Trans Service Members Fought Trump's Ban in a History-Making Congressional Hearing

By Christianna Silva


On Wednesday, February 27, five transgender service members made history on Capitol Hill, testifying before the Residence of Representatives about why the president’s proposed ban on transgender service members is unjust.


Democratic Representative Jackie Speier of California invited the service members to openly speak about their experiences in the military for the initial time in U.S. History in front of the Residence Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Employees. Since the congressional testimony of Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, was dominating a persons vision on the Hill, the service members waited in front of an empty committee for over 30 minutes before obtaining their chance to be heard, Broadly reporter Diana Tourjée tweeted.


Army Capt. Alivia Stehlik, one of the service members who testified, just returned from a deployment to Afghanistan, where she replaced a pregnant soldier in her unit. She transitioned soon following the Obama administration lifted a ban on serving while transgender in 2016. At the time, Stehlik was already a physical therapist in the service, right after being commissioned as an infantry officer from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. She was a graduate from Ranger School and mentioned she lived a “soldier’s life.” By all accounts, she was a celebrated service member.


Transitioning didn’t change any of that, she instructed them committee.


"What is the value of having transgender people in the military? Based on my experience first as a combat arms officer and medical provider, response The reply is unequivocally that my transition — and thus several others — has dramatically increased the readiness and lethality of every branch of the armed forces,” Stehlik said, adding that transitioning made her a more efficient soldier.”


Stehlik sat alongside Navy Lieutenant Commander Blake Dremann, a distribute officer who is also the board chair of transgender service member categorize Sparta Pride; Army captain Jennifer Peace, an intelligence officer; Employees Sergeant Patricia King, an infantry soldier; and Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Akira Wyatt, a hospital corpsman designated to treat Marine infantrymen.


All five of the transgender service members are still allowed to serve because they came out as transgender and acquired medical treatment while in the Obama administration, which makes them piece of a tiny cohort of service members who are exempt from President Trump’s recommended ban, according to the ACLU. Although, Chase Strangio, an employees attorney with the LGBT & HIV Project at the ACLU, told MTV News that there really are still multiple lost possibilities trans and other gender non-conforming folks face as a result of the Trump administration’s proposal, which was first introduced with a tweet from the President on July 26, 2017 on the unsubstantiated claims that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical charges and disruption that transgender [sic] in the military would entail.” If the ban goes into effect, the directive will ban all new transgender recruits from enlisting and prohibit transition-related surgery for mobile service members.


Currently, there really are numerous lawsuits fighting against the ban, although there really is only one injunction stopping the ban from completely going into effect up until those lawsuits are finalized: Stone v. Trump. That injunction helps in avoiding the Trump administration from barring transgender people from enlisting or discharging transgender people because of their gender identity.


“The final outcome of the litigation is still nevertheless to be determined,” Strangio explained. “The question is … does the ban go into effect while in the litigation, which can take years in the federal courts, or is it blocked while in the pendency of these cases? Now it is still blocked because there really is one injunction in place. It can might not be blocked for long, yet so far it is.”


Even if the ban is allowed to go into effect while the other litigation makes its by means of the courts, the transgender service members who are exempt from the ban may still be skipped over for promotion and deployment possibilities because of their gender identity, according to Strangio.


“Even with the exception for them, there really are so several lost possibilities that folks are never going to know about because they're operating under a policy that essentially tells them that they're unfit to serve,” Strangio added.


Supporters of President Trump’s offered ban on transgender service members claim that the healthcare bills of covering a transition are also high. Lori Trahan, a Democratic Representative from Massachusetts, pointed out that the Department of Defense spent about $8 million on trans-related medical bills since 2016 — less than one percent of the Pentagon’s annual healthcare spending.


The Trump administration also points to how much time the service members are unable to serve due to medical recovery to support the recommended ban. But, all five of the service members dismissed the claims that transition care was also drawn-out and expensive. None of these took any significant time off, and several had used their personalized holiday time to have the surgeries. Peace pointed out that a solitary pregnancy can lead to 16 months of non-deployability, in comparison to a number of weeks of recovery from transition-related surgeries. King mentioned she and her commander determined the ideal time to undergo vocal feminization surgery was throughout her personalized leave around Christmas.


“By doing this, I shortened the time that I was going to be down because I couldn’t speak over Christmas leave,” King mentioned. “I just used a whiteboard converse with my kids, and then at the end of January I was prepared to go to the field with my unit.”


Dremann mentioned that he had taken off just seven weeks over a three-year year period. “My transition had zero impact on any deployments or readiness issues. I was habitually obtainable for training,” he explained.


Soon following the five service members testified, James N. Stewart, a retired Air Force general who performs the duties of the undersecretary of defense for employees readiness, testified that the policy isn’t a ban. He mentioned that any person can join the military as long as they never seek any medical treatment connected to their gender identity and are not diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition in which people experience distress due to the sex they were designated at birth.


“The realities regarding the condition called gender dysphoria and the accommodations necessary for that gender transition in the military are far more complex than @we could assume,” Stewart said.


But, the ACLU argues that saying a transgender person can serve so long as they don't show any signs of being transgender is, in effect, a ban on transgender service.


“It is insidious and dangerous to propose it's not one because a trans person could serve in their appointed sex at birth,” Strangio told MTVNews. “That is like telling a gay person that a ban on same-sex marriage isn't a ban on them getting wedded because they can marry someone of the opposite sex.”


For her part, Stehlik says, she let the planned ban’s animosity stop her from fulfilling the oaths she made as a service member: “I belong in a combat arms unit, taking care of my soldiers.”


To learn more about issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community, head to lgbt.Mtv.Com.