Trump: Making America Ignorant Again

We’re halfway through 2017: Taiwan became the first Asian country to allow same-sex marriage, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first sitting prime minister to participate in the country’s Pride festival, and Malta passed a new act that makes it illegal to try to “change, repress or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression.” However, while the rest of the world moves forward this year, the U.S. is taking a major step back. At the end of August, President Trump signed a memo officially banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.

A year ago, the Obama administration announced that transgender Americans could be in the military, and the Pentagon would cover the costs of those in uniform to go through gender transition. The U.S. had finally seemed to join the list of countries, including the United Kingdom, Israel, and Canada, that were making an effort to move toward a less judgmental society. President Trump is now attempting to undo this step toward equality.

The Trump administration knows that our military is struggling financially. With low numbers of soldiers, outdated equipment, and too much turmoil around the world, the U.S. military could use as many soldiers as possible, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The RAND corporation, a national research and analysis service, found that the new ban would affect from 2,000 to 11,000 active soldiers, as well as thousands who are looking to join. The Heritage Foundation further states that the United States cannot survive such a blow, with troops already deployed in 180 different countries and not enough back home.

President Trump believes that transgender individuals are too mentally unstable to serve our country, stating that the U.S. cannot be burdened with the “disruption that transgenders in the military would entail.” However, the RAND study, looking at countries that allow transgender people to serve in their militaries, found that these foreign militaries agree that having transgender troops has “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.”

President Trump sees the presence of transgender individuals in the military as entailing “tremendous medical costs and disruption.” He argues that it costs too much for the United States to pay for gender reassignment surgery for its transgender soldiers, taking away from the “decisive and overwhelming victory” our military should win.

The Obama administration, however, proved the opposite. When President Obama first brought the issue up to the American public, the RAND corporation found that “[U.S. military] health care costs would rise $2.4 million to $8.4 million a year, representing an infinitesimal 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase in spending.” The slight increase in military spending proved to the Obama administration that allowing transgender individuals into the military did no harm.

Multiple LGBTQ organizations are filing lawsuits challenging Trump’s new policy, and politicians are joining together to craft acts against the ban. The Stuyvesant community, too, must do what we can to avoid the backward steps that our country is taking. We must stand together as a community to show our opposition to it.

We must keep our school’s LGBTQ community comfortable and raise awareness that Trump’s policy is discriminatory and unacceptable. The acknowledgement that we, as the student body of Stuyvesant, and as the future generation of New Yorkers and Americans, do not accept or approve of this new ban shows our dedication to equality as well as freedom. While that may not change Trump’s policies toward transgenders, our actions can show the LGBTQ students in our school that they are welcome and respected here.