Trump order targets transgender troops and ‘radical gender ideology’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/28/trump-transgender-troops-military-hegseth/

tRump is old and … intellectually challenged so he can not understand gender identification.  A lot of older people can’t handle the changes in society and the acceptance of new ways to be / live.  As far as the religious fanatics pushing the hate against LGBTQ+ people including trans people are cis people who do not feel a disconnect between their sex organs and their feelings of who they are in society.  Just as the same religious straight people can not understand the attraction gay people feel.  They don’t feel that way themselves, so don’t see being cis and straight being the only acceptable way to live as a problem. Instead they think because they don’t feel that way then no one else does so it must be a choice.  Or a mental defect to be cured.  They refuse to accept medical science / medical studies and all the evidence that it is real, exists, and normal.  We learn as a society and we as we grow in understanding we learn to accept new things.  Medical science and medical research tell us that being trans and gay is normal, also that medical care that affirms those feelings is important along with necessary.   Just because I don’t like a food or feel like I want to eat it, doesn’t mean no one likes it or don’t want to eat it.  But liking a food I don’t doesn’t mean it is a mental illness or makes a person unfit.  

saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”

 

It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

 

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.

 

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who has said that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,”

The above by the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth is wrong.  The only complication and differences caused by having transgender people in the military is not the trans people but the fundamentalist religious people / Christians like Hegseth who feel the entire LGBTQ+ is an abomination to his god and so shouldn’t be allowed to exist.   Or worse mix with the real children of god, people with good morals like the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth. This issue over transgender people in the military reminds me of when Clinton tried to make it legal for gay people to be out in the military.   Senator Sam Nunn went on a Navy ship and said no real service member wanted to be sleeping near, working next to, or using the bathroom facilities with the dreaded gay person, which some churches were desperate to keep from being accepted and live openly in society.  The anti-gay people claimed all sorts of horrors if gay people were allowed to service openly from the collapse of the military to mass exit of members.   None of that happened, the military stayed the world’s best and there was no mass fleeing from the service. 

These same people with the same hater mind set made the same claims about first black people being allowed to serve, and then when the military was desegregated.  The same was said of women in combat roles.  It always comes from the haters who use their personal bigotry as the metric for how everyone should be and feel.  And they never admit when all the horrors they claim will happen if those they are against get equality and inclusion never happen.  They just pick a new target and repeat the same attacks and hates.  Now it is the trans people’s turn to be accused of all the horrible things that blacks were, the gays were, that never were true.  Trans people have served openly for some time, studies show that they do not harm the military or lower the military readiness / effectiveness in any way.  Sadly far too many of our general public who know nothing about the military or who never served think they are experts and again feel that everyone has the same bigotries, racist, and misogynistic feelings they do.  Being in other countries or even different parts of the US will open closed minds.  Harris did not lose by much, she almost won.  It is too bad these hateful ignorant people are going to be able to enshrine their hates and bigotries into law and hurt so many people in the next few years. But remember if we can get the House then most of the damage can do with the passing of laws will stop, and if we can regain the Senate we can stop hateful ideolog judges from being installed.   It is up to us to get out the vote.   Hugs

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The executive order took aim at transgender individuals in personal terms, noting that physical and mental health conditions make them “incompatible” with military service.

January 28, 2025 at 12:28 a.m. EST
 
The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
 

President Donald Trump on Monday night issued an executive order targeting transgender service members and an array of other people, saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”

 
 

The list of conditions identified could affect tens of thousands of people depending on how it is interpreted. It cites diagnoses “that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization.”

The order calls for the Pentagon to adopt updated policies on the medical standards required for military service. It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

 
 

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.

 

The order builds on a previous directive, issued hours after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, overturning a 2021 Biden administration measure that permitted transgender troops to serve openly, which reversed an earlier ban from Trump’s first term in office. The new executive order does not immediately ban transgender individuals from serving, but it directs the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, to revise medical standards and submit a report to the president outlining steps to comply with the directive.

While the Defense Department does not keep track of the number of transgender personnel across the force, the latest shift in the long-running policy back-and-forth could impact thousands of service members. It also represents one aspect of a far-reaching Trump administration effort to roll back diversity initiatives across the government.

 
 

Trump signed the new transgender order along with others calling for the reinstatement of troops who were discharged during the Biden administration for refusing coronavirus vaccines; the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion offices in the Defense Department; and the creation of an “Iron Dome for America,” Trump’s vision for expanded missile defense.

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who has said that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,” promised in his first remarks to reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he would ensure implementation of Trump’s priorities, which also include ordering the military to guard the southern border.

“This is happening quickly,” he said. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”

 
 

In a November podcast, Hegseth said personnel receiving medication related to gender transitions would be unable to serve effectively.

Advocates for transgender people have said that there may be as many as 15,000 in the U.S. military. A 2016 Defense Department survey found that about 9,000 identified as such. Both figures represent less than 1 percent of the 2 million people who serve in the active-duty, reserve or National Guard components of the military.

