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The Corporal Klingers of the U.S. military can rest easy.
At least for now, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, military men who dress like women — or vice versa — might still get that Section 8 discharge, figuratively speaking.
The court has temporarily stayed nationwide injunctions from lower federal courts, which blocked the Trump administration’s partial ban on “transgender” people serving in the military unless they serve in the accoutrements of their real sex.
Of course, the problem the military faced before Trump’s partial ban wasn’t the Corporal Klingers, Klinger being the perfectly sane character on M*A*S*H who hoped cross-dressing would get him sent back home from the front lines in Korea.
The problem was transgenders who actually believe they are the opposite sex and demand the right to serve.
The Obama administration said they can. The Trump administration said they can’t.
Thus, the usual court fight.
The Ban
The fight began not with Trump, but with the Obama administration’s order in July 2016 to permit cross-dressers to serve.
The plan? Permit people who believe they are members of the opposite to serve and get them “medical care.” That meant taxpayers would pay for “sex-reassignment,” the term of art used to describe the unspeakable surgical and pharmaceutical mutilation these unfortunate people undergo in the vain hope such butchery will resolve their mental difficulties.
The order was to have taken effect in July 2017, after which the transgenders would be allowed to serve and get the “medical care” they need.
Hilariously, the Washington Post reported, the Pentagon would begin accepting such troops “as long as a doctor certified that they were mentally and emotionally stable over the previous 18 months.”
In other words, they had to be mentally and emotionally stable in their mental and emotional instability.
On July 26, 2017, President Trump stepped in to to stop the insanity with three tweets:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.
The order took the military by surprise, and unsurprisingly, the military’s phalanx of drag queens exploded with rage.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis modified the policy and permitted “transgender” personnel to serve as long as they a served in the sex they actually are. The drag queens double-timed it to their attorneys.
Thus did the policy land in federal courts, two of which in the Ninth Circuit issued nationwide injunctions blocking the policy. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. blocked a similar injunction from a third court.
The Trump administration took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in November.
Today, the high court stayed nationwide injunctions from the two lower federal courts. The court’s order permits the ban on cross-dressers to continue until the courts settle the matter.
As expected, the court’s so-called conservative wing prevailed.
Transgenderism Is a Disorder
The premise of those who think “transgender people” can ably serve is that such individuals are normal, but trapped in bodies of the wrong sex. All they need is acceptance, hormones and surgery. And that, says former John Hopkins psychiatry chief Paul McHugh, isn’t right.
Wrote McHugh, the disorder is akin to anorexia nervosa. “Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.”
But as well, McHugh wrote, the larger issue is the “meme” that inspired the Obama administration’s ideologically-driven decision, and those attempting to overturn the Trump administration’s policy in court. The meme that “one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture…. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.”
And now, it’s damaging the military.
Photo: Marilyn Nieves/iStock/Getty Images Plus
