Trump Targets Transgender Military

Matt Thorn, President and CEO of OutServe-SLDN, the national voice for LGBT service members, talks to  Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ talks about Trump’s threatening tweets that transgender service members would be banned from serving in the Armed Forces. Trump claimed in his Tweets that our transgender community should be banned from the military because of the financial cost and disruption associated with transgender service members. Currently there are 15,000 transgender service members in the US military. The financial cost of providing health care to transgender troops would be at most $8.4 million per year according to the New England Journal of Medicine which is one one-hundredth of one percent of the military's annual health care budget. Fifty-six retired Generals and Admirals have warned Trump that if his ban were to be implemented it would degrade military readiness. Transgender troops have been serving honorably and openly for the past year and have been widely praised by commanders. Eighteen foreign nations including the UK and Israel allow transgender troops to serve and none have reported any detriment to readiness. We talked to Matt about what action OutServe-SLDN will take to protect transgender service members and recruits should Trump follow through on his threats to ban transgender military service members and his spin on our LGBTQ issues.

When asked what he hopes to accomplish, Thorn stated, “Well I hope that people have a higher degree of respect for transgender individuals particularly those serving in the military. We have an all-volunteer force regardless of sexual orientation, sex, national origin, race or gender identity. People are signing up to voluntarily defend our country and it is important to recognize that and appreciate that. We don’t have a draft and we don’t have a mandatory service like Israel does. So these are individuals who have a very high degree of commitment to our country and it’s really fundamentally important to brief that awareness. Trans individuals are not just Caitlyn Jenner; these are individuals who are serving in combat zones who have a K-47 or fly an F-35 jet and it is really fundamentally important that they are given the respect and dignity that they serve as human beings, as individuals. Our hope is that as destructive as these tweets are and as much of a distraction that they are that it does raise awareness of the public that Caitlyn Jenner is just one example of a transgender individual but we have 15,000 who are defending our country every single day around the world…”

Matt Thorn a graduate of Catholic University is a fierce advocate for what he believes in and the mission of progressive change. He is committed to uniting and bringing education, awareness and a variety of services to progressive and socially conscious community. OutServe-SLDN is the largest non-profit, legal services, advocacy and policy organization dedicated to bringing about full LGBT equality to America's military and ending all forms of discrimination and harassment of military personnel on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
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