defense’s archaic and narrow view of what they think should be gender-normative behavior for men and women, including sexual activities. Basically, you don’t have to be gay, or act gay, or be sexually active with a same-sex partner, as long as they think you’re gay. They hold all the cards.

It’s the famous oxymoron of “Military Intelligence” in play here. This is why transgender-identifying service members also find themselves snared in the DADT trolling nets that commanding officers like to throw out every so often. Maybe they have to “catch their limit” to get promoted. Who knows? But, we do know for sure that transgender service members need to be factored into the DADT mix when the discussion comes up.

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Guest Blogger Dixon Osborn (Cross posting from The Bilerico Project)

Dixon Osburn is Co-founder and former Executive Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

The Palm Center at the University of California Santa Barbara this week published a new report by a “study group” of four flag officers calling for repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In issuing the report, the four flag officers have joined five dozen other generals and admirals that have called for repeal. The growing chorus for repeal from the highest ranks of our armed forces should be cause for celebration.

The report’s findings are indeed groundbreaking. For the first time ever, four flag officers have reviewed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in some depth and, according to the Palm Center, found that the law “prevents some gay troops from performing their duties, that gays already serve openly, that tolerance of homosexuality in the military has grown dramatically, and that lifting the ban is ‘unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion.’”

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