http://ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=71706
Transgender people can serve openly in the United States military, following last week’s announcement by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that he has lifted the ban on open trans service.
During a June 30 news conference, Carter said that the policy change will roll out over the next 12 months, the Washington Post reported, starting with guidance issued to current transgender service members and their commanders.
Lifting the ban began immediately, as service members can no longer be involuntarily separated from the services solely on the basis of being transgender, Carter said.
Carter added that the policy extends to medical coverage, including hormone therapies.
“Americans who want to serve and can meet our standards should be afforded the opportunity to compete to do so,” Carter said at the news conference. “The United States Army is open to all who meet the standards, no matter who they are. Embedded in our Constitution is the principle that all Americans are free and equal.”
LGBT organizations applauded the change, which came about after a year of study.
“As we have seen so many times before – in the long battles for marriage equality, for anti-discrimination protections, and over ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ itself – when government condones discrimination it gives others tacit permission to do so as well,” Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur said in a statement. “Today’s announcement is a strong statement that the federal government is moving away from discrimination. It sends a powerful message to states that still seek to target LGBT people with discrimination that these archaic policies have no place in a modern, respectful America.”
The Palm Center, an independent public policy think tank, also hailed Carter’s announcement.
“With today’s historic decision the U.S. military has taken a sweeping step to advance readiness,” Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, said in a statement. “In ending discrimination that had no basis in medical science or military necessity, Secretary Carter is enhancing readiness as well as core values of honesty and integrity, an enormous accomplishment with a durable impact on all service members.”
San Francisco resident Veronika Fimbres, a Navy veteran who transitioned in 1978, also praised the move by the Defense Department. Fimbres, 63, had served as a Navy corpsman prior to her transition.
Veronika Fimbres Photo: Duane Cramer
“I saved lives and worked at Balboa Naval Hospital, showing leadership at 17 by handling the orders of seven service members and myself,” she recalled in a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter . “I served at Coronado Amphibious Base, where I worked at the clinic and saw Navy SEALS and their families. I checked the crotches of servicemen who came in from the field. I inoculated everyone, from newborns on. I was starboard supervisor on the ENT Unit.”
Fimbres, who is African-American, recalled experiencing both racism and sexual abuse during her service.
“There was a great deal of sex that went on in the Navy and not all of it given willingly. I am still being treated for PTSD for sexual abuse while in the Navy,” she said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Fimbres survived those abuses and has been a community leader since coming to San Francisco in 1996. A long-term HIV survivor, she has worked with the Shanti Project and AIDS Emergency Fund. She also served on the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Commission for 14 years.
She has also taught third year medical students at UCSF how to deal with transgender patients and is a licensed vocational nurse.
She was happy to see the ban on trans military service lifted.
“I commend the Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, for stepping up to the plate, as it has not been done,” she told the B.A.R. “It is awesome. Bill Clinton should have done it, instead of that stupid Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
Signed into law by Clinton, DADT was a policy by which gay and lesbian people could serve in the military as long as they didn’t disclose their status. It went into effect in 1993 and Congress repealed it in 2010. GLB people could serve openly in the fall of 2011. Trans service members, however, were still unable to serve openly.
Congressional action was not needed for the Pentagon to lift the ban on trans service members.
Fimbres urged LGBT people who are against the military to respect the choices of those who wish to serve.
“While many veterans hate war, the experience and what can be gained by being in the service cannot be stressed enough,” she said. “It should be a personal choice, and now that they have removed all restrictions regarding being trans in the service, I think many trans men and women may very well join. The choice is up to the individual. If it meets their needs, who are we to tell them to not join?”
Fimbres acknowledged that changing the policy is not the same thing as changing minds. She hopes to sign with a speaker’s bureau in order to publicly address ongoing transgender military issues.
