President Joe Biden lifted Trump’s discriminatory and transphobic military ban back in 2021, shortly after taking office, thus fulfilling one of his campaign promises. But Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and House Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) want to bring it back and then some, all while demeaning transgender people in the process. According to the Advocate, this pair of congressmen introduced legislation last week to restrict transgender people from serving in the military once again.
In an insulting and confusing statement, Rubio compared being transgender to an allergy, saying, “The military has strict standards for who can and cannot qualify to serve. For example, under President Biden, you can’t serve with a peanut allergy.”
The statement from the Florida Senator sent on to accuse Biden of instituting a “woke social experiment,” and finished off by mocking the trans community saying, “We need to spend more time thinking about how to counter threats like China, Russia, and North Korea, and less time thinking about pronouns.”
In the same press release, Jim Banks similarly compared being transgender to ADHD, a condition which Banks says requires a waiver for entry to the military. Cosponsors included Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Budd (R-NC), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Mike Braun (R-IN), most of whom contributed their own statements using republican’s favorite buzzwords: “woke” and “pronouns.” The statements read less like a press release from dignified politicians and more like cheap political stand-up routines.
Several conservative organizations offered their own statements in support of the legislation, again resorting to buzzwords, cheap comedy, and flimsy claims. “Data shows that service members with gender dysphoria are at a much higher risk of suicide, crippling anxiety, or other mental conditions than their peers,” wrote Ryan Walker, vice president of Government Relations for Heritage Action in the same release. At no point did Walker give the source of this data or address how things like a military ban might be leading to suicide, crippling anxiety, and other mental conditions.
The statement also provided a link to Senator Rubio’s laughable “report” entitled Woke Warfighters: How Political Ideology is Weakening America’s Military which is packed with more insults and misinformation and repeats Rubio’s and Banks’ peanut allergy and ADHD comparisons, while throwing in depression and anxiety and “skin diseases like eczema and psoriasis” as other similar conditions that already restrict people from entering the military. Throughout the report, Rubio shows his continued contempt for the word “woke,” a word he seems even more obsessed with than anyone on the left.
LGBTQ groups slammed the legislation immediately. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement stating “We should be honoring anyone who chooses to serve our country in the United States Armed Forces. They are our heroes. They deserve our gratitude and respect. It is despicable that Senator Rubio and Congressman Banks are harkening back to an unpopular, Trump-era policy that would make it impossible for nearly every transgender American to serve openly in the military. The current policy is working and makes our military stronger. This is nothing more than a political stunt aimed at riling up an extremist base at the expense of what is best for our military, and it will fail.”
With a Democratic controlled senate, and Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, it does seem unlikely that Rubio and Banks’ legislation will have any success. It seems to accomplish little more than demeaning the transgender community to gain Rubio and Banks political points by taking a whack at the “woke” liberals to rile up their base.
