Monday Evening, April 15, 2019
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MRFF CLIENT
WHO IDENTIFIES AS TRANSGENDER
SPEAKS OUT AGAINST
PENTAGON's DESPICABLE
TRANSGENDER TROOPS POLICY
The new policy limits service members
to their birth gender: Effective 4/12/19
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MRFF represents
over 1,000 LGBTQ military members of which 12 are armed service members who identify as transgender
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Emphasis Added by MRFF)
From: MRFF Client Name Withheld
Date: Apr 13, 2019, at 9:23 PM
The military’s transgender ban policy fundamentally blocks transgender people from joining the military while not allowing anyone to begin transition while in the military. This policy prevents the entry of qualified individuals and waits out those who can’t de-transition while forcing everyone else to remain in the closet. Ultimately the long term objective is to eliminate all transgender individuals from the military or keep them out of sight and out of mind.
This policy is simply the manifestation of xenophobic fearmongering exercised by ignorant, heartless hypocrites who hide behind their bastardized, cult-like version of Christianity. This ban violates transgender peoples’ civil rights in order and portrays them as subhuman.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) tirelessly advocates for the Constitutional civil rights of all active duty and veteran armed forces members regardless of their religious faith, no-faith, sexual orientation or gender identity. MRFF exists to be the voice others are not allowed to speak with.
I am one of their nearly 63,000 clients, 1015 of whom are LGBTQ. I am also a 20-year veteran and service academy graduate as well as a gender-conforming transsexual woman. As a military officer and leader, I proudly served my country with great distinction while, with great anguish, concealing and denying my gender dysphoria. There are many like me currently serving and have always been people like me in the military.
Upon transition, I experienced tremendous liberation, joy, sense of empowerment, and elevated self-esteem because my gender and sex were finally in alignment and I was living with full integrity: a core military value. This policy denies that experience to transgender military members. There is not a single assignment I had during my military career that I wouldn’t have been able to do as a transsexual woman. I was and I am equally lethal. Shamefully, this policy is based on unsubstantiated myths:
1)
Transgender members are not deployable
. Wrong! There are already many who have deployed to combat zones. Pregnant/postpartum women and soldiers recovering from injuries are placed on a temporary “non-deployable” list that would be analogous to transition surgery recovery?
2)
Cross-sex hormone therapy is a disqualifier
. Wrong! The military continues post-menopausal women who are on Hormone Replacement Therapy.
3)
The cost of medical care is too high
. Wrong! The military spends $84M/yr on Viagra, 5x more than projected for transgender care (Rand Corp). They are not eliminating military members with claimed Erectile Dysfunction. The amount required for transgender care has been described as so low as to be considered within the rounding error of the budget.
4)
Transgender surgery is elective surgery
. Wrong! In most cases, the medical community identifies it as a necessity. The military paid for my vasectomy; that was purely elective.
The American Medical Association has stated, “There is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender individuals from military service. Transgender individuals are serving their country with honor [as I did], and they should be allowed to continue doing so.”
Despite what’s stated in the DOD policy letter, the policy singles out able-bodied transgender people, forcing them to sacrifice their personal integrity. Many other countries have accepted and affirmed transgender people within their ranks without issue.
Why try to fix something that’s not broken? The answer lies with the purveyors (e.g. Family Research Council) of this heinous policy who hold animus against transgender people. They are afraid of anything that disrupts the status quo especially if it challenges their position of power or comfort level. Therefore, they prefer things to be black or white, good or evil, friend or enemy; simple concepts for simpletons. So they attack anything that deviates from the gender binary. The dominant role of conformity and uniformity in the military makes it a prime target of these bigots since it aligns with the religious orthodoxy accompanying their dominionist world view. In other words, transgender military members are the low hanging fruit for their theocratic authoritarian agenda (i.e. American Taliban) that ignores separation of church and state. It’s only the start. (
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/christian-right-plan-turn-us-oppressive-theocratic-state-already-started/
)
Clearly, the human impact of this egregious policy is unforgivable. The fear, misery and despair that comes from belonging to an organization that rejects you, treats you as less than, results in a sense of being an outcast. Having a transgender person in units has not been detrimental to unit cohesiveness thus far, but having any member of a unit who has been discriminated against and singled out as an outcast will.
In the larger society, 41% of transgender people contemplate suicide. Not because they are transgender, but because of the hatred, discrimination, violence, and torment perpetrated on them by others. This policy only compounds the situation.
To punish someone for being true to themselves, living with integrity is abhorrent. To all of us who answered the call to serve our country and sacrifice to defend our fellow citizens, this policy is an insult, particularly coming from a Commander-in-Chief who has demonstrated a gross lack of integrity.
-MRFF Client Name Withheld
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SALON
MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda
Highlighted and Quoted in Salon Article
The plot against America: Inside the
Christian right plan to "remodel" the nation
By:
Paul Rosenberg
Saturday, April 13, 2019
(
Excerpts from Salon/Emphasis Added by MRFF)
On April 3, USA Today published an array of stories under the banner, “Copy, Paste, Legislate,” exploring the political impact of model bills on state-level legislation — more than 10,000 bills from 2010 to 2018 — based on a two-year joint investigation with the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. The lead story headline said it all: "You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead."
[...]
To better understand David Barton’s role in particular, I turned to Chris Rodda, author of "Liars for Jesus" and senior research director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
On the one hand, as an activist, she noted,
“Barton has for years encouraged his followers to run for local and state office, from school boards on up, and pushed the importance of local of state and local elections to get the voter turnout.”
