Transgender Lawsuits Seek to Reverse Donald Trump’s Pentagon Policy

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Advocates for the transgender ideology have filed two new lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s decision to end former President Barack Obama’s short-lived pro-transgender policies at the Pentagon.

The legal fight over the Pentagon’s rules is important because pro-transgender advocates are trying to persuade judges throughout the nation to approve and establish their claim that the government officials — including teachers, school boards, city councils and state legislatures —  must validate and support people who are trying to live as members of the other sex, regardless of each person’s male or female biology.

Trump’s formal rejection of Obama’s pro-transgender policies — and his support for a normal two-sex society — makes the task of winning those pro-transgender lawsuits more difficult, said Carisa Cunningham, a spokeswoman for GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD.

One lawsuit is being filed on Monday in a federal court in Seattle by Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN. The second federal lawsuit, Stone v. Trump, was filed in Maryland by the ACLU of Maryland. The plaintiffs in the Maryland includes several service members who want the federal government to help them live as members of the other sex.  The lead plaintiff is Petty Officer First Class Brock Stone, a Navy officer who has served in Afghanistan.

The two locations maximize the chance that the pro-transgender cases will be heard by progressive judges, who may declare that Trump’s power as Commander in Chief is insufficient to stop the enlistment of people who say they are living as members of the other sex.

The lawsuits argue that Trump’s direct rejection of the transgender ideology contravenes the Constitution’s requirement that “No person … [shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The two lawsuits follow an August 9 lawsuit featuring “5 transgender service members with nearly 60 years of combined military service,” according to a statement from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.

The well-funded pro-transgender Palm Center also complained August 28 that Trump’s policies create special policies for any soldiers who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex. “Even if some transgender service members are granted continuation of service despite the ban, they will serve under standards that apply only to them, in a system in which there is a presumption that they are unfit for duty, and with no assurance that their permission to remain will endure,” said a statement by five allies of the Palm Center.

The Palm center memo also argues that Trump does not have the legal authority to stop sex-related cosmetic surgery for soldiers trying to live as members of the other sex:

Because of the above statutory entitlement [from Congress] to all medically necessary care, President Trump does not have authority to deny medical care to anyone serving in uniform, including transgender service members. Congress has spoken on whether members of the military have earned full medical care, determining that they do. All service members have a statutory entitlement to full doctor-recommended medical care.

Advocates for transgenderism say each person’s legal sex is determined by their chosen “gender identity,” not by their biology. These advocates also argue that the federal and state government must support people who say they are “transgender” by requiring other people to treat them as members of the opposite sex and to refer to them with opposite-sex pronouns.

In contrast, polls show that most Americans want to conserve their two-sex society, in which laws and civic practices are intended to help the two equal sexes manage their different and complementary average desires and capabilities. Polls show that roughly one-quarter of Americans support the progressive claim that biology is subordinate to chosen “gender identity,” despite intense media pressure in favor of the pro-transgender, anti-sexes campaign.

The “gender identity” claims have a growing impact on the operation of different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered womensports leagues for girlshiking groups for boysK-12 curriculauniversity speech codesreligious freedomsfree speech, the social status of womenparents’ rights in childrearing, practices to help teenagers, women’s expectations of beautyculture and civic societyscientific researchprison safetycivic ceremoniesschool rules, men’s sense of masculinitylaw enforcement, and children’s sexual privacy.

There are very few “transgender” people. For example, advocates say from 1,320 t0 11,000 people in the military are trying fully or partly to live like members of the other sex, within the military population of 1.3 million full-time soldiers, sailors, marines and air force personnel. Fewer than o.3 percent of Americans wish to live as members of the opposite sex.

Trump’s formal opposition to the transgender ideology is pushing Democrats to make their unpopular transgender ideology an issue in the 2018 elections. However, Obama has said twice that his 2016 support for the ideology helped contribute to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election.

 

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