WASHINGTON — President Biden signed an executive order on Monday reversing the Trump administration’s ban on “transgenders” serving in the military, allowing men who identify as women and vice versa to serve in the nation’s Armed Forces if they are otherwise qualified.
“[T]his is reinstating a position that previous commanders as well as the secretaries have supported,” Biden said moments prior to signing an order before members of the press Monday afternoon. “And what I’m doing is enabling all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform, and essentially restoring the situation as it existed before, with transgender personnel, if qualified in every other way, can serve their government in the United States military.”
“No one will be separated or discharged from the military or denied reenlistment on the basis of gender identity, and for those transgender service members who were discharged or separated because of gender identity, their cases will be reexamined,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki also outlined during the daily White House briefing.
“President Biden believes gender identity should not be a bar to military service and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,” Psaki stated. “America is stronger around the world when it is inclusive.”
New Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star Army general, also released a statement on the U.S. Department of Defense website, opining that he believes it is the “right thing to do.”
“The Department will immediately take appropriate policy action to ensure individuals who identify as transgender are eligible to enter and serve in their self-identified gender,” he said. “Prospective recruits may serve in their self-identified gender when they have met the appropriate standards for accession into the military services.”
Austin advised that the new policy will further “ensure all medically-necessary transition related care authorized by law is available to all service members.”
As previously reported, in 2017 then-President Trump ordered a halt to “transgender” participation, stating that the matter is a distraction to matters of readiness and lethality and that the costs associated with so-called sex changes are a burden on the U.S. military.
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Trump tweeted. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgenders in the military would entail. Thank you.”
However, he directed that no action be taken against those already serving in the military who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and said that those who have already been undergoing a gender transition must be allowed to continue.
Then-Defense Secretary James Mattis said that transgenders should only be able to serve if they are deployable, stating that if one is not able to deploy with their unit for more than one year, they would be released from the Armed Forces. It was then questioned whether those who obtain sex change-related operations would be able to recover within a year.
The matter has also caused controversy as it pertains to female privacy and propriety, as men who identify as women would be able to share women’s sleeping and showering quarters.
“Americans need to know the extreme implications of this policy,” Chaplain Col. (Ret.) Ron Crews of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty said in 2016. “Do we want our sons and daughters to be forced to share showers and sleeping spaces in a ‘mixed genitalia’ environment with no recourse for objections of conscience?”
“Spending billions of dollars on transgender surgeries and treatment plans, when the military has other priorities that would actually ensure its effectiveness in war, is irresponsible,” Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, who now works with Family Research Council, also remarked.
Doctors and nurses who serve in the military could also potentially face adverse circumstances if they hold to Christian convictions about gender and do not wish to affirm a person as being the opposite sex, it was additionally posited.
THE GOSPEL
As previously reported, while some view transgenderism as a medical condition, Christians believe the matter is also a spiritual issue at its root — one that stems from the same predicament all men everywhere face due to the Fall.
The Bible teaches that all are born with the Adamic sin nature, having various inherent feelings and inclinations that are contrary to the law of God, and being utterly incapable of breaking free by themselves.
“Bitter experience teaches that the imprisoning net clings too tightly to be stripped from our limbs by our own efforts. Nay rather, the net and the captive are one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which hinders him from following that which is good is trying to cast off himself,” wrote the late preacher and Bible commentator Alexander Maclaren.
It is why Jesus came: to free men from the bondage of sin (1 John 3:5; 2 Corinthians 5:21) and reconcile those alienated from God because of their sin to the Father (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:20).
“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” Paul declared in Romans 7:24-25.
Jesus outlined in John 3:5-7 that men must be regenerated supernaturally by the second birth, and have their very nature transformed from being in Adam to being a new creation in Christ, or they cannot see the kingdom of Heaven. It is known in Christianity as the doctrine of regeneration.
2 Corinthians 5:17 teaches, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.”
“But to men writhing in the grip of a sinful past, or paralyzed beyond writhing and indifferent, because [they are] hopeless, or because they have come to like their captivity,” Maclaren declared, “comes one whose name is ‘The Breaker,’ whose mission it is to proclaim liberty to the captives, and whose hand laid on the cords that bind a soul, causes them to drop harmless from the limbs and sets the bondsman free.”
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