This local election focus is where evangelical conservatives consistently have an edge over Democrats, she noted.
Barton's fake version of history is directly connected to political outcomes, Rodda said.
“The reason for the history revisionism is to make the followers of people like Barton think that the religious legislation is justified by history,”
Rodda said.
“Since most Christians aren't liars, he has to get them to genuinely believe that the legislation that they're trying to get passed is what the founders intended,”
when it’s actually the exact opposite, as I’ve noted repeatedly before (here, here and here).
[...]
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AMERICAN's UNITED
FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
AU has been MRFF's staunch ally in our fight for the separation of church and state in the U.S. Military since MRFF's inception in 2005. AU honored Mikey Weinstein as its First Person of the Year in 2011.
Theocrats Are Scary – And That’s The Truth
By:
Rob Boston
AU Senior Adviser/Editor Church & State
Thursday, April 11, 2019
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Excerpts from Americans United Blog/Emphasis Added by MRFF)
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and Vice President Mike Pence (former governor of Buttigieg’s home state) are both Christians from Indiana – yet you might have noticed that they don’t agree on much.
Pence is known for his anti-LGBTQ views, a stance that Buttigieg, who’s gay, not surprisingly finds troubling. During a recent speech,
Buttigieg laid into Pence
, remarking, “If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me – your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
[...]
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BACKGROUND:
MRFF's Statement on Previous
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Transgender Ban
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"Eighteen other Nations ALLOW transgender service members with zero issues, as stated in the Business Insider article below."
- Mikey Weinstein
MRFF Founder & President
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MRFF's Statement on Supreme Court Ruling Banning Transgenders to Enlist in the U.S. Military:
The predictable, fundamentalist, evangelical, extremist leanings of the U.S. Supreme Court's majority have risen to the surface of an already murky swamp of institutional religious intolerance.
Today, Tuesday, January 22, 2019, the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court showed their extremist religious bigotry by allowing Trump’s transgender military ban to take effect. Sanctioning this ban is an appalling breach of our Constitutional freedom that is a vehemently atrocious aberration and an affront to humanity.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF)
presently represents approximately 61,000 Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, Veterans, and Airmen in their brutal civil rights fight against fundamentalist Christian religious extremism and oppression in America’s military.
Over 1,000 of MRFF’s clients are LGBTQ, of whom 13 are transgender armed forces members
who are either on active duty, in the national guard, in the reserves, or civilians who serve in the Armed Forces.
[...]
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ABC NEWS
Pentagon's transgender policy for military service
to take effect, nearly two years
after Trump tweeted about the ban
By:
Elizabeth McLaughlin
Friday, April 12, 2019
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(
Excerpts from ABC News/Emphasis Added by MRFF)
The Pentagon's new policy that places limits on the military service of transgender individuals goes into effect on Friday, nearly two years after President Donald Trump tweeted that he wanted to ban transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military.
The new policy largely
requires service members and those wishing to join the military
to adhere to the standards associated with their biological sex.
[...]
The Pentagon asserts that the new policy is not a ban on transgender individuals, saying
"all persons will continue to be treated with dignity and respect."
[...]
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"So Sad"
From: (name withheld)
Subject: So sad
Date: April 13, 2019 at 8:55:15 PM MDT
So sad to see Bibles being removed. Also sad to see an organization like you so hell-bent on removing God from everything.
The Bible says, although you don’t really care what it says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”.
You are on a mission that is going to destroy or great country. It has never Turned out well for countries who kicked got out. And that is factual history not just a Christian opinion.
I’ll be praying that God will open your eyes to the evil and destruction you are doing to this great land before it’s too late. Then I hope you’ll put as much effort into it then as you are now but for the good.
(name withheld)
To see responses from MRFF Advisory Board Members John Compere, Mike Farrell, MRFF Founder & President Mikey Weinstein, and MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda:
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"Removal of religion from our ranks"
On Apr 14, 2019, at 1:21 PM, (name withheld) wrote:
I find it interesting as a soldier for our great country that none of our leaders ever ask what they would like to have. I’ve noticed that where I once found a Bible on the POW tables on bases once sat that a Book of Faith is now placed. It feels to me that you have become as Isaiah states bringing wind and confusion to our ranks. I don’t wish to attack or denigrate, but it appears to me that anyone asking for explanations receive open attacks in retaliation pasted all over your website. What I’ve seen shows a genuine concern from your constituents that in turn brings scorn and destruction rather than a true adherence to any belief or Faith.
I hope and pray you could provide a professional response without the need to destroy what you deem an attack and injustice. I’m a simple Christian soldier seeking only to understand why you would take such a defensive stance, when you seek to quote the Constitution I defend, yet would remove people’s constitutional rights to religious expression trying to convince everyone that this is the only way to appease all. I’m a very tolerant person and believe that any religion that betters a person is in turn helping that individual. In attempting to be politically correct you would in turn insult and attack rather than help in a situation. A gentleman in the Middle East taught me that religion in and of itself teaches peace and tolerance yet here we find ourselves attacked for simply trying to understand why we are attacked as Christians to appease the rest of the nation founded on Christianity.
Sincerely
(name withheld)
To see responses from MRFF Founder & President Mikey Weinstein and MRFF Advisory Board Members
John Compere and Mike Farrell:
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MRFF Information/Contact:
(505) 250-7727
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