For decades, the military considered transgender people to be sexual deviants who were unfit for service. But in 2016, after a year-long policy review, the Obama administration repealed a ban on transgender service, citing the value of ensuring that all qualified individuals were able to serve their country in uniform.

 

“We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer forces to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified — and to retain them,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the time.

 

The repeal followed the Obama administration in 2011 overturning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibited gay service members from serving openly, and the 2015 repeal of a ban on women serving in a wide array of jobs in ground combat units.

After taking office in 2017, Trump announced a ban on transgender military service in a series of tweets, without notifying key defense officials. The move triggered a scramble in the Pentagon, with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordering another policy review.

 

In 2018, Mattis adopted a new policy with Trump’s tacit support that softened the full ban, effectively prohibiting new transgender service members from joining the military but allowing those already in uniform to stay on.

The ruling was challenged in court, but the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s partial ban in 2019. The military began enforcing that policy later that year.

President Joe Biden quickly reversed Trump’s ban in an executive order after taking office in 2021.

A Brain Cleanser from Lit Hub

Snippets from my this week’s newsletter, with links.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror.
In January 1845, the greatest goth in literary history published what would swiftly become his most famous poem: “The Raven.”

Poe first sold the poem (for $9, the equivalent of about $375 today) to the American Review, where it would appear—under the pen name “Quarles”—in the February 1845 issue. It was published concurrently in the January 29 edition of The Evening Mirror, prefaced by a note from editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, who called it “the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’” Well, sure.
 
“The Raven,” if for some reason you don’t know it, is a narrative poem about a young scholar who, sitting alone on a bleak December night, mourning his lost love Lenore, is visited by a raven, who torments him by speaking, over and over again, a single word. Poe later wrote that he knew he wanted this word—“nevermore”—to be repeated throughout the poem, but finding the idea of a person uttering it too implausible, he struck upon “the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.”
 
Well, it worked pretty well, you might say. The poem, writes Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, “made an impression probably not surpassed by that of any single piece of American poetry. It was widely copied, parodied, and one humorist even took over a page of the Mirror to suggest five alternatives as to the relation of Lenore to the poet.”
 
One-hundred-eighty years later, it may be still unsurpassed, though contenders abound. Either way, as you have probably noticed, the parodies and tributes have never stopped. We shall be quoting it forevermore.

MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane

A Brief and Incomplete Survey of Edgar Allan Poes in Pop Culture

The Greatest Goths in Literary History

YEP, STILL SLAPS
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—            
Only this and nothing more.”
–EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE RAVEN”
In other (old)news this week
Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to his daughter, pooh-poohing the bald eagle as the symbol of America, and instead championing the great and noble turkey (January 26, 1784) • John Millington Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World premieres at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin and causes a riot (January 26, 1907) • The first part of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is published in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27, 1898) • Franz Kafka begins work on his novel The Castle at the mountain resort of Spindermühle (January 27, 1922) • Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is published anonymously in London (January 28, 1813) • Thomas Jefferson sells his library to the government after the Library of Congress burns down (January 30, 1815) • Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters premieres at the Moscow Art Theater (January 31, 1901) • The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published (February 1, 1884) • Great American Iconoclast Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is published (February 1, 1962) • David Foster Wallace’s eerily prescient Infinite Jest is published (February 1, 1996).
(snip-More)

I hope you enjoyed it! These newsletters are free, and are great for brain/heart health breaks.

Some things I found a need to know

A lawyer who represents Federal Employees.. the last bit is chilling.

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 Today’s speeches were delivered from behind bulletproof glass. Meanwhile, Trump just gave violent anti-abortion zealots free rein to blockade clinics and probably much worse.

The proposed school is being defended by the governor and state attorney general.

In 2022, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt declared, “Father, we just claim Oklahoma for you. Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus. Father, we can do nothing apart from you. We don’t battle against flesh and blood but against principalities and darkness.”

During his 2018 inauguration, Stitt pledged that his primary mission would be to “bring people to Jesus.”

Stitt last appeared here in November 2024 when he warned that “Satan is trying to take over my state” because a pagan woman gave the invocation at Tulsa’s city council meeting.

In June 2024, Still signed a bill allowing public school students to leave campus three times a week for “religious instruction.”

Peace & Justice History for 1/26

January 26, 1784
Benjamin Franklin, noting the bald eagle was “a bird of bad moral character” who lived “by sharping and robbing,” expressed regret it had been selected to be the U.S. national symbol.


Benjamin Franklin
Franklin proposed the wild turkey, “a much more respectable Bird and a true original Native of America.” He said the eastern wild turkey, known for its intelligence, cunning and boldness, was a far better symbol of the United States.
In a 1775 letter published in a magazine, Franklin made a good case for the rattlesnake as an appropriate symbol of “the temper and conduct of America.

