When President Trump announced a ban on transgendered people in the military last week, the internet immediately lit up with cries of injustice.
One Facebook posting showed a solider in military garb with a rainbow sticker pasted across his or her mouth, with the caption: “Is this a man or a woman? Does it matter? Did they serve this country? Protect transgender rights. They protected yours.”
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, welcomed in this world, and approached with kindness.
But while the heart needs to be always engaged, we humans are not just beings with feelings. Sometimes our heads need to take the reins, for the good of all. Such as in the case of whether to allow transgendered persons in the military. It seems the majority of those who agree with the president’s decision are focused on the potential-for-combat aspect — on which the military is based — and the obvious and imperative need for restrictions in this area.
We see in this how our “personal decisions” are not isolated. If an individual were to medically pursue a gender change, join the military and become compromised in battle because of the resulting needs, we are all now at risk.
Based on advice of those who know the battlefield, the president is putting the good of all ahead of the individual.
In the middle of the blowup, I read an essay by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, an organization that exists in part to defend the religious freedom rights of all Americans. Donohue comes at his case for agreeing with the president based on what he calls “just discrimination.”
“…there are plenty of good reasons, especially for the military, to practice just discrimination against any person or group of persons who may logically compromise winning in the battlefield,” he writes.
Donohue mentions how “Type 1 diabetics are barred from the military because of their need for regular injections,” stating the impracticality of accommodating them. Since trans persons also need regular injections, he adds, it would be unfair to allow them to serve and not Type 1 diabetics. Allowing one but not the other to enlist would be “an expression of unjust discrimination.”
The only fair solution, he says, is to ban both groups. “Inequality exists,” Donohue continues. “But it is important to concede that not all manifestations of it are inequitable.”
I agree with Donahue. I think it’s possible to make a place for everyone in this world, and to respond in love to those who struggle. But perhaps all is not fair in love and war after all. Kindness should be a given. But being kind will sometimes mean choosing sensibility over sentimentality in doing what’s right.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Aug. 5, 2017.]
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