New Report: Open Trans Military Service “Administratively Feasible”

Our colleagues at the Palm Center at San Francisco State University this week issued a new report finding that allowing open military service for transgender people “is administratively feasible and neither excessively complex nor burdensome.” The study, “Report of the Planning Commission on Transgender Military Service,” comes from a commission of experts including three retired Generals and serves as a road map for the U.S. Department of Defense to review their regulations that disallow open transgender military service.

The report comes three months after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he is open to reviewing the regulations that bar transgender people from serving openly, and ahead of the three year anniversary of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

National Center for Transgender Equality commends the findings of this report and calls on the Defense Department to initiate the review. NCTE is confident that open transgender military service is inevitable and we will continue to work until it is achieved.

Read the report here.

Toward Open Military Service

Transgender people cannot currently serve openly in the U.S. Military. Military medical regulations, as currently written and implemented, effectively preclude service. These rules are based on unsupportable, old fashioned, unscientific nothing and they must end. And they will end.

Finally, nearly three years after Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed, attention is finally turning to trans military service. Just this week, our colleagues at The Palm Center announced that they have commissioned eleven studies, supported by the largest known grant ever given to a trans policy effort. And yesterday, The Williams Institute released a new analysis of the challenges reported by veterans in the NCTE/Task Force National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS).

Even more is happening behind the scenes. Conversations are starting, plans are being laid, and progress seems inevitable. We will win open military service for trans people.