How the bald eagle became our national bird (Interestingly, the link on the P&J History page leads to “Forbidden.” I thought I oughta make a note of it. The link here is on History.com, not forbidden when I posted.)
Frankin’s letter on the rattlesnake
January 26, 1930
Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the anti-colonial movement in India pledged to achieve complete independence, or Purna Swaraj, from Great Britain.
Nehru said:

“The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually . . . We hold it to be a crime against men and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country.”
January 26, 1950
The Indian Constitution became law and India proclaimed itself a republic. The new president replaced the King of England as head of state after nearly 100 years of British colonial rule. The Republic of India considered its sovereignty derived from the people, becoming the most populous democracy in the world. The day is now celebrated as Republic Day.
The new President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, after taking the oath of office:
“Today, for the first time in our long and chequered history, we find the whole of this vast land . . . brought together under the jurisdiction of one constitution and one union which takes over responsibility for the welfare of more than 320 million men and women who inhabit it.”
More About Republic Day
January 26, 1956
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for the first time, for driving 30 mph (48 kph) in a 25 mph (40 kph) zone in Montgomery, Alabama. This occurred shortly after the beginning of the citywide bus boycott he had helped organize. His home was bombed a few days later.
January 26, 1962

Bishop Joseph A. Burke of the Buffalo, New York, Catholic Diocese banned a new song and dance, “The Twist,” by Chubby Checker.
It couldn’t be danced, sung, or listened to in any Catholic school, parish, or youth event. Later in the year, the Twist was banned from community center dances in Tampa, Florida, as well. It was claimed the Twist was actually a pagan fertility dance.

“The Twist” by its originator
January 26, 1969
Police wielding truncheons and firing tear gas from pressure canisters broke up a march by hundreds of demonstrators in central Prague.

Jan Palach
The violence erupted as officers tried to disperse the crowd gathered at the foot of the Wenceslas Statue to pay tribute to Jan Palach, the student who burned himself to death in protest at the Soviet invasion the previous summer, and their ongoing occupation of Czechoslovakia.
More about Jan Palach 
January 26, 1991
Germans protested their country’s membership in the coalition prosecuting the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after he invaded Kuwait. Rallying out in many cities, the largest turnout brought 200,000 to Bonn. The number of those claiming conscientious objector status jumped 35% in that month to 30,000.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january26

Everyone! So, there.

Some Hasanabi clips

Reblog of a reblog; a very strong read-go see!

Episcopal Bishops Encouraging Flock To Stand Up For Migrants

I like this person and his teachings.  Clearly.  In truth had he been the one to save me as a 17 yr old beaten boy hiding in his barn I think he may have still sent me to a church school to protect me but he wouldn’t have then expected me to go on and become a priest in their religion.  I couldn’t tell my savior who wanted that from me why I rejected his strong demand / offer and instead went into the military was that I was gay.  I had accepted it to myself.  I was well versed enough in the acts of it due to my abuse to know that along with my internal emotions about guys vs women that the acts themselves did not repulse me.  Just the way they were forced on me. Remember I had been forced to please females as well as males since I was 3 years old and I understood my attractions were to males.  I was very gay.  Instead I think he would have asked me my goals and I would have had to tell him the mystical parts of the religion I had issues with … but the reason I need to withdraw was I was gay.  If he responded as he did in my comment to him, then I would have stayed in his congregation.  Not believing the magic parts of the religion but the community and acceptance that their god has for those different.   Rev. Ed Trevors admits he doesn’t preach facts, he preaches faith, and much of what he stresses is things as a humanest I can fully endorse. 

I do wonder with his … more violent past if he had found a badly beaten very thin small 17 year old boy who told him he was being abuse if he would have done more than force the parents … well in their mind’s owner of the boy to let him leave.  But again maybe that is my hopes / emotions talking over my understanding of reality.   Hugs

We Get Another Hummingbird This Week: “Border Beauty”

Peace & Justice History for 1/25

January 25, 1930
Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the anti-colonial movement in India pledged to achieve complete independence, or Purna Swaraj, from Great Britain.
Nehru said:
“The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually . . . We hold it to be a crime against men and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country.”
January 25, 2002

Israeli Refuseniks
A group of Israeli reservists issued a declaration saying they would not serve the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) if assigned to the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip. It was called the Combatants’ Letter, and the organization Courage to Refuse grew out of their resistance.
Captain David Zonshein and Lieutenant Yaniv Itzkovits, officers in an elite unit, realized the missions assigned to them as commanders in the IDF had in fact nothing to do with the defense of the State of Israel, but were rather intended to maintain control of the occupied territories at the price of oppressing the local Palestinian population.
Within three months, 69 such refuseniks had been jailed. 629 Israeli soldiers ultimately signed the pledge. Over 280 members of Courage to Refuse were court-martialed and jailed for periods of up to 35 days as a result of their refusal.

The Israeli refusnik movement today